Why headship?

 

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  A little bit about who I am. I grew up and was educated in the City of London and in return I felt I needed to give something back. So I've now completed 27 years of successful teaching experience in inner city London schools. I was also very fortunate in undertaking a year's secondment through an organisation called HTI (Headteachers in Industry) with HSBC, a global corporate. I'm very interested in teaching and learning. I'm very interested in leadership and management, but there is a need for work life balance and I'm a father of two. I'm very interested in athletics and my sons there, one's a county athlete, and my younger son is a 2012 prospect. He led the rankings for his age group last year in the triple jump.

  On successfully being appointed to Leytonstone Business and Enterprise Specialist School as head teacher, I want to share with you a couple of phrases that seem to be coming to mind, or coming across regularly prior to taking up that appointment. The first was 'where there is no vision the people perish' and 'we are what we repeatedly do'. Excellence then is not an act but a habit. As a headteacher you're looking to be successful. What factors are involved in being successful as a headteacher? What factors are involved in making a significant difference in teaching and learning or delivering a quality curriculum?

  Hargreaves in 2001: 'The promise of sustainable success in education lies not in training and developing a tiny elite but in creating entire cultures of distributive leadership throughout the school community.'

  QCA, their aims: 'Develop a modern world-class curriculum that will inspire and challenge all learners and prepare them for the future.'

  School improvement, NCSL: 'It is now clear for school improvement, leadership needs to focus on two dimensions: the teaching and learning focus on the one hand, and the capacity and the ability to deliver that on the other.'

  So why apply for headship? What are the reasons for not applying for headship? The NUT did a recent survey on reasons for and against, and the answers won't surprise you.

  Why headship? It's an opportunity to make a difference. Something certainly that's in keeping with my philosophy. An opportunity to become a community leader, a role model. A natural career progression. It's important to think about what it is you're going to do after headship as well, and prepare for that. There is, of course, an attractive salary, responsibility. It's the opportunity to realise your vision of how an effective school will work and, of course, it's a leadership opportunity.

  But, of course, there's also 'why don't we apply for headship'? Fear of not being successful. Maybe the need for more training before you feel confident to apply. And the need for experience before taking on such a daunting role, and certainly these are the sorts of things I reflected on and were the reasons why I did my secondment before taking on headship.

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  What do they say makes effective leadership? I want to share with you seven strong claims about leadership from a recent survey conducted by the University of Warwick, The Institute of Education and the University of Nottingham, and these might well resonate with your ideas and philosophy on leadership and management at present. Effective leadership is second only to teaching, as an influence on learning. The majority of successful leaders share the repertoire of basic leadership practices, and they're applied in different ways depending on the context. Effective leaders improved teaching and learning powerfully, because of their influence on staff morale, staff motivations, staff commitment, and the working conditions for staff and students. Effective leadership has the greatest influence when it's distributive, but there are some staff with distributive leadership that are more effective than others. There is a need for accountability. If you look at effective leaders, they share a handful of traits: they are usually very flexible, willing to learn, they're optimists, they persist, they're resilient, and have a set of core values.

  You will be familiar with the PricewaterhouseCoopers report on present models of effective leadership. This notion of the strong heroic head teacher who carries all before him and drags his school into a better place is not the only style of effective leadership any more. There's the structure that I work with where I've got support staff in my senior management team, a much flatter structure. With the 7-19 curriculum and the HR Matters agenda, there's an opportunity now for a multi-agency style of management structure, and it could well be that in the future we have a non-teacher as a headteacher, and there's federations and collaborations, and networking styles of leadership and management. Some of those, when you're choosing your schools, may well be more in keeping with your idea of where you want to work, and it is very important that you choose the most appropriate school for you when applying for headship.

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  So my story, how did I become a headteacher? As a senior manager undertaking the National Professional Qualification for Headship (NPQH), you become a much more reflective practitioner, and I'm very grateful for NPQH for establishing and making sure that I had a very clear vision of what I wanted my school to be. I had extensive senior management experience, and it is important to build on the NPQH work that you've undertaken, to make sure you're a member of a senior management union, because of the staff development opportunities that it provides and the materials that come through. I was also grateful for this opportunity for this secondment for one year, which prepared me for headship. I will just mention briefly a few of the benefits of that.

