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Succeeding in headshipNational Professional Qualification for Headship (NPQH) Case study: Ash Park Primary School and Children’s Centre

Schools and academies

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National College for School Leadership

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Case study I Succeeding in headship I LEVEL 3

Case study: Ash Park Primary School and Children’s Centre

This case study focuses on one new headteacher in a primary school and, in particular how she:

− familiarised herself with the school, established her credibility as a head and formed relationships with key players

− developed an accurate picture of the school’s performance and strengths and weaknesses, identified priorities and formulated a strategy

− worked with governors and others to manage whole-school change, align the organisation and build teams, considering accountability and performance management

− managed pressures and put in place strategies for sustaining herself and the organisation over time

Background

Ash Park Primary School and Children’s Centre is set in an urban area that has undergone regeneration and investment, helping improve its appearance and standing in the city. Some private housing has been built to replace flats so that the surrounding housing estate now combines both private and local authority owned housing.

While there is still significant disadvantage, with approximately half of all pupils in receipt of free school meals, it is seen as a more desirable location in which to live, a stark contrast with how it was perceived previously, with a well-known drug culture in parts of the estate that have since been demolished. Since Sarah’s appointment, Ash Park has benefited from a rebuild, including a children’s centre, replacing the once-decrepit buildings she inherited as headteacher.

This case study is organised into four sections, which correspond with the topics in this module:

− preparing yourself and establishing your credibility

− developing your strategy

− shaping your organisation and building your team

− keeping your balance

Preparing yourself and establishing your credibility

Sarah had been looking for a headship for a year or so before she applied to Ash Park; it was her first application for headship as she wanted to find a school that fitted her. She had been a deputy in three schools partly owing to local authority reorganisation and a secondment opportunity; all had been in disadvantaged and challenging areas of the same city. While others had arisen within this timescale, she did not want to apply for just any headship but wanted a challenge, a school in which she could make a difference and to which she would feel totally committed. Ash Park filled these criteria. Sarah describes how, on visiting the school, she felt the same as when looking for a house – that one knows when it seems right.

Sarah knew of the school through being in the same local authority but sought conversations with others who could provide some insight into its needs and demands. These included, either on or off the record, other headteachers,local authority officers and a local councillor. These conversations confirmed that the school would be a challenge: she would be the school’s fourth headteacher in three years.

© National College for School Leadership


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Case study I Succeeding in headship I LEVEL 3© National College for School Leadership

On visiting the school and subsequently at interview, Sarah found that the building itself made a strong impression:

The building was falling to bits – cracks everywhere, leaks everywhere, graffiti everywhere, furniture was disgusting – the whole place was just so uncared for.

Sarah, headteacher

While these challenges were self-evident, others were not so easy to establish:

I have to say that at the time the governing body and the previous head were quite closed about the reality and just how bad things had got in the school.

Sarah, headteacher

However, the governors were very clear from day one about retaining the school’s community emphasis, something Sarah too felt passionately about so that was an area of strong accord.

Early surprises and challenges

If I was applying for a headship post now, there would be certain information that I would require upfront, not because it would put me off but because I would want, not more honesty, but more clarity around really key things to do with the school … When I arrived, it was so clear that there were lots of things wrong with the school but that it had continued on in spite of them. The issue for me was around leadership. The basics were there; it wasn’t an impossible task; it just needed somebody to get a grip of it and move the school forward.

Sarah, headteacher

The budget situation came as a shock. Sarah had been told by the governors and the previous headteacher that there was a deficit of £30,000, but when she took up the post this was nearer £90,000 so there was a substantial problem to resolve. This was in part as a consequence of reduced rolls following the regeneration of the area. As flats were pulled down, 100 or so pupils were relocated to other schools.

Standards were also low in terms of Key Stage 2 (KS2) results, which were about 20 per cent below floor targets. In an early meeting with the local authority that Sarah attended with her chair of governors, the school was identified for potential closure if it did not improve within two years:

It was my mission – and I mean mission – to make sure that we stayed open so that we could move the school forward and improve it.

Sarah, headteacher

At an operational level, the lack of policies, including statutory policies and effective systems, were a shock. In terms of teaching, although the core of teachers appeared to be satisfactory or good, the school was, in Sarah’s initial view, “the land that time forgot” in terms of teaching practice:

Surely they know that teaching isn’t about talking for 20 minutes, handing out a worksheet and collecting them in again at the end. That was a real shock.

Sarah, headteacher


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However, the unadventurous approach to teaching was seen as a result of a lack of professional development rather than a wish for practice to remain pedestrian.

How did Sarah respond? She sought to get to know the staff well as a first step in assessing her context. She invited every staff member to have a one-to-one discussion with her. These were open-ended so ranged from five minutes to one hour, but they gave her an opportunity to get to know them better in terms of their professional and home lives and to seek their views on improvements required at the school. This was seen as an important step by Karen, a teacher, and Jo, the deputy head, both of whom had been at the school for around two years. It conveyed to them that all members of staff were valued and that Sarah wanted to get to know and listen to them as individuals.

In her initial state-of-the-nation speech to the staff, Sarah spoke a little bit about herself as a person and what she wanted to achieve, as well as what her early impressions of the school were. She wanted to convey the message that the core of the school was right but there were some aspects that needed sorting out:

I also tried really hard, and I know it sounds a bit of a cliché, to have a no-blame culture because a lot of the issues in the school weren’t the staff’s fault. It was a lack of leadership.

