Are you a Headteacher or Senior Leader within a UK School?

“In life, if an opportunity comes your way, you need to take it.” – Nick Bevington

Watch Nick Bevington’s interview where he speaks of his route from Finance graduate to Head of Town Close School, the boredom of working in Finance and how summer camp work had lit the torch paper of his love of helping and teaching young people. Nick’s early advice of taking an opportunity has stood him in very good stead.

In fact, this advice leads to Nick progressing quicker than normal to his first Deputy Headteacher role. He describes how he handled the responsibility of this post when relatively inexperienced compared to other more established staff.

Nick has lost none of his enthusiasm and passion for education and had some amazing examples of current initiatives in Town Close school. Enjoy!

The Restless School – Roy Blatchford

Listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts.
Stream by clicking here.
Download as an MP3 by right-clicking here and choosing ‘save as’.
Watch the video on YouTube.

QUESTION(S) OF THE DAY: What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let me know in the comments.

Scroll below for show notes, transcript and links…

SHOW NOTES:

[00:30] Nick’s route into teaching.

[01:50] The biggest influencers in Nick’s early teaching.

[04:50] Becoming a Deputy headteacher

[06:17] Learns as a Deputy.

[08:00] Making the move into Headship.

[09:54] New Head, new experiences.

[11:29] Implementing change as a Head.

[13:08] Current inititives at Town Close School.

[15:49] Genderless uniform.

[22:11] What makes a good SLT.

[24:06] Nick’s advice to NQT’s.

[27:02] Nick’s advice to aspiring Head Teachers.

[28:39] How Nick gets away from work.

INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT

Lee Stanley 0:06
Hello, and welcome to health food education good to great webinar series where I interview the leading Head Teachers in the UK. And today I’m joined by Nick Bennington of Town Close School in Norwich. Hi, Nick, how are you?

Nick Bevington 0:21
Very well. Thank you. Good to join you.

Lee Stanley 0:23
Excellent. Thank you for being here. And so Nick always like to start by finding out sort of your roots into teaching. So what took you into into education?

Nick Bevington 0:32
I’m one of those people who didn’t start off as a teacher. I actually joined a finance Graduate Programme for British Airways. And in my mind going to school and university, I was looking for that great job and that that great career and I never thought of teaching. When I was a student, I did work in America for some summers working in American summer camps. Then when I started my finance graduate programme and started thinking is this actually what I want to do for the rest of my life? realising that it wasn’t, I came back to other things that I’d enjoyed, and I realised I’d love working with young people in America. And I thought about teaching as a career, retrained and then worked my way from being a classroom teacher to a head teacher.

Lee Stanley 1:15
Excellent. So what was your initial route? Did you do PGCE?

Nick Bevington 1:19
Yes,

Lee Stanley 1:20
OK within what subject.

Nick Bevington 1:22
So I did a math specialist PGCE for secondary combined with the general primary. And at the time, that was with Newcastle University, and it was a completely new course. And because it was completely new, it was actually released later in the year. And so it was my route into teaching, when actually everything else is full. And it was perfect, because I wasn’t sure if I wants to be secondary or primary. And it gave me that ability to do both.

Lee Stanley 1:45
Excellent, excellent. And then the early couple of years, who was sort of the biggest influences within your teaching career?

Nick Bevington 1:51
Well, I mean, there were many I say, my first teacher was an influence in one key piece of advice he gave me and he was trying to persuade me to take on an opportunity. But he said that in life, if an opportunity comes your way, you need to take it. And I think that that sounds obvious, but that’s really good advice. And that’s sort of how I’ve ended up where I am now. The second person I really admired was some somebody who was as a teacher, one of the most accomplished practitioners I’ve ever seen, in that she was just always so good at dealing calmly with difficult situations, about getting the balance right between having that really warm relationship with pupils, but then knowing absolutely who was in charge. And there were there was no pulling the wool over her eyes. Oh, no getting one over. And I thought that she was one of the most amazing teachers currently a serving deputy head, but they’re probably one of the best. I’ve seen it in my career.

Lee Stanley 2:49
Excellent. And then in terms of career progression, and move. What did you move into middle leadership?

Nick Bevington 2:55
Yes, I did. So the opportunity that the first had wanted me to take on as the head of Modern foreign languages role, and bearing in mind I was a maths teacher

Lee Stanley 3:03
Yeah,

Nick Bevington 3:03
You can see why we’re having the conversation but I worked in France in my gap year and I had done some French has passed my degree as an extra course. And they couldn’t find a teacher that they wanted for the role and they wanted to encourage me and so I’m actually applied for a head of department role in a subject that I wasn’t a specialist teacher in.

Lee Stanley 3:25
Fantastic How did that work out?

Nick Bevington 3:27
Well, it worked out very well. Um, you know, in life if you if you don’t know everything, you have to get the help of people who do. And I was very lucky that at the time there was a student working with us who had studied French A-level he’s now a successful author incidentally and as also a journalist, but the time he was a gap student, and I went through the content for the grant French grammar lesson with him the night before, to really get on top of this piece of history, and I could and the existing head of languages who was observing lesson you could tell I’m thinking, boy, I didn’t realise it this young teaching knew quite so much about French grammar and my preparation properly.

Lee Stanley 4:07
Fantastic. Fantastic. And how long did you spend within middle leadership?

Nick Bevington 4:12
I spent in total only four years, which sounds like a really short time I spent. I spent three years in that first school as head of Modern Foreign Languages. And then I got a job as a sideways move to another Modern Foreign Languages job to broaden my experience. But as she left that quite quickly, because an opportunity came up to be a deputy head in London, and it was for a school that was newly founded and it was a risk to take the role. But I remembered about thinking about opportunities and taking them and so at age 31, I became a deputy head in a central London School.

Lee Stanley 4:50
Fantastic, and how did that pan out for you?

Nick Bevington 4:55
Ultimately, it was successful. It certainly led to my first headship and And it was a very interesting and steep learning curve. I was a young and still quite inexperienced teacher really leading a team of people who were mostly more experienced than me. And certainly many of whom had been in education for a long time. But there are certain things that really helped you in that situation. Firstly, that sense that actually, you’re enthusiastic, passionate, keen to support people. And basically everyone’s keen to do the best they can for children, even if you difference to how you going to do it. So it was it was seeing that energy and commitment, I think that saw me through that. But also there are times when you have to be tough and resilient. And there was some interesting challenges with that role. And being a deputy is actually one of the toughest roles in in teaching, I think, both from a school organisational point of view and a day to day, people management point of view today. And this was made more complex by the fact that we were a multi site Its school with all the safeguarding and procedural elements. okay with that. And so it was actually a really interesting and important learning experience.

Lee Stanley 6:10
And in terms of the sort of the big, like learns and achievements that you had within that role, and what were they?

Nick Bevington 6:19
I think that more than anything, it was growing in confidence and learning that and apparently difficult situation can be dealt with. And there were difficult situations in that role. I think one of the most challenging ones was newly in when I was new in the role, the person you’ve done, the road previously had been much loved, die suddenly. And I had to, I had to break that news to pupils. And we were talking about someone who all of the pupils and all of my colleagues remembered with great fondness. It done a terrific job. And actually that managing that whole collective grief and mourning is a really, really difficult experience. Another really difficult day I can remember is the day of the seven seven bombings. But my school was just around the corner from Edgware Road.

Lee Stanley 7:13
Wow.

