Manx Maxim

At the O2 this week I watched Ariana Grande get lifted above twenty thousand people on rigging that gets load-tested and certified before every show. Leadership failure in a school is slower, quieter and never labelled as such, so nobody assures it. The last of the "Who Checks?" mini-series is about who pays that cost.

Tower Bridge looks ceremonial. A panel inside points out that if it stopped operating, London's traffic would stop with it. Governing bodies look ceremonial too, and they are holding up the road. Day four of Who Checks is about maintaining the structure everything else rests on.

Front of house, PA to the head, finance, comms, safeguarding admin, the furious parent and the frightened one. That's a school administrator on a Monday morning, and it is unmistakably leadership. Day three of Who Checks is about the people who lead your school daily and are never called leaders.

Somebody is a very good teacher, so we make them a leader. Then we assess them on their subject data and never check the thing we actually promoted them into. Day two of Who Checks, including an appointment I got wrong and what it took to put right.

Twenty or thirty people are leading something in your school today. Subject leaders, the office, site managers, the SENCo. Inspection judges the head and the senior team, and almost none of the rest is ever looked at as leadership at all. The first of five posts on a gap nobody owns.