Sarah, headteacher

Messages conveyed by Sarah included her wish that children and their outcomes would govern her decision-making. Jo, the deputy head, observed:

It was clear from day one that Sarah was here for the children and wasn’t on some sort of power trip. What we were doing was to improve the lives of the children in our school and equally the family lives and the community.

Jo, deputy head

Each day in the first half-term brought an opportunity to walk the school and visit each classroom in an informal approach to get to know the school culture, people’s practice and the children as people and learners.

Sarah reflected how her snap judgements of people are not always accurate and so seeing them daily over an extended period helped. She was unsure how she was going to establish a relationship with some staff members and acknowledges she was inwardly critical of some of the practices she observed or of their personal organisation, but was conscious she needed to defer judgement:

Sometimes, you’ve got to be careful about making those early judgements about staff.

Sarah, headteacher

This also transferred to her making judgements about things she did not understand. Sarah ensured she gained a better understanding of existing systems and structures by asking a lot of questions, particularly: why are we doing it? How’s it benefitting the children? These helped Sarah assess their effectiveness and efficiency and build a picture of what could be left alone, at least for a while, and what needed to be prioritised for action.


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Parents

Conscious that there had been significant change in leadership in recent years and that she was another new face, Sarah sought to be as high profile as she could with parents. This was achieved primarily by standing by the gate each morning and afternoon, something that Karen, Jo and Jeff, the chair of governors, saw as very important:

She is very good at relating to the parents; she’s always out there in the playground – she’s very hands-on as far as the parents are concerned.

Jeff, chair of governors

Sarah also introduced informal coffee mornings as a way of getting to know parents and linked these to their learning about the approaches used in school. This was extended to sessions where they would have a presentation about an aspect of learning, for example phonics, and would follow this up with a visit to classrooms to see it in action. Presentations were led by Sarah or a member of the senior leadership team (SLT). Sarah’s intention was to open the school up more to parents, to engage them more in understanding their children’s learning so that they could support this, and to promote the school’s work in making improvements:

That’s why we started these open mornings: to explain to parents why we are focusing on maths, particularly in the first year as our level was 43 per cent [of pupils at Level 4]. The government is expecting us to be at 65 per cent and we knew their children could do it. We knew we could do it, but we all had to work together. There are some things parents could do at home and a pack they could take home. This is where we were at and what we need to get better at.

Sarah, headteacher

This approach began in the summer term of her first year and although Sarah detected some initial reticence on the part of some teachers, the positive reaction to it by parents and its success allayed any remaining concerns. Sarah states that it also had the impact of increasing the profile of teachers in parents’ eyes, showing what a good job they did and helping parents appreciate what was on offer. This reflected Sarah’s emphasis on communicating the school’s position when she took over which was honest but positive:

In the early stages it was about being open about the school’s difficulties but remaining positive as well, to gain their support.

Sarah, headteacher

For example, it was evident that there were problems with the building in terms of its fabric. There was graffiti, and the grounds, which were not fenced off, suffered from litter. Sarah set about ensuring she addressed the latter two problems as quick wins so that supportive comments were made by parents and word got round that things were improving, helping them feel more positive towards the school. This was about making the statement that she cared for the school environment:

You have to be really high profile and you’ve got to make the effort to go and reach out to the parents. You’ll never get to know the parents if you stay in your office all day.

Sarah, headteacher


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Some systems were also changed. For example, enabling parents to settle their children in Reception and Year 1 combated a tendency to keep parents at arm’s-length. Outside school, some after-school clubs were provided and trips were run for families, which had not happened previously. All of these quick wins contributed to a sense of momentum and had benefits for children and parents alike. It also influenced the way parents perceived the school and its proactive efforts so that word of mouth became more positive.

Credibility was also developed by ensuring that any issues that parents brought to Sarah were rigorously followed through and actions promptly reported back so they gained trust in her.

Governors

In developing working relationships, Sarah and Jeff met very frequently to discuss the school and its way forward. This helped develop a working relationship and find common ground. For example they both agreed on the school’s needs, priorities and the expectations related to them, and held strong, complementary beliefs about their important role at the centre of the community. They also held strong views on the poor state of the school building and worked closely on this to challenge the relevant authorities. This included Sarah drawing on Jeff’s business expertise in this area and seeking support for improvements from the local MP, whom Jeff saw as very influential. Using complementary strengths was therefore important in this context.

However, both equally acknowledged that despite there being some strong common ground there were times when the discussions they had, in which critical challenge was offered, led to some disagreement on the approaches needed to achieve improvements. These discussions were, however, always behind closed doors and both presented a united front externally as they knew this was important for the school’s forward direction. Jeff identified that while he did not necessarily agree with the approaches taken at times, he was nevertheless supportive of Sarah and noted that the impact and outcomes, for example on attainment, were positive.

While understanding the importance of developing positive relations with the chair of governors and of work with governors in general, Sarah acknowledges that, in order to meet the improvement imperatives in the tight timeframes required, their involvement in strategy development was less evident in the early stages. This was something she increased by, for example, issuing briefing papers and giving presentations on improvement areas and presenting options for their consideration. A main strategic consideration for governors was the location of a children’s centre on the school site. This involved Sarah making the implications of this clear and its adoption reflected the community emphasis the governors considered important.

