THE new head of a Forest school has said he is “not interested in change for the sake of change.”

Rob Ford has taken charge of Wyedean School after a year which has seen the school work its way out of special measures, been hit by strike action and posted its best-ever exam results.

He said: “It is an incredibly positive time to come.

“I’ve had 21 years in education and worked in the private and state sectors in all sorts of successful schools but I’ve never started an academic year off with quite the buzz that we had here.

Mr Ford said he had no plans to change the school as a ‘marker’ of his arrival.

He said: “That is not a priority here for me. The foundation I’m coming into is incredible – they’ve got the ‘good’ from Ofsted and we want to push now for ‘outstanding’.

“It’s not because we want the label but because we want to be committed to the high performing level of education.

“Having that as a goal helps us focus on what we’ve got to do, not just to make our school good but to be outstanding in everything we do.

“That doesn’t mean me messing around with a uniform change.

“I want to build up digital learning, creativity, resilience, our character curriculum and global learning.”

Mr Ford said the issues around performance management that had seen teachers take strike action earlier this year had been resolved.

“They’re resolved because what weve done is we’ve sat down with the professional associations.

“In some respects the messages that came down from government in terms of pay, performance management and pay-related progression weren’t always clear.

“It was a difficult job for schools’ leaderships, teachers and the teaching unions to know what the intention was.

“Being an academy has given a lot of freedom over things like the curriculum but it has also meant the school has had to catch up quickly on employment law.”