Nick Bevington 7:13
And we were all in school that morning. And there was quite a lot of, you know, panic and anxiety and not knowing what was going on amongst both the staff who were getting news coming through and pupils who were obviously getting idea that things weren’t right and how best to respond to that. And so I had the challenge of leading on the ground, a response to a situation where mobile phones weren’t working as switch what was going mad. People want to know what we were doing that their children were safe.

Lee Stanley 7:48
Wow. Okay. And in terms of the move to headship, yeah, that’s something that you you’d always plan when did you sort of decide or feel that I do want to be a head teacher.

Nick Bevington 8:02
Well, the funny thing is I didn’t go into teaching with the idea that I wanted to be a head teacher at all I went to teaching because I love teaching. And I remember when I was in my very young teaching days of one of my colleagues, when we were walking to classes and sort of saying, aren’t we lucky to be in this environment? When you think about people’s work environment, now how great it is, it was, it was a sunny day, there were people walking happily from place to place. It was one of those idyllic moments. And he said, enjoy these moments. You know, enjoy, enjoy this time when you’re at the bottom. And I really did enjoy it. And I took the opportunity in London, but even then I didn’t think of myself necessarily becoming ahead. But I that by that point had become married. My met my wife, we were looking at the next stage in terms of her moving out of London. I was looking at opportunities and the logical step when you when you’re thinking about options well look at the market and the headship came up quite a big school. And I thought, well, this is a complete long shot. But I was a junior school attached to a senior school and I contacted the senior school head, who would offer informal meetings and asked for an informal meeting, just to explore whether it was even worth my while going through this role. And we had a conversation and it seemed from that conversation that we were really aligned as to where we saw education. And from that, he encouraged me to apply and I went through the application process, and actually flew back from a school trip to get to the second interview says quite jet lagged as well. But some it I got the job and it wasn’t an easy job. But that was my route into headship.

Lee Stanley 9:48
Fantastic. And in terms of the first first year, first two years within headship, what are your big learns within that?

Nick Bevington 9:58
Oh gosh, I think one of the things you learn as a head is that you need to remember everybody else, but they’re not going to necessarily remember you. And so you need to ask people, you know, how the family is or how was that weekend or, you know, is your mother feeling better, or whatever it might be. And think about their welfare. And yet, they won’t necessarily ever even contemplate your needs as a head. It’s a different relationship. And the relationship does change, because people can’t deal with you in quite the same way. I can remember as a young teacher, I was always, you know, one of the people in the staff from who was, you know, enjoying light hearted conversations and you know, being that the centre of all the fun that goes with teaching, and you know, you don’t lose the fun as a head but you there’s a certain distance and you’re not part of that grouping quite the same way as you were before. And I think that you also start thinking about how you’re going to leave things and move things forward. And and you use you start seeing what you’ve done and what what makes a difference. And you have to have quite a strong personality sometimes because inevitably all of us in not just in teaching but in general tend to be quite worried about change doing things in different ways of change management that does involved in headship.

Lee Stanley 11:25
Yeah, so tell me about some of the changes that you’ve had to implement.

Nick Bevington 11:29
Well, one of the first things I had to do is we had a school that was basically carrying more staff than it could afford. And that’s a very challenging situation because work out what you’re what you’re going to do in order to make sure that you you provide for pupils in a way that within the staff budget and at the same time, try to preserve, you know, the the, the feeling amongst teaching and other stuff that you know, this is a place that we all value. So I think that was a challenge. And the other challenge I had is it was a school that hadn’t previously done well in inspection. But the attitude amongst the teachers was that they were really doing a great job. And that somehow the inspectors just weren’t able to see what they they were doing and inspectors were wrong effectively. And actually, there were some key things that needed to change. And, you know, that were aspects of our provision, which we needed to improve and it was trying to take people on a journey to recognise that and to implement that improvement. And of course, when you have done that, and then when you get a very much better appraisal next time around or in this case, the time after, because my first inspection phase soon after I joined, I think that you then get people feeling quite satisfied about that and feeling quite pleased and quite validated about their contribution. But But leading people on that journey and leading change is not an easy thing to do.

Lee Stanley 13:00
Sure, sure. So tell me about current current school and, and any, like initiatives that you’re running in in Town Close?

Nick Bevington 13:08
Well, we’re it’s a very exciting time in Town Close because we’ve just been nominated for a TES National award, as was shortlisted for being the best school in our category. And that is a really wonderful moment when when staff realised that their efforts have been recognised in that way. And I think that we’ve been recognised that effort because of a number of pupil led or pupil inspired projects. with of course the support and encouragement of our staff. I think the first thing that we’ve done is that not only with ourselves, but with many, many other schools around us and with hundreds of pupils from our local area Norfolk we have inspired participation in a an environmentally friendly racing series, which combines engineering skills with teamwork with thinking about the environment and looking at the future of zero emissions transport, and there are different levels of the this green power series and we started off on what they call the Goblin level, which is for children in primary years. And in that level, you assemble a go kart and you take part in certain challenges like slalom, drag, race, and so forth. And people drive the car and peoples are the ones who are taking other roles, like making sure that the drivers and the driver change is done properly that someone has to do the push start. And and so they feel like they’re part of a team driving and running the car. And we actually started racing event in Norfolk at an old airfield. And lots and lots of people got involved in one of our stuff became an ambassador. We then moved up to the next formula up where you have to be a bit older and that’s what f 24 and now you’re allowed to multiple fly the cast really much more like a racing car. That’s like a kit and so People’s without volunteers to be working on things like the aero package, the battery management that the gearing, the throttle mapping, the passive cooling and all of those things that go to make a race car run for 90 minutes to battery. And we started at an event with Lotus here in Norfolk, and we had the first race, Lotus, we qualified for the International finals, which were at Silverstone. And in our first year, we were the best international newcomer, and this year actually came third in the international finals in the world. So there are 100 cars. And we were third in the world. We were the youngest team there, but or student were a bit lighter so it does help being younger, a bit smaller. And that’s one of the one of the things we’ve done. And we introduced with us Council, a new uniform policy, which basically stripped agenda labels out of uniform and allowed children to wear the version of the uniform that they felt comfortable with. And that’s in some ways was a very small change because we’d always allowed in our policies, boys in quotation marks to where the girls uniform and vice versa. But now all peoples can choose between the skirts stroke dress uniform, and the short stroke trousers uniform what’s happened is that Firstly, we read to parents, and although the local press picked it up, no parents worried about it. And secondly, we introduced it, a handful of peoples have come in their version of the uniform that they didn’t previously were not a particularly large number. But it’s very natural and easy and it was an obvious change. And it’s just shows that we are listening to our peoples into adapting to the way that society is moving. And the third thing we’ve done is worked really hard to reduce plastic consumption and we use that we lots of single use items that we use.

But a new school council chair elected by our pupils, Using alternative vote. So, you know, the most democratic voting system that we could find. And she is determined that we are going to go further. And I like the fact that she feels that we can lead. And we’ve also been working on homework policy. And with the school Council, we changed the homework policy. In theory, we’re giving the children the same amount that they always had. But in practice, they’re getting longer periods to concentrate on things and do them in more depth. So rather than having two homeworks a night, they’re having one homework a night. And they’re having that homework every other week, which is and the homework is in theory lasting double the time, which allows them to take their time and not feel on that endless treadmill pressure. Last thing we’ve done is we’ve worked with teachers on feedback. And again, the school Council was key to this. And we’ve been experimenting in different ways of what tradition you call marking. It’s actually been ethical feedback because it doesn’t have to be on the page. And we really managed to develop a policy which gives teachers much more professional autonomy, and gives them much more time to plan their lessons works, I think giving better feedback to people’s. So that’s really had a positive effect on workload.