In developing credibility, Jeff states that Sarah is “brilliant at process” and knew exactly what to do in terms of implementing the required policies and implementing systems so that they complied with statutory requirements. This he saw as a distinct need that she addressed as it was lacking on her arrival. This he considered was the biggest change she made in her first year, along with improving teaching standards and pupil achievement and attainment. Jeff also reflects that the governors’ involvement in monitoring and evaluating aspects of the school, for example through the introduction of links between governors and subject leaders, has increased.


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Quick wins

Sarah did set about rationalising the school’s systems and making sure these were fit for purpose. This involved, for example, discussions with the site manager about health and safety, applying an I-don’t-think-I-like-this barometer test to responses in order to prioritise where short-term change was needed. Some of these just needed a conversation; for example, one related to the site manager shutting external doors in the morning once pupils were in and parents had left, before he took his break.

Karen recollects a quick win which, from the staff’s perspective, was appreciated:

One of the things she did do that staff really liked was cutting two staff meetings a week down to one. And I thought that was a good move, really, because quite often we didn’t need both.

Karen, teacher

Securing commitment

Sarah’s view was that securing staff commitment was related to three key points:

− couching everything in terms of the impact it could have on children

− not taking on too many developments so that they became undeliverable or not fully embedded

− giving people the time to carry out improvement tasks

Jo also reflects that Sarah’s decision-making was always centred on what was in the best interests of children and was the reference point for all considerations.

Karen adds an additional criterion; that Sarah’s hardworking approach influences her own commitment:

If you’ve got someone who sits in the office all day and then comes into the staffroom and says, “I want you to do this” then you’re not going to react so well. But there’s nobody who can say she’s not pulling her weight. She works so hard and is fully committed to whatever the focus is that year. She fully backs anything you want to do, if it’s linked to the school improvement plan.

Karen, teacher

Sarah ensures that the monitoring and evaluation strategies she and others use include clear expectations, timelines and milestones for staff to work to so that there are no surprises but evident accountabilities. There is a compliance aspect to this which Sarah sees as being required to ensure consistency and embedded change:

If you can’t get everybody to commit, then the fall-back is that you can get everybody to comply.

Sarah, headteacher

Making the ultimate decisions, however, is a challenge that Sarah is very comfortable with and she enjoys being in charge, although not in a big, egocentric manner. The notion that the buck stops with her is one she accepts but finds daunting at times with the headship’s multiple accountabilities, for example, safeguarding and health and safety. However, making sure that robust systems are in place to manage these operationally helps Sarah militate against their potentially adverse impact or influence.


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Personal authenticity

In terms of preparation and establishing one’s presence and purpose as a headteacher, Sarah had thought about what kind of headteacher she wanted to be, based in part on her own experience as a deputy working for headteachers that adopted contrasting styles. Key characteristics were:

− exhibiting fairness

− ensuring that children were the number one priority so that everything centred on them

I wanted to be a head that made a difference and had high expectations of everyone really: the staff, the community, the children. It would be very easy in a school like this – predominantly white working class, 50 per cent free school meals, lots of parents on benefits – to make a lot of excuses. But you can’t use those things as excuses. You have to think: ‘that’s how it is, but what can we do to move that family on, that child on?’

My whole life was completely transformed by my own experiences at school and I am on a complete mission to make sure that in the school I work as a head, that’s what happens for my children. It might be a bit naïve, but I do believe schools can change children’s lives.

Sarah, headteacher

Sarah feels that she would like to think that those with whom she worked saw that she made brave decisions and gave a clear direction and structure and that she modelled the commitment that lay behind her leadership.

Reflecting on a previous headteacher with whom she worked as a deputy, Sarah sees strong decision-making as an important feature of headship:

I’d worked with a head who was quite gentle and soft and we would decide to do something and then if a staff member came along kicking off [the head] would completely backtrack at staff meetings and you never knew where you were.

Sarah, headteacher

This contrasted with her previous experience where she had worked with a different headteacher as a deputy. Having two approaches modelled helped Sarah compare their relative effectiveness and determine her preferred approach. Shadowing them and learning from them has been invaluable in informing her own approaches and still acts as a reference point at times when she asks herself, when facing a particularly challenging situation: what would Linda (a previous head) do?


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Developing your strategy

Sarah adopted quite a circumspect approach in the early days so that she did not make unnecessary changes:

You have to know your context, because in the early days you could make some major decisions and get it completely off on the wrong stance. It was about being really, really clear about what needed sorting out and what order you were going to put things in. Then looking at these and thinking: right, there are two ways of tackling this; what’s going to be the most effective and quickest? You’ve got to find time as a headteacher to think: ‘this is the issue, now how am I going to deal with it?’

Sarah, headteacher

Getting the balance right between long-, medium- and short-term change and making decisions about what needed to fall within each category were challenges for Sarah because of the multiple needs she identified. She had a strong appreciation that children in, for example, Year 1, weren’t going to get that year ever again:

It was like a clock ticking in my head – tick, tick, tick, got to sort this out, got to sort that out, can’t wait another year to sort that as those children will have left by then. And so it was balancing that panic, worry and concern and actually being really sensible and realistic about what you were going to achieve.

