Dear Headteacher,

Following the publication of national performance tables I am pleased to be able to invite you to join the specialist school initiative and to become a Bargepole School. This addition to the programme was announced by Estelle Morris in June 2002 as part of a commitment to encouraging every school to celebrate its own distinctive ethos and to develop its own character.

Probably, your first question will be why choose your school out of the five thousand or so secondary schools in England. The answer is that you have met a range of stringent criteria. The first criteria is that you have declining school numbers, perhaps because all the ‘normal’ people have moved out of a depressed urban area or because there is a nice new college in the action zone up the road. Secondly, you have succeeded in keeping your five GCSE passes at grades A* - C score below 25% and, thirdly, you have at least 10% of year 11 leaving school with no discernible qualification. However, you need to remember that any Level 7s at Key Stage 3 in the future will count against you.

The requirements as far as staff are concerned are a little more complex. At least 75% of the management team must be on regular medication for stress, and over 50% of the teaching staff need to have been at the school for less than two years. Special conditions apply if there are at least ten members of staff from Australia and there is a cash bonus if unfilled vacancies rise above 25%. A good way to meet the staffing criteria is to pass the best young English, maths and science teachers over to the Key Stage 3 Framework team so they are no longer teaching in the school. The headteacher should have been at the school for at least ten years and have a strong record of declining training opportunities – both personally and on behalf of the staff.

OFSTED is always hard to predict. The school does not actually need to be in special measures but should be hovering just above that label so that it is both deprived and unsupported. The local education authority should be in the throes of being taken over by a dodgy accountancy company and be pensioning off any active advisers as it works on its fourth action plan in three years.

As you know, the specialist school system relies on links with private sector sponsors so you will need to see if you can organise a staff discount with the local FoodKwik or burger joint – abandoning school meals and giving them the FSM franchise should oil the wheels. Alternatively, invite the local drug dealers to set up a small stall in the caretaker’s old shed that can meet the needs of your local estates. Dealing in soft drugs only will get the support of the local police and be in everyone’s best interests. Target your sponsorship requests – establish a junior cricket team, for example or open a shooting club. Once the sponsorship is in place, you will receive a smart
Formica plaque which is 100% graffiti resistant and be allowed to use the ‘crossed bargepoles’ logo on school letters and communications.

Many of the schools have specialisms and you might like to consider choosing to focus on a particular area. At the start of the programme, we expect to have specialist subject options in Business Studies and Money Laundering, ICT and Mobile Telephone reprogramming and Art and Design including passports and benefit forms. Whatever you choose, you will have the support of the DfES and a hotline number you can call which is manned for twenty four hours a day in Karachi. You can also join in the discussions on the Bargepole Schools website when the modifications to the site have been completed in 2005.

Another major advantage for you is that you will now be part of a family of schools working for the benefit of pupils beyond their own school boundaries. The Bargepole Schools will be able to work together with other schools in the network to advertise stolen goods nationally or provide instant alibis for pupils and their immediate families. Finally, there will be a Bargepole School of the year award and a prestigious long service award for teachers. This will be in the form of a certificate presented after eighteen months consecutive teaching with no sick leave.

We look forward to you joining this vibrant new sector of the education network.