Lee Stanley 18:13
Sounds fantastic. And some real, like fore fronted policies and changes and, you know, as well student led, which, if you empower people to make decisions, you’re always going to get 100% more buying, aren’t you?

Nick Bevington 18:29
Absolutely. And I think that people often worry that children will make silly or naive decisions, if you ask them. And in actual fact, that can be true if they’re not used to taking responsibility, but the more that they’re used to being involved in taking decisions, the more you find that you tend to make very sensible decisions.

Lee Stanley 18:49
Yeah.

Nick Bevington 18:49
And I think that we need in general, a society to have more faith in our young. The views are often dismissed as being naive. I think we think that we don’t know about the world but often those fresh eyes actually see things which our own experience and prejudices stopped us from seeing. Whereas I think that young children and older students do need of course, to listen to adults and to respect adults views. I think adults need to think a bit more about young people’s views and why they think that

Lee Stanley 19:19
Hundred percent, I think, as well, with the way in which children nowadays are open to so much in terms of social media, and the Internet, and the way in which they may upset, like perceive something could be incredibly like thoughtful and really good insight. As opposed to like you say, we may might not necessarily have that and we may have already had those, these pre built barriers, but it sounds sounds absolutely brilliant, brilliant. And, and in terms of moving forward, you have any other initiatives that you have your eyes set on.

Nick Bevington 19:59
Well, our next goal, which has been articulated by a new school council chair is all about taking our environmental awareness further and acting further. I think if you talk to young people, what is their concern above all else, and as much as the country may be talking about Brexit and young people are definitely remain majority. Their biggest concern is about the environment about the future. And there’s that feeling that the the current generation has known about the issues we now face for quite a while in a to my shame. I studied global warming at university in the early 90s. And somehow our generation has put that out of our minds in the way that we’ve acted. And other other things like economic growth, and other imperatives have allowed us not to think about it clearly enough, and yet the evidence of the rapidity of change And the starkness of what we’re facing, has has grown ever stronger. And I think that the current generation is determined that we need to be more ambitious than 25th in terms of our carbon targets and wants to look at all possible ways of eliminating single use plastic, eliminating the use of fossil fuels were possible leaving things in the ground. And actually, it starts with what every single person can do. And Greta Tunberg has also been a big inspiration to young people. And actually, we, we as a staff, we we lead an assembly specifically charting what she has done and her work because in her you always have a lesson that as a young person, you can make a difference. And she would never thought this time last year that she would be such a globally recognised name in just two months time.

Brilliant, Brilliant and within within school, and what do you feel has enabled? Or what do you feel makes a really solid, really strong senior leadership team?

I think that you have got to really think about any team being built upon relationships. And those relationships, his professional relationships are the key to achieving great things together. And I think that that is not just relationships with the senior team, its relationships with the staff, the staff relationships with pupils, and everyone’s relationships with parents. I think it’s recognising that you are all pulling in the same direction in terms of you know, we were all here because we want young people to achieve their best. And I don’t think there’s anyone in teaching you doesn’t believe that and actually, if you’re not, if you’re not there for that reason, that really is, you know, one of the key key signs actually it’s the wrong job for you. And I think that everyone’s in that position. So it’s about trying to listen to people’s views about trying to have that spirit of cooperation and understanding and collectively finding a way that will work. And we’ll get this buy in and the more you can involve people in decision making them, the more likely you are to make those decisions of success. And the biggest driver of staff happiness is that sense of autonomy, I can make a difference. And I think where you have morale issues, it tends to be when you’re feeling as she, what I do isn’t really appreciated. And, and the way I think things should change is really being listened to. And there are times where people have to do things that they’d rather not and there are times where difficult messages have to be given. But I think that if you can maximise your, the positive relationships with people maximise their input, then then you’re going to give yourself the best chance to achieve collectively.

Lee Stanley 23:59
Absolutely. Absolutely. And what advice would you give to any student teachers or NQT’s, you know, entering in the first year of profession?

Nick Bevington 24:09
Okay, well, I’ve seen quite a few NQT’s in terms of my own observations, lesson observations, and also I’ve done some interviewing for Brighton University. And what I would say is that the calibre of people going into teaching these days I did, I think it’s more impressive than ever. And the quality of some of the work that I’ve seen young teachers achieve is, again, really quite encouraging for the future. But I think there are challenges to and I think that it’s the advice for teaching would be rather like the advice acting is definitely not an easy path. And it’s a sort of job that you only do if you can’t think of doing anything else, because the people who really want to be teachers just aren’t prepared to think about any other possibilities, because that’s what they want. So always if you’re in doubt about being a teacher is probably Are they not the right job? You’ve got to know that you want it. And I think all of us teachers have that point where we suddenly realise that that’s, that’s what we did want to that. I think that’s the first thing I would say. I think the second thing I would say is that it is a tough profession. And when you look at what you are theoretically supposed to do, actually, he’s pretty impossible. I think you’re gonna be quite smart with your time and quite smart, realising what’s important and what isn’t important. And try to make sure that you you focus on those things that really are important. And I think when you’re developing your craft with students, and when you’re in front of a class or dealing with interactions are always going to be challenges. And I think that you definitely improve in terms of your assuredness and your ability to take control. And I think that the key advice for new teachers to play things with a straight bat not not not try to not try to be funny not court popularity. But but to be very straight with people very, very fair. And always to focus on the choices that students have, rather than to ever get into a confrontation. So rather than the you will do this, no, I won’t very much this is the situation, you know, the these are choices, these are the consequences of choices. No, it is down to you. And it because ultimately, that is the way it is. And it’s it’s having that assuredness not not to be riled, or to be provoked to be to be flustered. By situation. It’s difficult, and you know that it can arise anywhere. But of course, when you’re dealing with young people, you’re dealing with a group of people who are, you know, energetic, but they’re keen, enthusiastic, but they will say, finding their place in the world and they certainly don’t suffer fools gladly.

Lee Stanley 26:53
No, absolutely, absolutely. What about senior leaders that are thinking about Headship and their progression into headship. Why advice would you give to those?

Nick Bevington 27:02
I think that people who have the best heads sometimes dismissed themselves as being heads because they somehow don’t think they could do it. And and actually, I would like all of those people who who are thinking that they might like to be ahead, but don’t quite believe that it would be right or worried that they would be able to take the pressure, or think that that somehow there’ll be somebody else’s better than them. I’d say go for it. And actually, in most professions, we most of us tend to think of others around us somehow knowing more or being more capable. There’s an inherent insecurity about the human nature. But my view is that actually I’ve seen so many teachers and senior leaders who could make great heads and I think that most of the rules that apply to teaching and most of all Apply to senior leadership, really the same rules that apply to headship and headships are a roll in some ways frees you from certain day to day responsibilities, but she gives you a new a different set of very interesting relationships and interactions. And I think it’s a really rewarding role and there’s nothing more satisfying than standing up in front of a whole school and, and and leading it. So you can do it.