Sarah, headteacher

Although she had been told by the local authority that she needed to secure improvements in a relatively short space of time, Sarah considered that change needed to be well considered, thorough and embedded across the school to achieve consistency of practice. Taking on a wider range of change initiatives might have led to more of a scatter-gun approach where a number of targets are hit but reflection on their impact at the end of the year might reveal inconsistency and negate the value of the effort applied:

Whatever you put in place, whatever strategy, system, policy, way of working, it has to be consistent across the school and if it isn’t you need to tackle that. You need everybody buying into it, and you need to ensure that everybody is doing it.

Sarah, headteacher

Sarah believes that her intended commitment to the school for a long period of time influenced the pace of change in her first year. In retrospect, she feels that she could perhaps have made more changes or carried out those changes she did introduce at a faster pace.

In evaluating the school’s current status, her use of data to develop strategy was hampered by a lack of pupil- tracking documents when she took up the post. Although she expected this to be handed on by the previous headteacher, it was not, and in the early stages she was reliant on limited, paper-based levelling of children against national curriculum levels found in the staffroom and what the national and local authority data told her. This was triangulated with her own judgements from informal observations in order to identify priorities and Sarah felt this told her a good deal.

A key area for improvement based both on the available data and her informal observations of teaching was maths. As she visited classes, it became clear that teaching was very reliant on a single maths scheme and children working through text books. This had implications for mental maths which Sarah diagnosed as a particular area of weakness:

I didn’t need data to tell me there was something wrong with the quality of teaching and learning in maths.

Sarah, headteacher


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Central to improving maths, Sarah believed, was the style of teaching used by staff which lacked variety, creativity and motivational qualities:

I’m being very generalistic now but they didn’t work in groups or partners and there wasn’t a lot of talk going on – talk for learning, that is. So it was about totally changing the culture of how people taught. It was so behind where educational thinking was. I knew that and so did a few other members of staff and others probably who knew it but were too scared to teach in a different way.

Sarah, headteacher

Also related was the lack of curriculum target-setting and Sarah focused on maths in an effort to ensure that strategies were joined up.

In the first year, therefore, some major strands of school improvement were identified, focused on raising standards owing to the school’s poor performance, with the first two centred on the weakest area, maths:

− improving the quality of teaching and learning

− improving the use of curriculum targets

− improving assessment systems

The extent to which governors were involved in developing strategy at this time was, Sarah acknowledges, limited. At this stage, she set the direction based on her analysis of need and made efforts to increase governor awareness and understanding of the school’s strengths and weaknesses so that they could contribute more fully to the process of moving forward.

This was, she reflects, a hard task as there were a number of parent governors who thought the school was great, a chair who had identified that something wasn’t quite right, and a number of other governors whose attendance was patchy and contributed little even when they did attend. This meant that:

the biggest task was to have a bit of a reality check with the governing body and to get [the governors] to realise that there were things around the school for which they were ultimately accountable that needed to be in place and that we couldn’t have low standards. That was quite a challenge.

Sarah, headteacher

This was done, for example, by presenting briefs on issues, discussing these at meetings and encouraging questions. She also invited governors in to speak with her, particularly the chair, Jeff, and the vice chair. These meetings gave her an opportunity to set out the issues and have a dialogue about them outside the full governing body meeting. Sarah describes how this approach helped her convey the issues and shift attitudes. She was very clear with them about the priorities as she perceived them:

You have to be really honest with them and highlight the issues, but say what it is you’re doing about them.

Sarah, headteacher

This linked with ensuring that the school improvement plan with its budgetary commitments was approved by the governing body. However, the standards-focused priorities were not those, Sarah asserts, the governors necessarily wanted to focus on:

They were absolutely obsessed with the building and the budget and it was saying, yes, those are important, but there are other things you should be concerned about a little more, like the standard assessment tests (SATs) results which are so poor and the quality of teaching which is a bit iffy and there’s been no staff development.

Sarah, headteacher


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In the event, these became non-standards-focused priorities in an acknowledgement that they were important in terms of their impact on children. At the same time, Sarah worked to ensure that those policies that needed to be in place were in place and that systems were developed to increase the school’s efficiency.

As part of a strategy for improving maths teaching, Sarah held a meeting with the school improvement officer, the maths consultant and Lorraine, the leader of maths. Each was able to contribute in terms supporting improved teaching and learning; this might be in terms of brokering the support of other schools where there was effective practice, in teaching mental maths, for example, identifying effective practice internally so that teachers could observe peers, or leading training.

Sarah would have liked to have focused on both maths and English in the first year but decided that it would have been too much for the staff to accommodate and that change might have been superficial and not consistently applied or embedded. Similarly, although she would have liked to change the curriculum to a more creative model, Sarah considered that the foundations, in terms of teachers’ knowledge and understanding of what this might look like, were not consistently secure. It would have been too early. This in turn related to her acceptance of and commitment to a long-term strategy for the school:

You’ve got to have the long-term plan and see the steps that are going to take you towards that overall vision of where you want to be.

Sarah, headteacher

Sarah was also conscious that the staff had seen a great deal of turnover in leadership and what they needed was stability alongside measured change. This need was also identified by Karen, who saw that this was especially the case with more experienced members of staff as well as by Jo:

You could just see people looking and thinking, ‘and how long are you going to be here?’ It just needed a time of settling and understanding that she wasn’t changing things for the sake of change and that there wasn’t too much all at once. It was all very well researched.

