Making the Leap

Moving from deputy to head

Dr Jill Berry

• Publisher: Crown House Publishing
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781785831614
• eBook ISBN: 9781785831737
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Jill believes that the qualities that make you a good teacher are closely related to those which will serve you well in leadership. Every teacher is, in fact, a leader of learning within their own classroom. As your career progresses and you move from one leadership role to another, your sphere of influence gradually grows. You will have the chance to learn, to grow, to prove yourself. You will make mistakes and survive them. Headship is demanding, but it is also extremely rewarding: this book will encourage you to be clear-sighted about the challenges and responsibilities that lie ahead. Managing the transition from deputy to first-time headship successfully will ensure that you are on the most positive trajectory as you continue your leadership journey.

In Jill's experience, new heads often ask themselves similar questions. How can I balance the two roles as I begin to hand over my senior leader responsibilities and, at the same time, begin to assume the mantle of the head? How can I establish the most positive and productive relationship with the outgoing head, so that confidence is maintained and the school is energised, rather than threatened, by the change of school leader? How can I ensure the early months and years of headship are as successful as possible, so that the school develops and grows even stronger under my leadership? This book will answer all those questions and more.

Suitable for teachers, middle leaders and senior leaders who are considering school headship.

Making the Leap was a finalist in the 2017 Education Resources Awards in the Educational Book Award category.

Chapter 1

Introduction

Making the leap – why would you want to?

Spheres of influence and what is distinctive about headship

It seems to me that when you start teaching, your sphere of influence involves the pupils in the class, or classes, you are timetabled to teach. You focus on their learning in your subject or, if you are a primary teacher, in a range of subjects. You may also build your pastoral skills through your role as a tutor or form teacher, taking greater responsibility for the welfare and well-being of the pupils in your group and, through this, supporting their learning and progress. You care about them as people as well as pupils, and this may also lead to a fuller contribution to the wider life of the school and activities beyond the classroom – for example, through the extra-curricular programme the school offers. Building relationships through such activity can support and strengthen the relationships with those you meet in the classroom. In addition, involvement in the wider life of the school may enable you to establish positive contact with a greater number of children.

For many teachers, the contact with pupils, and the focus on subjects and activities about which they themselves are enthusiastic, and usually talented and knowledgeable, is the appeal of the profession. Being able to communicate the rewards of developing expertise in that subject/area, sharing your passions and enthusing others, is energising and thrilling, though it is also undoubtedly tough, especially if some of those you teach are reluctant to engage and prefer to focus on testing you. However, with increasing experience and growing confidence this can become easier. You learn as they learn – as you continue to practise and hone your craft.

Sometimes you reach the point where you consider yourself ready for further challenge. Inevitably, if you take on greater responsibility, perhaps initially as a middle leader, your teaching is likely to reduce as you are allocated more time for your leadership role. However, my view is that as your sphere of influence expands you begin to affect the lives of more pupils, by working with and through other staff. As a teacher of English my focus was the pupils in my classes. As a second in department and later a head of English my focus was the pupils in all the English lessons, taught by all the English teachers, in the school. I worked with and through other adults to reach more children.

Middle leadership will be a new challenge and will provide you with fresh experiences and opportunities. You realise that encouraging pupils to follow your lead is one thing; encouraging adults to do the same is a challenge of a different order! But leadership can be hugely stimulating and rewarding. How do you earn the trust and respect of those within your domain? How do you win hearts and minds, inspire and encourage? How do you ensure that you get the right balance of support and challenge? It is part of your responsibility to hold the members of your team to account, and not simply to be their indiscriminate advocate who tries to protect and defend them. It takes courage to ensure that, as a team, you all have high aspirations and that any difficult issues are addressed and not ignored. But it is crucial to do this in a positive and supportive way, to lead the team so that everyone has a part to play in its ongoing development: your role is to coordinate the efforts of all the team members, to see the best in others and to be aware of, and make the most of, their complementary strengths. You are not the only one with ideas; you are not necessarily the source of the best ideas; you are not even, necessarily, the best teacher in the team (although you have to be a good, credible teacher). Your job as a leader is to help everyone else to be their best, so that the team grows in strength and effectiveness under your leadership.