Lee Stanley 28:32
Brilliant. And in terms of outside of work, what what what takes your your mind off of off of the stresses and strains of the day job,

Nick Bevington 28:40
Well having a family and certainly it takes your mind so it can be a busman’s holiday at times when you’re trying to have a family. And yeah, I play tennis I play tennis for a team and local team in Norfolk. I wouldn’t say it’s that elite a team nevertheless, you know, just competing in sport is fun. whatever level you are, I love singing and say anything that involves joining a choir, getting involved in a local community group. Just getting involved in the community interacting with people who are doing different things from teaching and then your family and friends and and walks and activities and just keeping a balance to life. I think any teacher or any head teacher has to know when they’ve worked as many hours as they can work in a day. And actually you need to know when to stop and when to to carry on with your life was otherwise you won’t make a great teacher and you certainly won’t be able to sustain in the long term.

Lee Stanley 29:44
Now agreed. I think that’s something from my experience of, of dealing with teachers that that there’s a specific niche that really, they really struggle with that because let’s be honest, a teaching a teacher job is never complete. There’s always going to be more that you can do and in other kinds of roles and environments, but there must be, you know, a time where they draw a line and say, No, I am satisfied. I have done everything that I can do, and then, you know, have a bit of a bit of R&R or, you know, switch off. But I do I do genuinely think there’s there’s a proportion of the teacher population who, who do struggle with that, you know, incredibly conscientious worry a lot, but only because they want to do the best possible job that they can.

Nick Bevington 30:35
Yeah,

Dont read your emails at night. Is it good? Yeah.

Lee Stanley 30:36
fantastic. Okay.

Yeah. Well, the email is, yeah, it’s something that people really struggle to get away from. And what about in terms of book what’s, what’s the last book that you’ve read?

Nick Bevington 30:49
Well, I now I’m reading a book by Roy Blatchford called The Restless School, which is very interesting, because it’s all about moving forward. And thinking about the future. But in between that I also went to a talk last week by an internet blogger and a creativity inspirer called Nick Corston. And I had a book from his talk, which I read over the weekend. And that’s all about this, unlocking this sense of creativity in a world where we are ever focusing on the narrow measurables of education. And it’s all about thinking about the things that really drive success. And he has Einstein’s great quote in it, which is that logic can get you from A to B but imagination can take you anywhere. I’m all about trying to to think beyond the measurable.

Lee Stanley 31:48
Excellent, excellent. And in terms of work, and what’s your favourite app that you use?

Nick Bevington 31:55
Gosh, I that is an interesting question, because that I use lots of apps and we’ve got different mind mapping apps. And we’ve got a great app for teaching called explain everything. Even I love using in the classroom and the randoms selector app, so that that take out any human bias. I mean, I’m quite into my music apps, of course, for my own leisure time. And I consume all my news on various free and subscription news apps. And then I think virtually everything that you do in your everyday life these days is on an app we even have, of course, our great town place online presence and you can even sorted out listings for Town Close on your smartphone. So um, it’s difficult to say a favourite, but I think a good a good thing to do sometimes just like it’s good to go to the supermarket and buy five things that you’ve never bought before. I think sometimes it’s good to go into the app store and Just go and download an app that you didn’t think you need. And it’s, it’s interesting just to always have that spirit of trying something new.

Lee Stanley 33:09
I remember that. I did that for a while where you could get the editor’s choice. And you would, you would just discover a new app that you never heard of didn’t have really any use for, but because it was applicable to something that you needed. It was really it was a really good way of finding new and up and coming up as well.

Nick Bevington 33:32
There’s some brilliant apps alpha teaching. And I really like the ones I Socrative where you get that interaction between pupils and teachers and the virtual learning environment we use is also brilliant for being able to have comments to the viewable by everyone and it really helps discourse so so I think that education is lots of exciting, exciting stuff and education.

Lee Stanley 33:59
Definitely. Definitely What about favourite holiday destination? Where do you like to get away to?

Nick Bevington 34:04
Oh my goodness, that’s also a difficult one because there’s something if you think about the holiday, one of the best moments of holidays is when you dive into clear water. And it’s almost as you go underwater and you you swim in the court with with all of those lovely shots of light caused by the ripples on the water. It’s almost like every worry that you have sort of fades away and you’re sort of temporarily submerged in paradise. And I especially like somebody like the coast of Croatia, where you have many rocks where you could just dive straight into the deep sea. And it’s so beautifully clear, and I love this particular swimmer, but I love swimming in the sea. And that freedom that it gives you that’s so different from swimming in a swimming pool. And so, I mean, I love skiing as well where you’re on a mountain and it’s just you in the snow. I think the sun’s China is such an important ingredient for any holiday because it gives you that that lift of optimism.

Lee Stanley 35:06
Fantastic. I’ve heard really, really good things about Croatia. Really good things. Yeah. It’s on my, on my list of, of destinations.

Nick Bevington 35:13
And you get a sailing boat and anchor in a small harbour in a dive off and swim ashore you know, there’s certainly a very beautiful sort of Mediterranean evolved type of feel to it.

Lee Stanley 35:28
Lovely. And in terms of, if you hadn’t become a teacher, where do you think you’re you would have your journey would have taken you?

Nick Bevington 35:37
so difficult, isn’t it because, in a way, and lots of teachers find it hard now to imagine doing anything else. But I would like to do something involved, you know, presenting things or animating things, or some sort of communication type role and very much on the human side, and I do in enjoy thinking about things and coming up with ideas and discussing ideas. So I think the other thing might might be the the I the turning an idea into a business reality. So I quite often think of something that might make a good product and, of course, as a teach, right, and I never developed it, but I’m quite like it was

Lee Stanley 36:20
excellent. And he’s been the biggest influence overall, in your in your career to date.

Nick Bevington 36:27
Oh, wow. Now that is that’s a very difficult question. I, there was one conference that I went to on brains hands, where I’m a speaker, and you can’t be that big an influence because I can’t remember his name. But he came out with a statistic that’s been an influence, which was, his research showed that 98% of what we know, we’ve taught ourselves and 2% of what we know, and we’ve been taught. And I remember that thinking, Well, of course, whether that’s true or not, even if it’s out, you know, by a factor of five, and it’s how Actually 10% of what what we know, that really does make us think about the role of a teacher in a slightly different way. It may perhaps makes you obsess a bit less about what curriculum you’re covering, and a bit more about the human skills that you’re developing. But I think there was other great influences that I’ve lost. And I think Stephen Fry is someone who I’ve found inspiring. And I think I found him inspiring because, firstly of his, his genius in certain respects, but how that’s combined with vulnerability and his openness to discuss his writing about, you know, his emotions and his journey and the highs and lows, and I really admire that. But But I’ve not actually met him as a person. And there are a few professional sports people that I’ve come to know, through teaching. And I tell you, what I really admire about them is people often fantasise about being a professional sportsperson think how wonderful it would be. It’s amazing just how hard they work, how determined they are. And you know, you don’t get to those positions by accident. But I couldn’t I couldn’t give you a single name who has turned my life around. But I think I’ve been influenced by quite a few people.

Lee Stanley 38:17
Good. Good. Excellent. Okay. Well, thank you ever so much for your time today and your insight. It’s been fascinating and incredibly informative, and really appreciate it. And what’s the best way for people to get in contact with you?

Nick Bevington 38:31
Well, my email is in the public domain head@townclose.com. And on Twitter, I’m @TownCloseHead. So those are both pretty easy ways to get in touch.

