Since taking on executive roles over the past few years, I have sometimes been asked what I miss most about headship. This month I had two experiences which reminded me of the very best parts of being directly in school.
King Edward’s Consortium (KEC) is the no.1 school-centred initial teacher training (ITT) provider in the country according to the Good Teacher Training Guide and I am sure that many of you will have had the opportunity to work alongside the extremely high-quality trainees on their placements in our schools*.
I was delighted to be invited by Louise Leigh, the Director of ITT, to lead a session with the trainees about leadership. We engaged in over an hour’s discussion and debate about the meaning of leadership, how we can balance moral and effective leadership, what leadership we see in schools, and how they intend to be leaders from day one in their careers, not necessarily from the point of view of formal career progression (although given the calibre of the trainees I am sure that many of them will start this journey soon), but from the perspective of all colleagues within schools being leaders of students in their own areas.
Being in a room with thirty inquisitive, thoughtful and keen individuals, albeit adults, reminded me of some of my best days in a classroom. One of the thoughts that I left with them was a quote by the former head of the Australian Army when he was tackling incidents of sexual abuse in the forces. It is a sentiment that guided me as a headteacher and has since: “the standard you walk past is the standard you accept.”
This quote is one which I would particularly reflect on when walking the corridor of my old school in Cambridgeshire, before working across schools in the UAE, and observing student and staff conduct. It was especially relevant at duty time, which brings me on to my second flashback to headship last week, when I had the pleasure of accompanying Damian McGarvey on lunch duty at King Edward VI Balaam Wood Academy.
Lunch duty is when you see the interactions of a school community at their most open, in many ways. At Balaam Wood, I saw active students engaging with each other in a friendly manner, warm staff-student interaction (including two boys coming up to Damian to ask him to define a word that they had heard in a lesson), and strong routines which, although emanating from Covid procedures, have quickly become embedded and are making a difference to the smooth running of the school. It was a brief, thirty-five minute plunge into the daily life of the school, and reminded me how pleased I am to be getting into our schools and having these moments to understand our King Edward VI communities.
* There are still places available for September entry for trainees, so if you know anyone who would be interested in training as a teacher, please do direct them to: https://www.teachkec.org.uk/