Jo, deputy head

Just the fact that she was saying, “in a year’s time” and “two years’ time” helped with that stability because we’d never had that before.

Karen, teacher

There was, Sarah stated, mixed reaction to the priorities set out in the first year:

Some people are really enthusiastic and others – you can tell by their body language that they’re a bit here-we-go-again. But what I find here is that there are the ones in the middle who go neither way. So I go and speak with individual members of staff and ask them, “Is there anything worrying you about the project? Is there anything you wanted to say that you didn’t want to say in the staffroom?”

Sarah, headteacher


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Shaping your organisation and building your team

Two of the main improvement priorities are explored in turn below, along with organisational changes that were carried out to support school effectiveness:

− improving the quality of teaching and learning

− implementing the use of curriculum targets

Improving the quality of teaching and learning

Leading improvement in this area was, as with the curricular targets, related to improvement in maths. It comprised a number of strategies:

− Sarah led staff in-service training (Inset) days on teaching and learning to encourage staff to think in new ways and challenge existing pedagogies. She considered that change might be assisted if the message was to come from more than one source, in this case a local authority school improvement officer to lead additional staff Insets.

− There would be opportunities for staff to observe teachers in other schools.

Sarah highlighted how it was beneficial to deploy external sources to increase the validity of what she was stating, lend weight to the messages she was conveying and to give it the stamp of authority.

Following this continuing professional development (CPD), Sarah commenced lesson observations to see how effectively it had been put into practice. The observation team comprised Sarah, the SLT member responsible for maths, Lorraine and the school improvement officer. Sarah did not carry out any formal observations in the first term as she wanted to get established, for people to get used to her and to see how the land lay. She was also concerned she might make some snap judgements that might prove inaccurate:

You could see the people that had grasped it and were doing really well and the others who had not got on board with this initiative. That was really tough as we had to tell some people their teaching was unsatisfactory.

Sarah, headteacher

The realisation that just under half of the staff were, based on this round of observations, unsatisfactory, heightened Sarah’s sense of accountability and made her question her own capability:

That’s the bit that’s really scary and you think, ‘I can’t do this job; how am I going to turn it round?’

Sarah, headteacher


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Afterwards, Sarah spent time talking with these staff members, not immediately as it needed some space and not in a conciliatory or backing-down manner, but to maintain positive relations, understand their needs so that strategies could be put in place to support them, and to reinforce the fact that, ultimately, practice needed to improve:

You have to be really strong as a leader. You have to try and understand that everyone’s human but you have to set your benchmark and your expectations: “However much I sympathise with the fact that you’re upset, or that you’ve been here 20 years, or you’ve not been on a training course, that’s all context and we’ve got to do something about it.” For one member of staff I think it was a bit of a relief actually that it was all out in the open as I think there’d been some covering up. I think it took that to make her realise that she needed to improve and that she hadn’t been very realistic with herself about her quality of teaching.

Sarah, headteacher

This initial set of observations offered a benchmark of practice that would be evaluated through a second round of observations later in the academic year.

Between these two dates, a programme of training for staff was put in place based on the needs identified through observations. Sarah remarked: “you have to give them the time and the resources to make changes.”

The maths leader, Lorraine, was also a key person to have on board in leading this development, Sarah believes. She was a good Year 6 teacher who was very experienced, had been in the school a long time and held a good deal of influence and credibility with staff. Without her, Sarah reflects that she “could have lost the whole thing”. Getting Lorraine on-side was the result of one-to-one discussions about what Sarah wanted to achieve for the school, the part that Lorraine could play in this and clear messages that it was part of a no-blame culture. The latter point was especially important as Lorraine was the Year 6 teacher and it might have been easy for her to think that poor results would be attributed to her.

Jeff also feels that Lorraine’s involvement was key to success and that as a member of the old brigade could have resisted developments. Lorraine felt, however, that Sarah was right in her priorities for improvement.

Sarah was very clear in spelling out to Lorraine what she wanted to achieve, but this was in order to make sure she had a clear understanding of the vision and the expected outcomes. Lorraine’s appreciation of this was what Sarah termed the light-bulb moment:

This is what I want maths teaching in the school to look like – how are we going to get there?

Sarah, headteacher

Lorraine’s involvement gave her, in Sarah’s view, a new lease of life – she was a naturally gifted teacher who had become a bit jaded. She has since become a consistently outstanding teacher. Lorraine undertook a baseline audit, taking in aspects such as resources and schemes used, deployment of teaching assistants as well as carrying out a scrutiny of work. This helped inform areas for improvement so that Lorraine contributed her knowledge to strategy development.

Lorraine provided teachers with the opportunity to see her model effective teaching and signposted them to high-quality resources that she had researched. The emphasis was on helping teachers who had potential to realise it. Everyone was given the opportunity to observe peers, but those more in need were directed to do so.

Even though it sounds a bit drastic, with unsatisfactory lessons and being behind the times, I believed staff could do it. Some hadn’t got it yet, but I knew every single person could improve.

