EDUCATION Secretary Alan Johnson has sanctioned a major shake-up at a struggling Basingstoke secondary school.

The governing board of John Hunt of Everest Community School, in Popley, has been disbanded and is being replaced with an Interim Executive Body (IEB) - the first time such a step has been taken at a school in the Basingstoke area.

A new headteacher and deputy head are also set to start at the school on Monday, November 20, as part of a revised management structure which will include the existing deputy head Dan Brown.

The shake-up - which is being co-ordinated by Hampshire County Council in consultation with the Department for Education and Skills - comes less than a year before the school's move to a new £26.8million state-of-the-art site on the Merton Rise development. The new school, which will be called Everest Community College, will cater for up to 750 pupils aged from 11 to 16.

Parents of the current 432 pupils - who are this week being notified of the changes in a letter from John Hunt's executive headteacher Jeffrey Threlfall - are being assured that there are no plans to change the catchment area for the new school.

In its last Ofsted inspection in 2005, John Hunt was found to be "in challenging circumstances" and was served with a Notice to Improve.

Mr Threlfall, the headteacher at Wildern School, in Hedge End, near Southampton - which was rated "outstanding" in its last Ofsted report - was subsequently made executive head of John Hunt and has been working alongside headteacher Lesley Phillipson since May.

In The Gazette on Thursday, November 9, it was revealed that Mrs Phillipson would be taking early retirement at the age of 55. She was due to leave the school on Friday, November 17.

Mr Threlfall now faces the challenging task of spearheading the drive to transform the school where pupil GCSE results are among the poorest in Hampshire.

Mr Threlfall told The Gazette: "My intention is to transform John Hunt into a place where parents will want to send their children and where children will leave with outstanding exam results."

He added: "The Secretary of State for Education and Skills, Alan Johnson, has arranged a new form of governance for the school made up of governors from John Hunt's former governing body, members of Wildern's governing body, representatives from the local community and representatives from the local authority.

"We are looking to create an outstanding leadership team to allow the school to transform and move forward at a pace that it needs to.

"Our aim is to make it a really successful school with good quality teaching and learning with significant improvements in exam performance.

"We also want to provide a personal education for each youngster, focusing on their individual strengths, as well as looking at behavioural and attendance issues to ensure pupils are focused on learning."

Mr Threlfall praised the work of Mrs Phillipson, who took over as headteacher at John Hunt in January 2001.

"Lesley is someone who has a very caring approach to young people," he said. "I feel she has made a very strong contribution to the success of John Hunt. She has a very good knowledge of parents, pupils and the community and will be missed."

John Hunt is only the second school in the history of Hampshire County Council - the local education authority - to get an IEB, which has the same powers as a school governing body.

The IEB chairman will be former secondary headteacher John Samuels. Mr Samuels has worked for Hampshire County Council for three years as a professional adviser with responsibility for leadership and management. He has also had previous experience of chairing an IEB. The only other member of the IEB that has so far been named is Mr Threlfall.

John Hunt's annual prizegiving ceremony for pupils takes place at the school tonight. Among those attending will be Councillor Paul Harvey, former chairman of the board of governors and former leader of Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council.

Cllr Harvey said: "I will be at the prizegiving event to celebrate the success of the children. The GCSE results have gone up from 15 per cent to 28.4 per cent this year and a lot of this is due to the hard work of the teachers and Lesley Phillipson. They have always had a strong desire to support the children and provide rounded education for them."