There are advantages to having a middle leadership role: often the team you lead has a clearly defined identity with obvious parameters, and it may be of a manageable size. Often teaching and learning are still fundamental to your role, and, for most of us, the things that brought us into the profession in the first place may still be at the core of your day-to-day activity. You can lead change from this position; if the domain for which you are responsible is successful, well led and well respected, you can become a beacon of excellence which demonstrates what can be achieved when the conditions, and the degree of support and challenge, are right. You show convincingly what can be done.

However, as a successful middle leader you may feel, in due course, that you would like to have the capacity to make a greater whole-school difference. The leadership skills you are developing, and the achievements you are able to secure within your team, may give you a taste for what you could go on to accomplish with greater responsibility, increased authority and a wider brief. You may, in time, begin to look for a senior leadership position.

Senior leadership posts vary, and if you reach this point in your career it is important to be clear about what kind of area of responsibility appeals to you, and what you believe your temperament, skills and passions best suit you for. What lights your fire? It may be the pastoral element of school life that you find energising and rewarding. It may be the curriculum, timetabling or the leadership of academic teams. It may be a focus on teaching and learning, on professional development, on staff induction and support or on digital learning. It may be the coordination of the extra-curricular elements of the wider school community. Whatever your whole-school role, your sphere of influence will expand. The number of lives you are affecting – both in terms of students’ experiences and the full range of teaching and support staff – increases. Your influence on the direction of the school also grows. You can make a bigger difference.

And as a senior leader, especially as a deputy head, you have a taste of how it might be if, in effect, there were no restrictions to your influence, your responsibility and your capacity to direct the school’s development. As a head, you will work closely with your governing body, but in many respects you are the school – you represent what the school stands for and you take it on the journey you believe to be right for that particular school at that particular stage in its development. This is a huge privilege and a weighty task. But if you have the right temperament, it is, I would suggest, the best job in the world.

So as your career progresses and you move from one leadership role to another, your sphere of influence gradually grows. You will be required to take on new challenges and will, in every new job, be called upon to do things you may never have faced before. You will have the chance to learn, to grow, to prove yourself. You will make mistakes and survive them. But I believe that the qualities that make you a good teacher are closely related to those which will serve you well in leadership. Every teacher is, in fact, a leader of learning within their own classroom. If you decide to move to middle leadership, to senior leadership, to headship ultimately, you will continue to refine these skills, but in my opinion good leaders are good leaders at whatever level.

What makes headship distinctive? It is undoubtedly a big job. You need a clear grasp of the big picture – what the school stands for and where it is going – because no school stands still. During the course of a working week you may experience a huge range of different tasks: a governors’ meeting debating future strategy; a finance meeting looking at budgetary priorities and constraints; leading an assembly; interviewing staff; meeting parents. You might be working within the community as a representative of the school you lead and a spokesperson for education. You will certainly spend considerable time with your senior leadership team, making the most of their complementary skills and ensuring that, in the words of Dylan Wiliam, they work ‘as a team’ rather than simply ‘in a team’. Heads do not have to be able to do everything themselves; in fact, it is unrealistic to expect them to be good at everything. However, they do need to ensure that all the bases are covered. They need to be self-aware and to recognise when they are drawing on the expertise of others. They need to know the questions to ask and to be able to understand the answers, to probe where necessary and to have a secure overview of all aspects of the running of the school. If things go wrong, they are, together with the governing body, responsible. But developing and making the most of the skills of all members of the school community is a crucial part of the way in which successful heads operate. They lift and inspire, they encourage and motivate. They lead.