Lee Stanley 38:41
Brilliant, what I’ll do, I’ll put the links into the roll below. And also there’ll be a couple of pop ups as well that people can click and connect with you on. And once again, thank you ever so much for your time. It’s been really, really good and informative.

Nick Bevington 38:57
It’s a pleasure to speak to you too. Thank you very much.

Lee Stanley 38:59
Take care.

Nick Bevington 39:00
Bye

SELECTED LINKS FROM THIS EPISODE

Nick’s LinkedIn Profile

Nick’s Twitter

Town Close School website

Town Close Facebook

Nick Corston

Are you a Headteacher or Senior Leader within a UK School?

Feel like sharing your experiences and insights ?

Help the next generation of NQT’s Senior Leaders and Head’s?

PREVIOUSLY

Jonathan Cuff – d’Overbroeck

PREVIOUSLY

James Hodgson – Bedford School

PREVIOUSLY

Mike King – Releasing Potential

Good to Great Webinar Series – Jonathan Cuff – d’Overbroeck’s

December 18, 2019 by Lee Stanley

“It’s, it’s about getting your best players in place. It’s about giving those best players the opportunity to, to actually do what they’re good at.” – Jonathan Cuff

Jonathan always knew he was going to be a Teacher, from the off following in his fathers footsteps. Listen to his path from NQT to Headship, where he shares insights and advice to all levels of Education. Feel Jonathan’s enthusiasm for the new Discovery Plus initiative in d’Overbroecks and how the school help and support Mental Health issues.

Listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts.
Stream by clicking here.
Download as an MP3 by right-clicking here and choosing ‘save as’.
Watch the video on YouTube.

QUESTION(S) OF THE DAY: What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let me know in the comments.

Scroll below for show notes, transcript and links…

SHOW NOTES:

[00:33] Jonathan’s route into teaching.

[01:38] Jonathan’s NQT Learns.

[02:27] Progression into Middle Leadership

[03:24] Jonathan’s Path to Headship.

[06:10] Advice for NQT’s.

[07:11] d’Overbroeck’s New Discovery Plus Initiative.

[09:09] The Future of Education.

[11:38] Supporting Mental Health in d’Overbroeck’s.

[13:54] d’Overbroecks Growth and Progression.

[14:51] Building a Successful Team.

INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT

Lee Stanley 0:06
Hello, and welcome to Hadfield Education’s good to great webinar series where I interview the head teachers within the UK education sector. And today I’m joined by Jonathan Cuff, who is the head teacher of d’Overbroeck school in Oxford. Hello, Jonathan, how are you?

Jonathan Cuff 0:24
Yeah, fine. Thanks, Lee. Thanks for having me.

Lee Stanley 0:26
No problem. No problem. Thank you for being here. And so Jonathan, and tell me how did you get into teaching?

Jonathan Cuff 0:33
Or it was kind of always destined to be really my, my father was head of a of an independent prep school. And so I grew up living living on site and had all the wonders of the games fields and everything like that my disposal, and yeah, I was there from 7 to 18. And it was kind of what I was ever going to do. I think so yeah, I was the I was destined for it Really?

Lee Stanley 0:55
And what was your path into teaching?

Jonathan Cuff 0:58
I finished school. I did it I did a gap year working working at a school kind of doing all the dots body jobs and lugging a peek flipping around and things like that. And and from there I went to Brunel the old Borough road teacher training position to do four years there and then straight into school so I haven’t you know, some some head teachers in this day and age have gone through various kind of sizes of different work but I was I was I was always going to do education and, and really followed the the old traditional path straight into it.

Lee Stanley 1:29
So being an NQT as it’s now deemed and what what were your what were your initial learns, within your first few years of teaching?

Jonathan Cuff 1:38
Think about I mean, I was very fortunate. I had a I had a great PE mentor at the times very experienced a teacher lady there who kind of showed me the ropes and really, you know, I came out a young buck from University and I felt I knew exactly how to do everything straight away and she and she really taught me taught me quite a lot about about Teaching and, and different ways of, of teaching to a different kind of different audience of students. So there isn’t just one way there’s plenty of ways to get your to get your message across and, and allow those students to learn. So yeah, she was she was very influential, it really taught me that there’s more than one way to skin a cat. Right.

Lee Stanley 2:18
Excellent. And in terms of your, your progression into middle leadership, how did that pan out?

Jonathan Cuff 2:27
Well, I mean, I went from when I when I first got a job in my first school, I was actually in residential boarding accommodation, I was kind of an assistant house master shooter type role anyway. And from that, I kind of had a lot of pastoral care anyway, and kind of the PE games thing, I think traditionally sits quite quite nicely with that. And I then went on to be a house master house, two different schools. And so I always have my eye on that kind of Deputy Head postural type role and I guess through the experiences gained over kind of 12 years of doing house mastering at two schools, I applied having having my eye on what I always what I wanted to do. And yes, I got into into senior senior leadership as a director, pastoral.

Lee Stanley 3:14
Fantastic. And in terms of your, your path, because you’re obviously quite quite a new head teacher, how’s that? How’s that worked for you?

Jonathan Cuff 3:24
It’s good. I mean, I had about four years of senior leadership experience of Deputy head pastoral. In one school, I then moved to the school I’m currently adding in Oxford as a senior deputy, but also kind of overlooking the pastoral care. And then And then from there, the opportunity came around to be to take on the Principal role, and I kind of stepped in to do it that way. So I’d say it’s not unusual in this day and age to have kind of a senior deputy step up to be to be Principal but I didn’t really go through the application process that is still the norm.

Lee Stanley 4:04
Was that always in your in your plan? Did you always plan to be a Head teacher?

Jonathan Cuff 4:10
I always Yeah, probably the honest answer is probably in the back of my mind, that was something that I thought I’d be reasonably good at. But I’d always been taught from from an early point in my career that you know, you just focus on what you’re doing, and you don’t look that far, you know, my aim is always been focused on short term achievable goals. And and I’ve always you’re going to miss what’s directly in front of you and while you’re busy looking at the horizon, so yeah, it’s kind of happened. I think, I think within the independent sector, it’s important to have a some sort of plan know your way through if that’s where you want to go. But yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s kind of worked out quite, it’s kind of worked out quite well. So I’m delighted to be here.

Lee Stanley 4:58
And in terms of guidance and and sort of mentor who’s been the biggest sort of influence a mentor within your in your teaching.

Jonathan Cuff 5:08
And it’s a difficult one I’m I would really put one person’s name down next to it because I’ve I’ve had my teaching roles, I’ve had roles within within the games programmes at school have had enough had obviously senior leadership roles. And there’s been I probably keep people within those different different spheres of work that have had a had a great influence on me, the lady I mentioned about the head, the head of PE initial school, I had a very good deputy head of pastoral and I turned to first being a house Master, who was an experienced man and he kind of guided me through that as a as a young house master. And when I moved to my first deck, he is the head who appointed me, appointed me again the second time, and they were very influential as well. So yeah, kind of different people at key points. Really

Lee Stanley 5:59
Excellent. Thanks. And then what advice would you give to any NQT’s or people that are thinking of turning, starting a teaching career?

