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'I want the best for our pupils'

30/ 1/2002

PLANS to improve a failing Middleton high school include a "multi-agency approach" which the new management team will use to provide pupils with the best education possible.

Ron Dixon, aged 57, has been chosen as the new acting head teacher to lead the team at Queen Elizabeth School, in Hollin Lane. He comes highly recommended from Cheadle Hulme College, a large comprehensive school, where he has taught for 12 years.

Mr Dixon, a married man with three children, was brought up in Manchester before leaving to read history at the University of Sussex.

He taught in three schools in the London area before becoming a deputy head teacher at a school in Cambridgeshire. From there he progressed to a post as head teacher in Stalybridge, before taking his last post in Stockport. Mr Dixon is also an accredited external adviser for head teacher performance reviews and management.

Mr Dixon told the Guardian: "My priority is to work with the school as a whole from a management point of view. At the moment, we are looking at five key issues: attendance, behaviour, individual teaching and learning, leadership and management of the school.

"We are developing an action plan to take the school forward and all the school's teachers have been working together to produce an action plan for the governors, who spent a Saturday morning looking at some of the initial plans.

"I want the best for every pupil at the school so that they can all have a better future. I will be looking at a variety of different approaches and will be working with other agencies, such as the Youth Inclusion Project."