Sarah, headteacher


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The second round of observations showed the quality of teaching to be 100 per cent satisfactory with 40 per cent good or better. This enabled Sarah to see the pockets of excellent practice that existed across the school; Karen, for example, became a local authority leading maths teacher.

The approach taken was quite intensive in terms of time management due to the range of training opportunities built in, so a project plan was essential to ensure there were regular reviews of progress. Sarah saw this as her role, ensuring that project milestones were met and taking steps to address them if they were not. Initially, Sarah took the lead, but as time went on and Lorraine proved that she understood the plan, the outcomes and Sarah’s expectations, leadership gradually transferred to her and Sarah adopted more of a monitoring role.

Maybe it was linked to the accountability. I was so determined that we were going to improve the school, maybe I didn’t allow other people to take more responsibility in that first year than I could have, or should have.

Part of that was about wanting to be in control because I was too scared to let other people do it because I didn’t know them well enough or I didn’t know if they’d got it, or I didn’t know if I could trust them to get on with the project. The stakes were too high and I didn’t have time to get to know them and whether they’d got it and were able to deliver the goods. We had the local authority on our back and so I felt I had to be driving it all forward.

Sarah, headteacher

Implementing the use of curricular targets

Sarah and the SLT led on this to ensure that children’s basic skills were being planned for. This approach entailed:

− research including visits to other schools to see how these were being effectively taught elsewhere

− building on what had been learned from other contexts and deciding how this could be changed to make it even better and fit with what the school wanted to achieve

This was the first major project that Sarah and her team had led and it established a way of working which was to become a template for leading other developments:

− researching good practice

− building on this and tweaking to fit desired outcomes

− implementing

− monitoring and evaluating impact

The fact that it was her team leading the project contributed she believes to its success as there was more of a critical mass.

The curricular targets were established as a whole-school system with half-termly focuses and monitoring procedures tied into these so that there was clarity at all levels of what was required and expected:

I suppose it’s success criteria. It was very clear that by the end of the year this is what needed to be done, and also the reasons for that – because it will benefit this. And staff had no excuses [because clear outcomes, time and resources had been assigned to assist staff], and Sarah’s very much like that. It’s a no-quibble approach: here’s what you need to do; I’ve given you everything you need, so go and do it.

Karen, teacher


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Seeking opportunities to subsequently praise staff efforts where they had not been sure of an improvement priority was seen as a way of fostering commitment. For example, Sarah recollected the enthusiasm with which children showed off their progress against curricular targets on a visual display the teacher had created and how she was able to use this as opportunity for praise:

It’s about picking those moments and being really positive.

Sarah, headteacher

The impact of both strategies can be seen in the following extract from a local authority report at the end of Sarah’s first year, and the maths end-of-KS data (Table 1):

Tracking analysis of overall pupil progress clearly indicates a shift in maths suggesting capacity-building is effective and will over time impact significantly on raising standards within the whole school.

All teachers have embraced focusing on specific targets with their class, groups and individuals. Good-quality, user-friendly assessment information is compiled and used by teachers and support staff to identify progress and future targets and intervention that can be implemented through teacher delivery.

School improvement officer’s report

Table 1: Maths attainment at the end of Key Stage 2 for the year prior to Sarah’s arrival and first her two years of her headship

Year before Sarah took up post

End of first year End of second year

Maths: Level 4+ at KS2 48% 54% 76%

Improving the building and reducing the deficit

At the same time as addressing standards-related accountabilities, Sarah made concerted efforts to address the practical issues the governors wanted to focus on so that these became less of a priority in their eyes.

Developing a repayment plan to remove the deficit was carried out using the following approach:

− Sarah and her team identified what the school budget was spent on and redressed inappropriate expenditure. For example, the hours worked by learning support assistants were perceived by Sarah to suit their requirements rather than those of the school.

− Expenditure was reviewed at different levels. This brought out issues such as formula funding that was based on the wrong hectare measurements and, through Sarah’s discussions with a local councillor and MP, resulted in a clawback of funds the school should have received.

− Sarah approached local businesses and charities to generate funds which offset the need to spend the school budget on particular areas.

− Service level agreement subscriptions were reviewed.

− Sarah arranged for parents to be invited to a school-meal tasting session, which in turn led an increased take-up of free school meals, which helped improve the budget situation.


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At the same time as reducing some staff hours, others were increased to align with their roles and revised job descriptions. This particularly related to administrative staff who would form part of Sarah’s plan to make support systems in the school more streamlined and efficient.

Sarah invited the local MP to see the school building, taking him on a tour and questioning the building’s suitability for children. Supporting this was Jeff’s professional knowledge which gave Sarah leverage in her negotiations and confidence in promoting the outcomes she wanted. The combination of these factors lent considerable weight to the cause and tipped the balance in favour of redevelopment when at one stage its funding was likely to be withdrawn. Sarah sees political networking as important in adding leverage to school improvement initiatives and is a strength that she has developed.

In terms of governance, Sarah identifies that she was the one largely leading school improvement and reporting progress and outcomes to governors. The extent to which governors offered challenge varied. She stated:

In the early days, I think I was telling them, then as they got the hang of it they were quite challenging about things; then, as the school started to improve more rapidly, they started to back off from the challenge and began thinking things were going okay. But then I see it as my responsibility to make sure they are challenging me and I still don’t think they challenge me enough – or rather not a wide enough range of governors do.