Jonathan Cuff 6:10
NQT I thought I think, you know, they’re my, my main piece of advice would be their own lots of great teachers out there. And, and from my own experience, you know, coming out and knew everything out in the university, that actually there are so many different ways to teach and really not let anybody tell you how how to teach and how your personality should come across in a lesson. It’s got to be you. But to, you know, to go and observe great teachers in your school, I think I think your observation is, is well known, but it’s still such an undervalued commodity. And we have, we have these great examples happening every day in our schools. And for young teachers to actually go and look at a variety of lessons probably taught totally not related to their own academic subjects, I think is a brilliant way to see how different people are trying to access your minds in different ways.

Lee Stanley 7:04
Sure. Okay dnd in terms of within school, and what current initiatives you have running,

Jonathan Cuff 7:11
we have a we have a great new, a great new programme called discovery plus here, d’Overbroecks, which it really kind of tries to expand what we do in terms of branching out outside of the curriculum. It’s delivered within our activity programme, students sign up to it, they’re amazingly amazing. He keeps new this year. And it looks at current affairs, a variety of world events, things that are really happening today and are relevant and, and actually things that they will probably be asked to interview. And it’s, it’s staggering that we’ve got, you know, we’ve got bright students, but you actually investigate real genuine current topics, and and you’re sometimes a little bit dumbstruck by the the amount they don’t know. And so, so they are going through this programme, they do it in six week block. And then eventually they, they, they come together and they present all their their findings, their information in a kind of almost, it’s like a it’s like a game it’s like a game show where they are presenting their different findings on different subjects. And the panel will judge how how much they’ve learned and what they’re what they’re doing. And yeah, we’re we’re really hopeful for in terms of increasing the breadth of knowledge of our of our students in a world which is very exam focused, and very results driven, actually, our belief is that it’s that broad understanding of the world and the bigger issues in the world combined with their subject knowledge, their specific for their exams, that will make them a genuine candidate for for the top universities. Sure.

Lee Stanley 8:47
And you touch on that, but where do you see the education sector moving towards and in that sort of, you know, three, five years huge emphasis on Like you say, most of rounded technic technology and different angles of, of education, where do you foresee it going?

Jonathan Cuff 9:09
And then obviously, there’s been a lot written about about kind of online learning with with various I will, I won’t name them but various schools are now launching kind of online platforms. I think that’s a really interesting development that will see I don’t think it will ever it will never really catch on it’s like to go overseas and studying an English school for instance. But I think it’s, it’s, it’s certainly got legs because of cost implications things like that for, for for students around the world to have access to the British curriculum. And I think, you know, obviously the one of the main challenges that that we as educators have got a minute ease with the massive explosion in mental health. And, you know, how we actually as schools deal with that and were aware our responsibilities like with that because, you know, we have a firm understanding and happy students are successful students and therefore it’s all in our interest to have them happy and healthy and and working hard and achieving. So I think that’s going to become an increasing challenge and how, how upscale Do we need asked our staff to be in the modern age to deal with a multitude of issues that students bring through the door and it’s obviously it’s a challenge it’s a challenge on on staff time. You do they teach 22 hours a week do they do they now need to teach 18 hours a week because because they now dealing with X amount of of issues is it right that they deal with those issues? It’s a really interesting, it’s a really interesting I think one that only is gonna is going to develop and grown to a point where we really need to make some decisions about it. Certainly,

Lee Stanley 10:47
A teachers work isn’t is never really done is it because the number of number of hats that they end up wearing, I’m really is a phenomenally challenging position. Given the not only sort of the diversity of what they’re expected to do, but also then the diversity of the learner as well. And it can be, it can be incredibly sort of rewarding from seeing, you know, little Johnny short pants progress through and, and do really, really well. But also it must be incredibly humbling when they face sort of a little bit of adversity and have to help a student and the pupil through certain, you know, period of adversity and difficulty as well. So, and in terms of school, is there anything particular that you’re doing within school where mental health is concerned?

Jonathan Cuff 11:38
I think we’re very, I think we’re very fortunate. We’re in a very fortunate position. We we I mean, a lot of schools say they, they have a unique kind of relationship with their, with their students. I think, you know, d’Overbroecks in these is one that is actually known for that. We have we work incredibly clever Proceed with our students. We weren’t at a particular programme called a director of studies programme where our director studies the teacher and if you want to call it on our get shot, recording it at school, but if you want to call it a tutor, but it’s more of a specialist tutor for a small, very small group of students, they don’t have tutor meetings at six form, and they meet individually, and they will deal with pretty much everything to do that students students life and they and they do develop very close relationships with their students. And I think, you know, the d’Overbroecks model is probably in my, in my opinion, why it’s such an exciting place to be is probably ahead of the curve in terms of in terms of education, and I think society, as a whole children as a whole students as a whole. They, they don’t really want to be educated like it’s 1970 with X amount of military roles and whatnot, you know, there is a sense of there’s a difference emphasis on what they think is acceptable and what not. And you know, we don’t have a, we don’t have a uniform. So I don’t know a girl walking into a sixth for physics lesson doesn’t walk in and the first conversation the physics teachers having to say you skirt is too short. Because actually, you know, we all know that that probably alienates that that girl for a period of time, when actually the emphasis for us is on collaborative relationships and learning. And so, you know, I think I think the whole the whole d’Overbroecks ethos for me is the reason why we are we’ve grown so rapidly and why we’re so successful in what is a very competitive market in in Oxford.

Lee Stanley 13:44
Sure. And what about you in terms of progression and what are you looking to to implement over the next the next couple of years?

Jonathan Cuff 13:54
Well, I mean, we are we are in a period of growth. We have been for the last Three years, let’s say. And it’s quite this quite kind of rapid growth. I think we were at 520 students probably three years ago. We are 670 now, and we’re going to continue to grow. So with that we’ve obviously our our biggest challenge is the infrastructure that sits sits below that, below that growth. And making sure that we are still able to do exactly what we see on the team, which is treat all those students as individuals know themselves, really, I guess the main the main schooling challenge, if you want to call it is, is supporting via infrastructure and being clever about how we do things, the growth and maintaining the uniqueness of the school even though it’s grown substantially.

Lee Stanley 14:46
And how would you do you build a successful team do you feel

Jonathan Cuff 14:51
and I To be honest, the the the most successful teams have the best players and and you can’t get away from that. So it’s about analysing the team that you got. But often we were dealt a set of cards and they’re the cards we have to we have to play with. But it really it’s the same as any is any good games team really, you’ve got to make those people within your team feel valued that they have, that they have a significant input and actually, probably they are one of the most valuable members of that team. And, you know, my my style is very much to give them the scope to to go and deliver what what they what they believe in. We are a very collaborative SLT I think we get on well, I’m going to say that but i think but I think we do. But yeah, I mean, it’s, it’s about generating that sense of common purpose. I’m unfortunate. I’ve come into a school where we do have some experience SLT, and they have grown up on that journey of d’Overbroecks and they love the school for what it is. So you know, anything that they they say is really not out of personal benefit or gain that they might get out and it is out of a love of the school and wanting to, to maintain and cherish the unique ethos that we have. So yeah, it’s, it’s about getting your, your, your best players in place. It’s about giving those best players the opportunity to, to actually do what they’re good at. You know, it’s no point us as as heads employing people and telling them what to do because, you know, we can we can for anyone to do that you employ people who are better, more capable than you. So they make you look good. And, and I think, you know, fortunately, I’ve kind of walked into a situation and we’ve got a great leadership team here. So yeah, it’s pretty good.

