When I saw that Donald Trump wants to arm school principals I
wondered if this is the solution to our perennial school problems: short skirts, missed homeworks and trainers. It may be that headteachers have a pathological dislike of
chewing gum and this could be easily solved if we shot a few kids.
I’m not sure I would trust headteachers to act reasonably faced
with such unbearable provocation. I’m not sure I trust headteachers to be
reasonable people. And, yes, I can assure you, I will be generalising, except
when I give obviously specific examples.
I know of one long serving headteacher who cannot be interrupted
whilst speaking. It is accepted at his school that this is so. The drawback
here is that we don’t always speak wisely or know what to do. He was surprised
during his contribution at a headterachers’ conference when the rest of the
audience decided he was dull and started talking amongst themselves. He
bellowed an unfunny punchline, laughed at his own humour and sat, red-faced,
unused to critical acclaim. At the same time, it was rude of all the heads to
demean him. Sometimes we can be insensitive, rude and double-standarded.
Being on X Factor does not mean you’re a good singer and the
entire profession should be protected from heads who have been on TV. We may
have a misconceived perception of our importance, operating with the clenched
fist of truth and self belief in the one true path to success. Only Trump,
Putin and Boris know all the answers.
Headteachers should listen to everyone.
At my first school the headteacher, Saul Ezra, was regularly
harangued at staff meetings and it was no real surprise when one day he
announced that there would be no discussion on a new school rule: “As of today children
will walk upstairs on the left hand side and downstairs on the right hand
side.” I tried to advise but he was adamant that “enough is enough.” I have
never seen a school staff so willingly watch the new school rule – during the
20 minutes it survived the obvious.
I know that some of my colleagues are under pressure to single
handedly, “turn schools round’” which is a great-man myth perpetrated by
government ministers and the great men (and women) who claim to turn schools
from failing to amazing in a year or two. A few expulsions and some revision
lessons do not change the nature of a school. Schools need investment in their
teachers and a developing ethos based on whole school achievement. I once
listened to a headteacher tell how he had turned round four failing schools in
ten years. There are no great men (or women) but he must have been a
magician. Great heads can help great teachers improve achievement, working with
the students and their parents; it takes time and more commitment than a game of
pool.
In a time when new Headteachers are told they have 12 months to
bring about system change and improved results and they are then sacked it is a
little cruel of me to scorn our tiny corner of the profession. However, I am
surprised at some colleagues claiming to have turned round schools that no-one
knew were failing in the first place. Just as surprised as hearing almost all
job candidates claim the best results in their schools.
I know of a headteacher who issued yellow, and then red, cards to
staff who disagreed with her at meetings. She also checked teachers’ marking by
lining them all up, then summoning the next one up on to a stage where she sat
and checked the books. Teachers with poor marking would be sat in the hall to
do it again, properly. This could all take a long time, but she was in charge.
She treated her staff like naughty servants. Morale sank under her leadership,
student achievement plummeted, the school failed Ofsted - while she literally
ate cake- and she was removed from post. Children get one shot at education and
we have no right to mess it up, or be allowed to mess it up.
I wonder how many students fail in schools because headteachers do
not have the trust of their staff. If we’re not leading people what are we
doing? I know of a school where the majority of the staff told Ofsted they had
no confidence in the senior team. Strangely the team members decided this was
only a vote against the head, who promptly, and under prompting, resigned.
The government cuts our funding every year and this same
government has failed its own recruitment targets in each of the last five
years. This has dominated our work and disrupted our sleep. Many headteachers
are retiring early or just plain giving up trying to recruit teachers who are
not alive and trained and balancing budgets that can’t add up. In 3 years
over 90% of secondary schools will not be able to balance this budgets, at
which point the DfE is charged with ordering us to dismiss teachers.
Back to Saul and I remember how he shuffled papers allowing his
deputy and me to be verbally attacked and abused by a group of local
politicians who were there to defend a bully. Loyalty has got to be one of the
most important personality characteristics in schools – even more so with heads.
