EGGARS headteacher Felicity Martin visited Downing Street to celebrate exceptional school leadership. Mrs Martin was one of 90 school leaders at a Number 10 reception, in recognition of her role in supporting struggling schools, as a National Leader of Education (NLE). Prime minister Gordon Brown and Secretary of State for Children Schools and Families Ed Balls were there to greet the NLEs, along with senior staff from the National College for School Leadership (NCSL). Supported by staff at their schools, NLEs use their success and professionalism as school leaders to provide additional leadership capacity to struggling schools. NCSL selected Eggars as a National Support School (NSS) in September 2006. Since then Felicity Martin has worked with head teachers in seven Isle of Wight schools. "It is an amazing experience – it is about partnership working, looking at the school and sharing good practice," said Mrs Martin who was "really excited" at being invited to attend the Downing Street reception and to meet up with ministers to discuss the future of education. It has been a rollercoaster ride for Felicity Martin who stepped into a hornets nest when joining the school 11 years ago but has since led Eggars from strength to strength. She describes it as "a journey" which in its 2004 Ofsted saw Eggars achieve the top category for outstanding leadership, providing Mrs Martin with an opportunity to deliver a talk about Ofsted and data testing at a national DfES conference. Eggars excels at using information to identify individual children and intervene to help them make progress. Describing it as "the key to success", Mrs Martin says the data is used in an open, transparent way to build up pupil confidence and encourage them to meet challenging targets. The success of this scheme led to an invitation for Felicity Martin to give a similar talk to government ministers and ambassadors in Berlin, after which she was approached to apply to become a National Leader for Education, and was accepted – a reflection of Eggars, the teaching and pro-active support provided by staff, governors, children and parents. "It is all about community and team effort," said Mrs Martin. Two years ago Eggars was the fourth most improved school in the country, it has achieved high performance special school status with two specialities: science and maths and as a training school, working with other schools. According to Mrs Martin the school's success has opened up a wide variety of opportunities, and she has met up with some "amazing people". Among them has been national consultant educationalist, David Potter, who visited Eggars recently to take a rigourous look at the school, sitting in on lessons, talking to teachers and listening to pupils. He described Eggars as "like a stick of rock – whichever way you broke it it would be outstanding," said a delighted Felicity Martin. Describing Eggars as "a family who care about each other," Felicity Martin said the challenge now is to maintain this standard of excellence and to build and improve on it – no mean feat when working with adolescents. Taking on the headship at Eggars was "hard at the beginning", but worthwhile. It has, she says, been based on good decision making and the courage needed to become a good leader – "it is having the conviction of knowing your school and knowing that you are capable of making it outstanding."