Ahead of the class - Marie Stubbs

This is the heartening account of how Marie Stubbs and her team transformed St George's School - made notorious by the murder of its headteacher Philip Lawrence into a school praised by Ofsted inspectors.

Imagine a school where the staff are too fearful to leave the staffroom at breaktime, where stealing and absenteeism are rife, where vicious fights continually break out in the bleak playground, and children wander the corridors chatting on mobile phones. Now imagine a school where children turn up early to have breakfast and play football in a playground furnished with goalposts and attractive plants; where the corridors are empty and classrooms full during lessons, where classical music plays over the intercom and where pupils welcome visitors such as Lenny Henry, Ralph Fiennes and Cherie Blair to give talks. This is the transformation that Marie Stubbs effected at St George's, an inner-city comprehensive in London's Maida Vale. The school had gone into a decline after the murder of its head, Philip Lawrence, outside the school gates in 1995. When Marie Stubbs took over it was threatened with closure after a damning Ofsted report. St George's pupils had been depicted in the press as demons, but within 15 months this 61-year-old grandmother had given them back their self-respect. Attendance rose, examination results improved and in March 2001 the school received a glowing report from Ofsted. Marie Stubbs's approach combines conviction, imagination, old-fashioned discipline and modern management techniques. The heartwarming story of how she and her chosen task force turned round a school that had lost hope is inspiring.