Sarah, headteacher

Sarah feels supported by the governors in terms of their recognition of the school’s successes and her part in their achievement. Her performance management has, according to Sarah, varied in quality but she appreciates the governors do try to look after her, for example, in terms of talking about her work-life balance and giving her dedicated headship time. Jeff sees the external support for performance management as crucial in terms of aiding the governors’ knowledge of the educational side of targets:

I need someone like the school improvement officer to just reassure me that what Sarah is saying, and what her objectives are, and the areas that she is going to concentrate on are … I need someone to say, “Yes, she’s spot on.” I have to rely on an expert to do that. In fairness, Sarah has always been very good at identifying the weaknesses and pointing herself in the right direction; she’s very good at self-analysis. As far as her professional development is concerned, she will always challenge herself.

Jeff, chair of governors

Policies and systems

Putting systems in place and policies to support them enabled Sarah to build an infrastructure that would strengthen accountability and support improvement. Policy development also created opportunities for dialogue with staff. One early example of this was the behaviour policy as Sarah’s early focus was, as Jo confirmed, on the priority areas of behaviour and assessment, and understanding what the school currently did in these two key areas. The behaviour systems in the school were effective but nothing was written down and it enabled shared dialogue and understanding of them. It also encouraged and cemented a sense of ownership among staff that both Karen and Jo acknowledged: “the policies we’ve got are ours; they work for us”, says Karen.


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Governance

Sarah also ensured that the governing body structure was correct, which it wasn’t in terms of ratios and proposed different systems that were adopted. These comprised:

− named responsibilities for key areas such as maths, English and special educational needs (SEN) so that staff could report to their assigned governor on standards and their progress

− class governors so that each governor was attached to a particular class to hear children read, help on trips or other activities

These changes were designed to increase governors’ knowledge and understanding about the school’s day-to-day work, its strengths and weaknesses and what leaders in key areas were doing to address them. This greater involvement has increased, according to Jeff, the familiarity of governors with the school’s work, environment and issues that it faces both educationally and socially.

Sarah’s leadership of change in the first year was one that she acknowledges could and perhaps should have been more distributed in its execution:

I think that’s been the big learning curve for me as I think I can do everything, and want to do everything. No, not I think I can do everything because there are people in this school who are much more skilled than me in many areas but I just want to do everything. But I’ve had to delegate things and because I’m a bit of a perfectionist, I struggled with the delegation in the early days because I was thinking: ‘ well, nobody’s going to do it as well as I can.’

Sarah, headteacher

Jeff also saw that Sarah was not as willing to delegate as much as he thought she should and that at one stage he and other governors were concerned about her work-life balance. He sees that she is now better able to trust others and delegate more.

Maybe it’s about my relationship with staff, or my respect for them or knowledge, and knowing that I can give them that job. And not only is it in a safe pair of hands, it’s in a better pair of hands than if I was trying to do it myself. It’s also learning when to shut up and not be so interfering.

Sarah, headteacher

Sarah still finds this difficult, having a tendency to want to micro-manage, but realises that it is not a healthy disposition for herself or others. On these occasions her self-talk as a leader is, “move away, just move away”.

I have this thing about people who get it, who really understand the vision, the issues connected with this and how to achieve the desired outcomes. In that first year, when sometimes you do need things doing quickly, it’s easy to fall back on those staff who you know are going to deliver for you.

Sarah, headteacher

Sarah also acknowledges that she struggled to let go of roles she had formerly held as she had expertise in them. SEN was one such area as she had been a special educational needs co-ordinator (SENCO) for over 10 years in her previous schools. This was a role now fulfilled by Jo:

That was really hard as I thought I knew it all and I wanted it done to my high standards.

Sarah, headteacher


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However, Sarah had to accept, as she grew into her role and found there were only so many hours in the day, that she had to let go and not think that she could do everything. This transition saw her move into what she terms a more supervisory or advisory role, someone whom Jo could look to for advice. Jo confirms that Sarah’s expertise was something she called on frequently as it was a relatively new role to her and a steep learning curve.

Approaches that helped Sarah in delegating, distributing responsibility and aligning systems to support school improvement were:

− restructuring the SLT

− developing leaders

− restructuring the administration team

− performance management

These are outlined below.

Restructuring the leadership team

For most of the first year the SLT comprised Sarah, Jo and Lorraine only. This grew, in Sarah’s first year, by two key-stage co-ordinators (Karen and the Foundation Stage teacher) to make five in total (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Leadership team structure at the end of Sarah’s first year

I felt that Sarah built a team around her. I felt very much part of it and decisions were made jointly. We all brought something to the table. I felt the five of us were very strong.

Karen, teacher

Sarah, Headteacher

Jo, Deputy headteacher and assessment leader

Lisa, foundation stage leader

Karen, KS1 and English leader

Lorraine, KS2 and maths leader


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Sarah made Karen and Jo feel part of the team by:

− creating structured weekly meetings

− inviting involvement in school improvement planning, drawing on their experience

− involving them in review, monitoring and evaluation of the improvement plan

− explaining aspects of the school and its development so that others could gain an understanding of strategic decision-making and its ramifications and how individual aspects fed into the bigger picture

For Jo, this step was instrumental in changing the school from a reactive to proactive organisation. It brought clarity of purpose and helped develop a greater sense of whole-school working.

