I have known Nadine Powrie since interviewing her for a position as my deputy headteacher in April 2008. Even at interview she impressed an extremely experienced panel, and was head and shoulders above the other candidates on knowledge, skills and experience and how to use them to best effect – I would add that the shortlist was from a strong field of more than a hundred applicants.

On taking up her role she more than satisfied our very high expectations of what she would bring to the organisation. She took a very analytical approach: establishing where improvements needed to be made; seeking solutions and processes to make those improvements; developing a plan with short and long term goals and communicating it carefully and precisely to the various teams with which she worked; monitoring progress towards the goals, and taking remedial action where necessary; modelling the skills and behaviours needed to implement and continue the processes; reviewing and replanning at the relevant juncture.

In all of this activity the most important contribution was her work with staff to develop their leadership skills. This was based on first gaining their trust by modelling exactly what a process might look like/entail – for example a debrief session with a middle leader who needs to communicate a competency gap with one of their team – and then supporting them, if appropriate to conduct such an interview. She also delivered both generic training for whole staff groups, and bespoke training for smaller targeted teams. Her work was carried out within a framework of staff complacency that had existed for some years, and was so effective that the school became the LA’s best performer within two years.

Her contribution to this improvement was recognised with a rapid promotion to Headteacher of a school in Hampshire. She and I kept in close contact and I followed with interest her work there, in a different context, but equally successful. She continued to provide leadership training support to members of my staff – by distance learning and face-to-face – and those with whom she worked were invariably enthused by the specific and context driven methods she shared with them to improve their practice.

When Nadine went freelance I was pleased to be able to commission her to work with my Trust on creating a mission statement (statement of philosophy) that accurately represented our aims and ensured that our policies aligned with those aims. She brought the same level of deep analysis and careful consideration of all of our published (outward facing) documentation to this task in order to help us not only to draft a new statement, but to more formally monitor whether our actions were in accord with our published philosophy.