Private Management, State School

In June 2007, Salisbury School in Enfield became the first state secondary school to be taken over by private management. In this programme, we follow the first six months of this unique experiment.

Edison UK, a subsidiary of an American-owned education firm, were given a three-year £1.2 million contract to manage the north London school, with their fee directly related to school achievement.

According to executive headteacher Trevor Averre-Beeson, the secret behind school improvement is similar to the way in which profitable businesses such as Tesco have achieved success: they simply found a successful formula and repeated it.

Initially, staff at Salisbury were sceptical about this corporate philosophy. However, with time, many have started to react positively to a more business-oriented culture.