Developing leaders

In the early days Sarah would look for leadership potential in staff, looking for indicators of their capacity to lead. This would include their demeanour, their contributions (eg, in staff meetings), how they worked with other staff in their area of responsibility and their communication skills. One such leader was Karen who became a member of the SLT under its restructuring.

Sarah felt she needed to spend a disproportionate amount of time to develop long-standing senior and middle leaders in order to bring them on board. She needed their credibility and support to see change take effect due to their influence; for example, Lorraine and Pam.

Pam was one of the teachers who had been judged unsatisfactory but had evident potential. Sarah reflects how Pam came to see her a few months after the observation and was very honest about being complacent but said that she did want to improve. Sarah subsequently gave her a task to do in a staff meeting which led her to see that she had underestimated Pam’s potential. Later, Sarah gave her responsibility for science which became a strength of the school under Pam’s leadership.

Jo considered that the relationship with Sarah created a shift of expectation of her as a leader from a teaching deputy to a deputy supporting a headteacher. In part, this was due to her greater inclusion in strategic and operational decisions from their beginning.

Restructuring the administration team

In addition to restructuring the SLT, Sarah restructured the administration team so that this was better aligned with the systems she introduced, and supported greater efficiency:

I was bit shocked at how few people there were and as there weren’t [efficient] systems either it just wasn’t fit for purpose at all.

Sarah, headteacher

Once the budget issues were resolved, Sarah states that she and the governors spoke about their concern for her work–life balance and this led to discussions about recruiting additional administrative support for school systems and by default the time Sarah was obliged to spend on them herself. This meant that areas such as premises and pastoral support for families were within the redefined roles and associated job descriptions.


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Performance management

Performance management in the first year was something that Sarah carried out and its focus was very much on pupil progress. This helped set her expectations and was an approach that, being data driven, was different for staff and challenged them. Culturally, this helped send clear messages about individuals’ accountability for progress which Jo saw as being, for some staff, a bit of a cultural change.

At the end of the year, performance management of staff was also restructured. This was aligned with the new SLT structure so that both combined to create greater organisational efficiency and clear lines of responsibility. This, Sarah considers, has also developed reviewers’ leadership skills and has meant that reviewers are closer to the needs of reviewees than the more distant relationship with the headteacher would be. It also means that there are clear SLT structures which support line management.

One of the school’s challenges, Sarah states, is ensuring there is still professional challenge to teaching and leadership practice since personal friendships may influence the outcome of peer-led observations. As Sarah has ultimate accountability, she reads all performance-management reviews. Because staff are aware of this, they know that she will pick up on any lack of challenge. SLT meetings also provide a forum for the moderation of targets and progress towards them.

Keeping your balance

Sarah reflects on her stabilising influences and support structures. Outside school, these include her home life and her husband, both of which provide a sanctuary or safe haven and help her relax away from school. Aside from letting off steam occasionally in relation to a particularly stressful event, Sarah does not discuss her work with her husband. Sarah relates, too, how her faith is important to her and supportive in times of difficulty. In addition, she ensures she has colleagues at school in whom she can confide:

You have to have your kindred spirits in school, people that you can take into your confidence and what I say is that these are the people who really understand. I have a senior leader and my bursar is great and I think you need that sort of back-up because you’re not superwoman, you can’t do everything and be in control of everything; it’s not healthy.

Sarah, headteacher

Sarah reflects that some of her resilience comes from personal experiences and that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. “Some of it is about not being precious about yourself and not taking things too personally.”

She also values consulting on issues with her deputy headteacher and office manager. Consultation with external services is also a preferred approach so that Sarah knows she is not contravening any protocols and is working within the law. This relates particularly to personnel issues.

These sources of support combine to aid her in managing the emotional demands of headship.

Sarah values her professional development and sees performance management as an opportunity to identify her own professional training requirements; for example counselling. She also tries to identify a target that is related to something outside school. Currently this relates to a learning trust of which Sarah is a member and which she values as it comprises a facilitated network of colleague headteachers and other senior leaders who discuss significant matters from which she learns and which she applies to her own school. While she values networks and partnerships she is selective:

I don’t like sitting around with moaning minnies and coming away and thinking that I’ve just sat there for two hours and I don’t know what I’ve gained from it. I give everything a go but if it’s not productive I come out of it.

Sarah, headteacher


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Sarah also spends time looking at the National College website to maintain the currency of her learning about leadership.

She looks at her diary each week and builds in a pocket of time when she is not engaged in meetings or other matters and this allows her to reflect or think about what needs to happen in the school to move forward.

Her tips for new headteachers for keeping their balance are:

− Make sure you have a strong administration team.

− Grab every opportunity you can to do things that support you.

− Offer opportunities to others as you often get a payback.

− Know when enough is enough – know your own personal limits and when you would be more efficient putting something off to the next day.

− Be realistic about your own wellbeing.

− Prioritise your workload, prioritise the priorities and judge what you can leave to another time.

− It’s important not to be isolated – phone a headteacher if you have an issue. You know they’re never going to be judgemental.

− Know that you can’t do everything – you have to let go of some things, so long as you are happy with the choices you make.

− Have a strong personal belief that you are going in the right direction, and keep going.

− Have a sense of humour; know which staff you can go to for a laugh.

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