  Headteachers in Industry is an organisation that's regarded as the interface between education and business and they do a lot of research into leadership and management. That secondment enabled me to have very high quality staff development training that prepared me for headship and gave me a mentor to track my progress in that direction. It also gave me an opportunity to experience business practices in a global corporate.

  HSBC is the second largest bank in the world. Being at HSBC gave me an opportunity to see, at first hand, global leadership and management exemplars. For example, Sir John Bond, who was the Chairman of the bank at that time, clearly walked the talk. He valued his colleagues. He talked about 'our' bank, but also he never accepted second best. Working at HSBC gave me an opportunity to liaise and network on a national and international level, and play my part in the corporate social responsibility agenda for HSBC. It was interesting to see how highly they promoted their reputation, how they used technology to communicate globally, how they marketed and promoted themselves. All these things can be brought back into school as a headteacher. But not only that, as a result of that year I was very, very clear about the education agenda. I developed a network of organisations and people that I could use in my headship.

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  In preparing yourself for headship, you've got to make sure that when you walk into any prospective school that you're actually in role and that when you walk through that door they see you as a potential headteacher. These are the sorts of things you need to reflect upon when applying for headship. It's very, very important to choose the right school, use the data that's out there, use your networks. Is it a school where you'd feel comfortable working with that management team, or within that particular school, or community?

  Just reflecting on that first year, the vision that I carried with me through the interview process, into that first day and the present day was so important. I can still remember that first day when I was delivering meetings to staff and also meeting all the year groups, and having that clear vision, and getting the opportunity to share with them my view, my picture of where we were going and ask them to come on board and help me develop that vision. It also gives you the opportunity to put into practice all those team building, leadership and management skills and expertise that you've developed during your senior management experience. My values and vision is very much one of developing staff and students so that they achieve their potential and more, through having a learning community, a thinking school, developing mutual respect - all underpinned by equal opportunity.

  A few things have really helped me develop my team over this last year and a half. A key activity has been to ensure that all my teams and my students had a clear purpose and set of values, that they were empowered. I aimed to be flexible whilst driving standards, and worked on day-to-day relationships and communication. Recognising what staff and students do, looking for opportunities to praise and appreciate them, and keeping morale up were all high on my list of priorities. And it's crucial to share with students and staff this idea that what we're doing is worthwhile - that we're looking to develop a much better place, share goals and values. It's also important for staff and students to be in control of their areas of responsibility, that they're respected and listened to, but challenged when needed. It's important that we cheer each other on. And when it comes to developing enthusiasm, it's important to have a clear mission, to congratulate, and of course, to pay your staff appropriately.

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  There is a big difference between being a deputy head and a headteacher, where you're ultimately responsible on a day-to-day basis, and you're responsible with the governors, for the strategic direction of the school.

  Remember though you are a role model, you'll be under constant scrutiny, you set the tone in the school, your presence and your profile are extremely important as you go on your day-to-day business, and how you handle yourself.

  You can be regarded as the fount of knowledge, but this is very clearly not the case, and I do value the knowledge and expertise of my colleagues, and of course my students. And you need to know who it is you can talk to, to get the information that's really required to make some difficult decisions.

  Last but not least, it's important to get a work-life balance. Get your team to shield you, get your PA to shield you - a lot of people want your time. It's important that you do focus on what's important in driving your school forward. At the same time, think about your next step; do think about what it is you want to do after your present headship. I think it is important to reflect on where you're going. It's another opportunity to develop your staff. I get a lot of satisfaction of seeing my staff and students achieve. It is fantastic.

  We are in a unique position to improve the lives of students, the lives of staff, and the community. I get a lot of satisfaction out of developing my staff into middle management, into senior management, and beyond, and similarly my students. And we are uniquely placed in the community to have an effect to counter some of the negative aspects that are out there at the moment.

  In closing, I want to share with you a quote on mastery, something I suppose that I aspire to, which is 'One who has mastered the art of living simply pursues his or her vision of excellence at whatever he or she does, leaving others to decide whether he or she is working or playing.'

  So headship, why headship? I've shared with you who I am, reasons for headship, and challenged reasons for not applying for headship. We have reflected on what makes effective leadership and management in 2007, and I've also shared with you my story of headship in terms of preparation and reflections on my first year.

  Thank you very much.