The head at my second school didn’t want to appoint me but was
overruled by the governors. As I set off for my first Senior Team meeting I was
advised not to say anything. I lasted half an hour. One of my suggestions that
she liked was to get rid of the uniform description “dark grey” and replace
with “black.” It transpired that uniform is a governors responsibility and when
they questioned her, the head said, “I don’t know why Dennis thought he could
do this.”
Disloyalty rests with the self- centred or the cowardly
opportunist. If you can’t trust your headteacher then no-one takes risks and
everyone is afraid of failure.
Heads are easy targets for disgruntled students, parents and,
sometimes, politicians. I have had three sets of secret HR meetings about me
but held in my absence and without my knowledge. In the first one, my
headteacher at this school stood up for me, and possibly saved my career, even
though she had only known me a few weeks. In the most recent meeting,
convened because a social worker decided there could only be one person in the
world with my name, our chair of governors refused to suspend me. I may well
have had a slightly controversial career so one need only Google, “Yid Army
Schoolboys” for the Daliy Telegraph article on a time when governors were asked
to step bravely, and found it difficult to do so.
On this last matter I am obliged to abide by an agreement, the
content of which I am not allowed to see. As it’s clearly illegal to hold me to
something I can’t see my union advised me to sign the piece of paper that
allowed the Director of Education to abrogate his duties. We can fall victim to
bureaucrats which is one reason so many of us accepted relative independence as
academies. Teachers looking to be heads should beware the insensitivity of
Multi Academy Trusts who sack without second thoughts. Did I mention my
lack of admiration for Executive Headteachers already?
If teachers are to teach and children to learn it is compulsory
for the head to support the staff and the governors to support the head. This
does not mean that anyone should accept and support wrongdoing.
One teacher showed a boy the bin for his chewing gum and mum
called the police, saying he’d been smacked in the face. I refused to let the
police interview the teacher and it is school policy to expel students making
false allegations against staff. Another seriously false claim of assault was
loved by the police who did all they could to humiliate the innocent teacher,
until the serial false accuser admitted that she made up the story.
Headteachers are no longer allowed to suspend staff without strong evidence but
we should not need the weight of the 2017 law to stand up for maligned
teachers. Headteachers should be loyal and brave.
Headteachers can be the target for abuse by parents and by
strangers coming on site at the end of the school day. For 39 years I have
confronted potentially violent strangers and I was critical of a head
whose instruction was “staff to staffroom” whenever close of day problems
occur. Then one day I bent to help a young man from the gutter and his arm came
at me in a perfect arc. Time slowed and I realised I was open to a possibly
lethal knife attack. His arm dropped; he swore at me and ran away. I know of a
staff in London where they wear stab vests on duty and during our very own Race
Riots (or Newham 8 as it is known online) in 1983, my headteacher told
me, “Get them to the school gates and leave it to the police.” I’m not
sure who is right in these situations but I do know that heads need to be
courageous in their decision making in all sorts of situations and they should
not be tossed around by ambitious politicians in search of publicity and
unearned advancement.
Very few headteachers get the sort of reputation of one recent
head who parked right next to the exit and his name became synonymous with
leaving school on the bell: “Doing a Jonesy.” Headteachers should set an
example.
One teacher once told me that there was a major problem with the
school: “There’s too much talk about students.” At a time when I wonder what
drives Executive Headteachers, and what is it they do I offer this: Our job as
leaders is to think big, to leave teachers energised, optimistic and excited by
the challenges of educating children. We should not shy away from pursuing our
values, sharing and driving our ambition for all kids, particularly those cast
astray by a system meddled to near exhaustion.
Personally I think we need to be in school, with an open door and
a welcoming inquisitiveness and governors and governments should understand
that instinct and experience are sometimes the same thing.
I guess we all have to live by principles - as few as possible so
we can sleep at night. The best headteachers, and there are many, follow a
moral purpose with dignity, unending optimism, care for their staff and
dedication to thriving schools at the centre of their communities.
Being a head is easy – try delivering paraffin and get back to me.
Dennis O'Sullivan
Dennis O'Sullivan