Lee Stanley 16:45
Excellent. And what about outside of work? What, what sorts of do you do to sort of get away from get away from work,

Jonathan Cuff 16:53
Erm I might get a golf when when, when when is better, and I’ve got time and I’m also a big Yeah, I’m a big I’m a big Welsh rugby fan so I can be I can also be fan of sitting on the couch and watching a little bit too much. A little bit too much rugby on the weekends. So yeah, that’s that’s me playing with playing golf, my son and watching rugby, I think.

Lee Stanley 17:15
Fantastic. And what’s the latest book that you’ve read?

Jonathan Cuff 17:19
Well, I’m actually I’m actually just onto the new Warren Gatland autobiography. So yeah, that’s that’s my that’s my latest kind of couple of day really, if I if I could say that. Not very educational, butbut very good.

Lee Stanley 17:30
Fantastic. And, and what’s your favourite work app?

Jonathan Cuff 17:35
is probably an app called Due. That helps you you plan and it kind of it pops up on your on your phone and tells you various things that you should be doing. It’s like a, it’s like a PA in the pocket. So yeah, it’s needed because it’s busy.

Lee Stanley 17:52
And what about your favourite sort of personal app outside of work?

Um, well, good question. of the A couple of my phone, probably the one I use most is, again, it’s going to be my rugby related. It’s probably a BBC Sports app that I that I regularly check check things on when I haven’t got time to actually sit down and watch it.

Excellent. And if you weren’t a teacher, and what career path would you have chose?

Jonathan Cuff 18:17
And it’s certainly be something to do with child student development. And I’m not 100% sure on on probably what that would look like. As I said, I always had my, my, my, my kind of career and what I wanted to do. In fact, me I wasn’t one of those people who, who ever thought about other other options really. I did. I did. I did tinker with wanting to work in a golf shop at once at one point, but that never really materialised but yeah, I think I think it would be something to do with young people anyway.

Lee Stanley 18:53
Excellent. Excellent. And in terms of that, within school, is there any any initiatives that you want to share, and that people need to know about.

Jonathan Cuff 19:05
Don’t oxidise it as I mentioned, the you know, we’re always looking to do new things. And the discovery plus that we’re doing this year is our is our is our big thing. And we’ve got we’ve got a huge uptake of that, you know, we’ve got a new original programme that’s running again this year, which, which hopefully, covers and is a forward thinking enrichment programme, which covers a lot of the things that probably the more traditional kind of, you know, the sex drugs, cigarette, you know, don’t smoke education is is kind of gone and we’re, we’re covering more relevant upstate things. But you know, really for us this year, it’s about consolidation is about it’s about a discovery plus programme. It’s about continuing to support the mental health of the students in the school to get to get the best out of them. We’ve got, you know, a fabulous suite of apps For those who come in and work at work at the school alongside to start helping both staff and, and students, we place a place. I like to think that place great emphasis on on the well being of staff and and students. And yeah, so you know, our end game is always to, to try and broaden the students academic opportunities. You know, we do that by, we have 35 available options anyway. So they’ve got a pretty broad, pretty broad selection of subjects that they can study, but it really is to give them every opportunity and, you know, one of the things I’m always proud about that we always kind of come across when people come for, for interview is they say that, you know, we must be one of the only schools with on our, on our principles and our guiding principles. One of them is laughter. And, and they always say, well, that’s, that’s so unique, and we’re like, well actually, you know, we generally engage with that idea that, that that we need to have that collaborative hacking relationship with with students. So, you know, in terms of new things, discovery plus but but it’s really more of the same for us at the moment. Okay, excellent.

Lee Stanley 21:07
And what’s the best way for people to get in contact with you?

Jonathan Cuff 21:12
Obviously via via the school about my, my, about my PA. They can they can find on Twitter at DBX principle. I’m not a I’m not a massive Tweeter, but I do occasionally dabble. So yeah, then they would be the best, the best part of the protocol by Twitter and school.

Lee Stanley 21:35
Excellent. What I’ll do, I’ll put the links to your Twitter and also to school and contact details and then enrol below. And I’ll probably pop up on the screen somewhere as well. And thank you ever so much for your time. It’s been really informative.

Jonathan Cuff 21:52
Yeah. Thanks, Lee its been absolutely great,

Lee Stanley 21:53
Brilliant. Thank you,

Jonathan Cuff 21:54
Cheers. Thanks a lot.

SELECTED LINKS FROM THIS EPISODE

Jonathan Cuff – LinkedIn

Jonathan’s Twitter Account

d’Overbroeck’s website

d’Overbroeck’s Facebook Page

Due App

Are you a Headteacher or Senior Leader within a UK School?

Feel like sharing your experiences and insights ?

Help the next generation of NQT’s Senior Leaders and Head’s?

PREVIOUSLY

James Hodgson – Bedford School

PREVIOUSLY

Mike King – Releasing Potential

PREVIOUSLY

Alex Wilson – Hull Collegiate School

Good to Great Webinar Series – James Hodgson – Bedford School

December 11, 2019 by Lee Stanley

“Don’t get too far ahead of yourself, because if you’re always looking at the next thing, you’ll never be happy in your current role.” – James Hodgson

James Bedford is the Headteacher at Bedford School, Bedfordshire. Listen to how James began his teaching career after the dream of being a professional cricketer didn’t materialise. He initially worked for Ernst and Young and after learning how much he hated that job, he decided to find a working environment that he would love and appreciate and the found teaching!

Here James talks us through his path from teaching Classics in Australia to Headship at Bedford School and the fantastic “Movember” YouTube videos his current chort of boys produce to raise awareness and funds for a fantastic cause (you need to watch!).

Listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts.
Stream by clicking here.
Download as an MP3 by right-clicking here and choosing ‘save as’.
Watch the video on YouTube.

QUESTION(S) OF THE DAY: What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let me know in the comments.

Scroll below for show notes, transcript and links…

SHOW NOTES

[00:35] James route into teaching.

[08:36] James route to middle management

[10:11] Enjoying Senior Leadership and never planning for it.

[11.31] Who moulded James SLT path

[14:17] Going into SLT with your eyes open!

[16:36] Initiatives in school Digitally preparing pupils for the working world, Partnerships with local schools, charities and business, Entrapreunerialism in school

[29:13] Movember at Bedford School

INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT

Lee Stanley 0:06
Hello, and welcome to Hadfield Education’s good to great educational webinar series where I interview the leading had teachers within the UK education system. Today I’m joined by James Hudson, who’s the head teacher at Bedford School. Good morning, James, how are you?

James Hodgson 0:24
Really well, thanks, Lee, thank you very much for having me on.

Lee Stanley 0:27
No, no problem. And so James, I always like to start by finding out about how you got into into teaching. So where did it all begin?

