Double the fun: Meet the head who is running two schools

Jo Shuter is so good she has been put in charge of two London comprehensives. She tells Francis Beckett how the cult of personality produces great results

In the reception area at Quintin Kynaston School, there's a prominent picture of Jo Shuter, with a quote from the school's Ofsted report: "The head teacher's dynamic, keen and determined leadership drives the school forward." Underneath, there's a quote from "Jo Shuter, head teacher of the year, 2007" about how she adores the job. On another wall, a history of how this handsome reception area came to be built explains that "the head, Jo Shuter, has done much to give the school a sense of pride and purpose...".

Some school corridor walls carry more pictures of Ms Shuter, and there's a newly built coffee bar (sixth formers and teachers only, except on club nights) called Joanna's. It was a school council decision to name it after the head, but she's naturally delighted.

Is this taking the cult of personality too far? Jo Shuter in the flesh is quick and fluent, with an untidy mass of brown, curled hair, a wonderfully mobile face, and a great, deep, dark brown laugh that sounds as though you could be warmed by it from the other side of town. She's instantly charismatic and disarmingly honest, and defuses anything that sounds like criticism by agreeing with it. Yes, she tells me, there's a cult of personality: "School success is about leadership. I'm a maverick and a risk-taker. The wonderful thing about being a head teacher is that you can do your own thing, and I hope that rubs off on the kids."

Well, I say querulously, you want them to do their own thing, but you force them into uniforms? A lesser head would have tied herself in linguistic knots trying to square the circle. Jo Shuter blows me away with a gale of laughter: "Yes, it's double standards, isn't it?"

She adds: "I like all that no trainers, wear uniforms, line up before going into the classroom, call teachers Sir or Miss. There was a view in some London comprehensives that it stifles creativity. I think that's a load of tosh."

But the next thing I learn is that she herself was a rebel at school. Born in 1961 in a north London Jewish family, her father was an accountant and her mother ran a restaurant where, as a teenager, she did some waitressing. She was destined for the selective grammar school Henrietta Barnett or the private North London Collegiate, until she deliberately failed her 11 plus so that she could go to the local comprehensive.

"I was born with a really good brain." There's no air of boasting, she's just informing me of a fact, and it doesn't occur to me to doubt her. "So even though I was a rebel, I got really good GCSEs. Then I wanted to be a PE teacher, because I was really good at PE and it allowed me to burn off energy, but the school said that was a waste and I ought to do law, and I went to Bristol and started a law course and I was bored, bored, bored." She transferred and did social science and psychology instead, left with a 2:1 and a husband, and went with the latter to Birmingham, where she took a teaching certificate in PE and English.

She came to Quintin Kynaston in 2003. "There was something of an atmosphere of a Seventies London comprehensive about it no uniforms, children called teachers by their first name." That wasn't all bad it meant there was a good relationship between staff and students, and she built on that. She also spent money the school didn't have. "I went into deficit to buy things. At first I played the baby head, oh, sorry, didn't know I was supposed to ask. Then I started getting the local authority to sanction the spending." The money went on instant improvements to the environment in which children learn, like that spanking new entrance.

Divorced after 17 years of marriage, she worried about not having time for her own two children. So she gives the best of herself to the school during a long working day, but never takes work home. "I come in with nothing, I go home with nothing. You hear about heads who schlep all their papers home. I don't do that." "Schlep" is a reminder that, though she's lost the religion of her childhood, she's strongly culturally Jewish, certain there's no ailment so serious that a bowl of chicken soup won't cure it.

She does schlep two things home though: a walkie talkie and a mobile phone. They go everywhere with her. The walkie talkie keeps her in touch with everything that happens at QK. The mobile is for Pimlico School.

Having got QK into the top 3 per cent of schools nationally for value-added student progress, with no permanent exclusions in the past two years, more than 90 per cent attendance, and 600 applicants for 210 places, she was asked to do the same for Pimlico School at the other end of Westminster, which went into special measures in January. This year she has been dividing her time between the two.

At first there was some resentment at Pimlico as Jo Shuter says, "the head can't be everyone's friend" but they are starting to see results. She and the QK governors put forward a scheme for a federation between the two schools. Each school would have its own head, and she would be in ultimate charge of both of them which is effectively what has been happening this year, when she has had a deputy in day-to-day charge in each school.

Pimlico's governors were very keen on the idea. The two schools have a lot in common, and the methods which worked at QK looked set to work at Pimlico. Unfortunately, Westminster Council decided instead to turn Pimlico into an academy, sponsored and controlled by the venture capitalist John Nash and his charitable foundation, Future, so after this term she will have no further connection with Pimlico. "I wouldn't choose to be head of an academy," she says.

She's deeply disappointed. "Westminster preferred the academy model. I beg to differ. We've made a huge difference at Pimlico. They have their best exam results ever. We were able to mirror the system and structures that we have here." She was using staff expertise from Quintin Kynaston at Pimlico, and bringing prefects from the two schools together. "I would have loved the opportunity to carry on at Pimlico."

She is not impressed by academies or trust schools, which is very suspect in New Labour circles, yet she still managed to be one of Tony Blair's favourite heads. When prime minister, he paid three visits to the school. His famous announcement that he would not serve a full third term was made in QK's playground, and he invited her to breakfast in Downing Street. As he was leaving (to meet President George Bush), he put his arm round her and said, "Lovely to see you, Jo."

"I don't know why he kept coming here," she says. "He picked me, I didn't pick him." Is she a Blairite on education, I ask. "I've seen education turned around by the funding that has come in." That isn't yes or no. I remember how she "played the baby head" with Westminster Council. She's not a politician, but she has plenty of political skill.

She's going to need it. She thinks QK will have to become a foundation school as other schools in Westminster become academies. It's on the border of Westminster and Camden, and despite a court ruling some years ago that was thought to make it impossible, Westminster forces her to give priority to children from Westminster primaries which means that Camden children who live a street or two away might not get in.

She believes firmly in the local community school, taking children who live in the surrounding streets. Two of the most deprived wards in the country are in QK's catchment area. So, too, are some very wealthy homes some houses in the same street sell for 4.5m but children from those houses are bussed out to independent schools. Jo Shuter insists there's nothing that places like the vastly expensive North London Collegiate which so narrowly avoided having her education on its conscience can provide that QK can't.

Shuter wonders aloud whether her popularity in Downing Street was because "I don't look like a head teacher and New Labour quite likes that." It's not just the mass of hair and the mobile face, but also a famous tattoo.

The day I went, she wore a black trouser suit which hid it, but rather spoiled the stratagem by owning up to it as soon as I asked. As I left, I said: "Where's the tattoo exactly?" "Left ankle," she shouted. I thought I could still hear her laughing when I got to the Tube station, but perhaps I imagined it.