Support with headship

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  Hi I’m Andy Brown. My substantive post is Executive Headteacher of West View Primary School in Hartlepool. This year I’m seconded to NCSL as their North East region leader for the Leadership Network. My presentation to you today is ‘Headship is a fantastic job, as long as you get the right support’. I’ve had the privilege to be headteacher for over 11 years and more recently to support leadership development across the North East as part of the National Leadership Network. Research tells us that, as a result of the baby boom after World War Two, there will be more vacancies for headteachers nationally in 2009 than there’s ever been before. As such headteachers will have, in many cases, very short apprenticeships. So support for headteachers will be even more invaluable.
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  Preparation for headship is very important including persuading those talented leaders that they can be great heads. It’s an integral part of my present role within the Leadership Network. One programme that was designed within the team is internships. The idea for the design came from one of my teachers. She is a fantastic teacher – Teacher of the Year in a primary school in the North East. If she ran her school, everything would be outstanding. But she doesn’t want my job, and within my team there are lots of other people like her. So what we wanted to do was set up a scheme and a programme where aspiring leaders, or people that had been spotted as aspiring leaders, can move into another school, in another setting and experience headship. We called it internships, and one thing I would add to that is that this year when I’ve gone back into school, the teacher said to me, who acted up as deputy head, “actually I’ve quite enjoyed this Andy, it’s made me think more about moving into deputy headship or headship”.

  Another intern that we had was a deputy head from North Yorkshire, who’d applied for 11 or 12 headships and she was getting interviews. But they were all small middle-class high performing schools, and she needed something else on her CV. So we placed here within a very, very challenging school in East Middlesbrough, and she had a wonderful week. Her CV looked stronger and it’s made her think about challenging schools.

  The Leadership Network in the North East had 36 interns and five of them are already headteachers. Some local north-east authorities and dioceses are already delivering quality talent management CPD, not just for future heads but for prospective deputies as well. Two of these local authorities feel this is so successful that succession planning will not be an issue for them, because it’s always inextricably linked to their CPD agenda. Headship is not just an honour, but in my opinion is the best job in the world. And for those who are about to, or have recently taken up headship, I can recommend to you the NCSL’s ‘New Heads’ conference each autumn. It is inspiring, with very high-profile speakers.

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  NPQH is presently being redesigned. We know that some graduates who struggled with the NPQH have made outstanding headteachers and the converse is true also. So what made those heads outstanding? The first 100 days of headship is crucial. This is when many local authorities match their new heads to a mentor headteacher with a lot of experience. A good suggestion I came across working in the Leadership Network was a head from Long Eaton in Derby who used to be an actor, and he investigated and he sourced his own mentor and got Sir Ken Robinson, and the result for his school has been phenomenal. His curriculum has changed, it’s moved towards 20/20 vision. He’s very much a risk-taker and his standards have gone through the roof, so that might be a good message for aspiring headteachers.

  Everybody finds it tough. If I briefly share with you the early days of headship both personally and from a well-respected colleague, you will see how much pride headteachers gain from making a difference to their communities. Also, do not dismiss challenging contexts, as they are fantastic places to work. High-performing schools are not always the easiest schools to lead, as they can be seen by some as struggling to attract headteachers.

  When I took my school over in 1996 it was pre-Ofsted and I was asked by the local authority to go in, and immediately the local authority then came in and said “Andy, you know it’s failing?” I said “well it didn’t take long to realise that”, but there was a lot of exclusions. I had five teachers on capability. Standards – only 12% of pupils were getting Key Stage 2 English. We had a large arson attack. We had the firearms squad in school. We had serious child protection... It was really, really hard, but yet in 2003 the school was identified as the 25th highest performing school in England and Wales and, in fact, it led to a visit to Parliament. In 2007, our English results are above national averages, so it can be done.

  Another colleague of mine in 1993, very respected now by the Department of Education, NCSL and Ofsted, she too felt very isolated in the early days, but she persevered and today she’s supporting schools across the country with a model of learning.

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  Hero heads do not exist! This job is too big for one person. You can’t lead alone. We hear a lot about distributed leadership, not delegated leadership. And this clearly has been one of the reasons my school has been so successful. During my time at West View we’ve had ten promotions, five heads have come from this school, and we’ve done that through not having single people running curriculum areas, running pastoral areas. We have very much a facilitation group approach, mirroring the distributed leadership across the school involving governors, non-teaching staff and teachers. We used a lot of our planning for that from the work of Dr Brent Davies on Strategic Leadership. I firmly believe it’s headteachers’ responsibility, it’s in fact their moral purpose, to grow the headteachers of tomorrow.

  During headship you will only move your school from good to effective, or good to great, by looking outside the box. Don’t feel you have to be in your school five days a week. There are a number of supportive structures out there. These are a few that have had an impact on my school and other schools across the country. The NCSL Leadership Network is not just for headteachers, it’s for leaders at all levels. Professional learning networks such as Network Learning Communities can support your middle leaders. The NCSL has a number of leadership programmes such as Leadership Pathways, Leading from the Middle, LPSH, NPQH, there’s National Leaders of Education. Your unions can be a good source of support: SSAT, GTC, TDA. Your headteacher clusters are also an invaluable support mechanism for you.

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  Finally just to conclude, it is worth it in the end. When I first moved to my school, I remember driving to work in the morning, and seeing all the pushchairs and mums going in the opposite direction and I thought “they are going to different schools, why are they not they going to my school?” It’s changed now. Those pushchairs don’t go that direction, but one memory I will always have is when one of my mums knocked on my door one July and said “Mr Brown, can I have a word?” I said “Yes”.

  “I was in the dentist this morning, and the dentist said which school do you children go to? And I want to tell you a story … for the last seven years I haven’t said this school, I’ve made up another school. And today I proudly said West View Primary School, and so I thought I’d come and tell you that.”

  So it is worth it in the end, because that’s something I’ll always remember. Thank you.