This episode discusses how to be an effective school leader in challenging and difficult circumstances – both the expected and the unexpected.

Our experts consider how to lead and manage these situations, sharing their tenets of effective leadership under pressure, their own experiences, and lessons learnt.

We ask how leaders stay calm, decisive, and people-centred when times are tough. We also look at the particular challenge of handling a negative Ofsted inspection outcome.

We consider specific examples of challenging circumstances and the different types of challenges we may face as a school leader, handling angry parents, a death in your school community, a local incident, a serious safeguarding issue, staffing problems, Ofsted and others.

We try to outline a general principles of handling these situations and discuss a step-by-step guide for how to respond.

We discuss in particular Ofsted – perhaps the most common "challenging circumstance" – and how leaders can handle a negative outcome and the challenge of turning a school around.