There are a number of ways in which those who aspire to headship can prepare themselves to take on this ultimate responsibility for school leadership, and these ways will be explored in subsequent chapters. They need to develop a clear conception of what the best school leadership looks like, where their own strengths are and in which areas they are still learning and strengthening their capabilities. They will have been formulating their vision of the kind of head they might one day hope to be throughout their careers, even through their own schooldays. They will have learnt both from positive examples and also from negative role models, who may have taught them about the pitfalls they hope to avoid. However, there is much about headship for which it is difficult, perhaps even impossible, to prepare yourself. All heads will face unexpected challenges which will test them in ways they have not been able to anticipate. When they face such challenges they will need to be adaptable, quick-thinking and keen to learn. They will need to understand where they can go for support and counsel, but they will also need the courage to make what may be difficult decisions and to show real leadership in the times when they, and perhaps the school, are tested.

Robert Quinn (2004: 153) talks of how as a leader you need the ‘adaptive confidence to walk naked into the land of uncertainty and to build the bridge as you walk on it’. No beginning head is the finished article. It could be argued that this is a stage which no head ever reaches, as we are constantly learning and evolving. Certainly, more than five years since I finished my own headship I feel I am still learning about school leadership – from my reading and research, from my reflections after a thirty-year career, from contact with others in my consultancy work and also from my engagement with educational professionals through social networking. Aspiring heads need to have sufficient self-belief to recognise that much of being a head they will learn from the experience of being a head.

In the following chapters I focus specifically on the process of transition, and what it means to relinquish the professional persona of a senior leader and to take on the professional identity of the head teacher. It is a journey which is well worth taking.

Questions for reflection

Can you describe your current professional sphere of influence?

How might this sphere of influence expand were you to move into a new professional role?

What is the appeal of this potentially extended sphere of influence? What do you anticipate it would enable you to do, and why might this be an attractive proposition for you?

What challenges might this greater sphere of influence bring?

Consider how you can best prepare yourself to face the challenges, and to make the most of the opportunities, presented by this extension to your sphere of influence.

My own experience

I started considering headship applications in the third year of my time as a deputy. I very much enjoyed being a deputy head, but when my head was out of school and people looked to me in her place, I found this was an opportunity I relished rather than shrank from. My deputy headship had helped me to clarify my thinking about the type of school I wanted to lead – the environment in which I felt I could be the kind of school leader I hoped to be, and where my temperament and skills might perhaps be best suited. So in year three I started to look at the vacancies that were out there and began to apply.

I had four headship interviews in years three and four of my deputy headship, and was successful at the fourth attempt. The selection process took place late in the summer term, with the appointment beginning at the start of the autumn term the following year, so I had just over a year’s lead-in time. I found this invaluable; in that year I attended a number of events in my new school, just to watch, listen and learn. I discovered more about ‘how it is done here’: the parent–teacher association annual general meeting, the award of A level prizes and certificates, a music concert in partnership with other schools in the grand Birmingham Symphony Hall, the opening of a new building. It was excellent to have the time and space for reflection. What was the school clearly strong at? Where was it continuing to develop? Where might I be able to find, or create, the space to make my own contribution, and to put my stamp on the role and the school? This was a school which had already existed for 118 years before I arrived as its eighth head teacher.

It is perhaps interesting how difficult it can be to appreciate how typical our own experience is, as we often have no clear frame of reference and nothing to compare it with. It was over a decade after making the transition to headship myself that I conducted my professional doctorate in education research into the experiences of six other deputies moving to their first headship, in each case involving a change of school. Reflecting on their experiences, and what appeared to be distinctive about the nature of transition, made me appreciate that in a number of ways I was particularly fortunate – something I did not necessarily realise at the time. I’m now grateful for the following factors/elements:

• My predecessor was positive and supportive, and clearly invested in helping me to make a success of the transition. She was comfortable with her own decision to leave; she was retiring after ten years as head of the school which had followed on from a first headship elsewhere. She did everything she could to ensure the lead-in period was a productive experience for me and for those with whom I would be working as head. She understood that the focus should be on what was good for the school, not on herself. She had invested ten years in making the school stronger than s...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Praise for Making the Leap
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Acknowledgements
• Contents
• Preface: my story
• Chapter 1: Introduction
• Chapter 2: Applying for headship
• Chapter 3: Managing the lead-in period
• Chapter 4: The early months in post
• Chapter 5: Established headship and beyond
• References and recommended reading
• About the author
• Copyright