James Hodgson 0:35
It began it probably began at school, actually, I was I was very lucky at school to be a border at an independent school that offered me an enormous amount of opportunity, both inside the classroom but particularly outside the classroom, and I always wanted to be a professional cricketer. And so the next stage of that particular journey was when I was 19. And I found out that I wasn’t going to be quite good. enough to be a professional cricketer, which left some thinking to do for the next few years, whilst I was at university, and part of that thinking revolved around what I enjoy doing myself and, and trying to find an environment where I could pursue the sorts of things that I really enjoyed doing, but also make a difference to other people’s lives along the way. So I sort of built this idea around, going back into schools where I could help with not only the subject that I was teaching, and the sport that I enjoyed, and the boarding which I also very much enjoyed, but could look at helping children all around education. So it’s, it’s kind of underpinned what I what I try to do now and look at look at the whole child rather than just part of a child and everything that I do. And I didn’t want to go back into school straight after university because I thought personally, that would be too narrow, I did want to do something completely different to begin with. So when I got to the end of university, I went to work for Ernst and Young in London as a trainee auditor. I did that for two years, I had it in my mind that I’d do that for six or seven years first, but I spent two years getting out of bed every morning and not wanting to go to work. And that was pretty miserable actually. And at the end of two years, I thought I’ve had enough of this and went off up to Cambridge, very short notice to PGCE had a great year there played lots of cricket scratch that sort of first class cricket Ah, which I’d had for a long time anyway because I used to play against all the counties and then went off and taught classics in Sydney in Australia for six years. So So I had a very lucky lucky few years if you like I don’t regret the Ernst and Young bit at all. I think it was very important for me to have seen something with the outside world. But But two years was plenty

Lee Stanley 3:00
So would you say that that insight, it rounded you in terms of your your teaching, and in particular, your initial teaching,

James Hodgson 3:07
I think it helps to have an understanding of where the children that I was teaching my go on to. So, you know, a lot of my friends would work in London that time. And certainly very few of them were actually working in teaching at the time. So, you know, just to have a have a view of what the workplace look like, what what real the real world was like, if you like, what it was like to, to work in a job where you weren’t particularly happy every day.

Was was, I think, probably an important start for me. I’m very lucky because since then, I haven’t had a single day in my whole working life when I hadn’t wanted to go to work. And there’s not very many people can say that.

Lee Stanley 3:55
Yeah, absolutely. So tell us about your your first teaching role.

James Hodgson 4:00
I was teaching classics in Sydney of all places. There are about 50 schools in in Australia where you can teach Latin and Greek. And I managed to find one of them. In fact, they found me really because when I was when I was at Cambridge, studying a PG, CS or handwritten notice on a notice board from a headmaster in Australia, saying he was after a classics teacher, and he actually came to England the following week and interviewed a few people because there were there was nobody studying to be a classics teacher in Australia. And, and I was very lucky I got that got that role had to finish off the PGCE, obviously in England, got married the day before I went out to Australia to an English girl and and we had six years out there and it was incredibly happy. It was it was quite interesting teaching classics in Sydney because the boys absolutely loved it. And we had a an amazing head of classics there who, who they adored but the difficulty was persuading parents that this was a this was a useful subject for their child to be able to study and continue at school. So we had to do a fair bit of defending the classics and trying to promote the classics wherever we possibly could.

Lee Stanley 5:13
And he moulded your early stages of your teaching career

James Hodgson 5:17
Two people I guess, the the man who ran the PTC at Cambridge guy called Bob lyst it was absolutely incredible that he he he was probably the first person who really challenged me in the sense of I don’t I don’t mean that in set intellectually at all, because there’s lots of people who challenge me intellectually but in in the sense of picking me up on small things all the time and telling me it wasn’t good enough. And you know, he would scrutinise every worksheet you ever produce every minute of every lesson he would. He was very. He go into everything in great depth. He’d be incredibly supportive, but but you always had something to come away. And learn and to improve. And so he was, he was a really interesting man to start with. Sandra, who was the head of classics in Sydney was amazing. Incredibly support, she must have wondered what she got to be perfectly honest. I went out there age 25. I looked like a 15 year old. And in my first lesson with 33 boys, it was an all boys school. There was a full on stand up fist fight. And she must have thought who has the headmaster sent me all the way from England. But she was incredibly supportive, really good fun. And she really sought to enjoy every single day that that she had. And that rubbed off on me a lot and rubbed off a lot on the boys. And we had a great time together. We built up a department from really one and a half teachers to about three teachers. By the time we left, there was a lot of demand for it and it was and it was one of the boys favourite subjects I think, brilliant, brilliant, man.

Lee Stanley 6:55
Where did you progress from that?

James Hodgson 6:57
Well, coming back to England, we we had our first Two children over there. So we wanted them to have uncles and aunts and cousins and so on. So we came back. And I wrote down to a number of independent schools in the UK independent largely because local company might come to this a minute, but largely because of the extracurricular they could offer. And, and that was really part of me. And and I ended up at a place called Tunbridge school in Kent had 10 years there and did all sorts of things there. So I taught classics, obviously, but I ran a boarding house for seven years, which I think still is the best job you can get in the hopper. Certainly the independent sector is the best job you can get as a wonderful experience and running the cricket which was fun for me, hopefully fun for them as well. And I read the a bit at the admissions department temporary so I had a lot of broad experience there coached other other other sporting sites as well under various bits and pieces. Run the bottom Half the school for a little while the bottom two year groups and left from there to go to modelling college, Gordon Oxford as their senior deputy head. Did that for three years and then and then came here to Bedford School. And I’ve been been doing this for the last five years. And this is an all boys independent boarding and day. We’ve got 1100 boys from age 7 to 18. And I spent probably most of my time in the top part of the school so 13 to 18 yet I’m also headmaster of the whole school. So the head of the of the junior part reports to me.

Lee Stanley 8:36
Okay, and in terms of the progression into middle management, and when did you realise that that was it was the right time for you to do that?

James Hodgson 8:48
That’s a good question. I’ve never thought about my career. And I think this is one thing. I mean, I would say to to people coming into teaching now you know, don’t don’t get too far ahead of yourself. Because if you’re always looking at the next thing, you’ll never be happy in your current role. And if you if you’re happy in your current role, the chances are it’s going to be doing you’re going to be doing the right sorts of things. So, so try and get as much as you can out of what you’re doing currently. For me, I did, I did want to run a boarding house and that was that was middle management. And I had let the headmaster know that, you know, I was keen to do that when I came back to the UK, and was lucky enough to be able to do that within two or three years. I served as a tutor in a boarding house for those two or three years that kind of an apprenticeship if you like, learning underneath. housemaster called Andrea, she was absolutely excellent. And had seven years doing that. But I then got offered a job running the admissions department which put me on to the management team at Tunbridge school. And that for me that I said I’d only do that if I could stay running the boarding house. So I ended up doing very little teaching as it was their classroom teaching them but for me, that was The that was dipping the toe into senior management and seeing if I wanted to do it or not. And if I didn’t want to do it, I could still withdraw and carry on running the boarding house and do my classics teaching and get out on the sports field.

Lee Stanley 10:11
Sure. And then the progression into into senior leadership. What was the path that you followed there?

James Hodgson 10:18
Well, I think I found that I did enjoy senior leadership at the same time as doing do the other things I was doing in the school. So it was it was probably more mistakes than anything else. I mean, it was a bit of a fluke I applied for I applied, I did apply for three jobs at the same time, and anyway, one of them came up, it’s the one at modelling College School in Oxford. And it just seemed like it seemed like a natural progression. I think I’d had 17 years in a boarding house. So I’d I’d had 10 years at the school. I didn’t want to spend my whole life in one school. I didn’t think that would be Healthy although I having said that I really admire those who do I think it’s I think every school needs a few teachers who stay there for a very long period because it helps keep you It keeps a little bit of knowledge in the institution which you know, of the institution, which is helpful to everybody. But I didn’t want to be one of those. So, so we knew we had to move at some stage and it just felt about right after 10 years or so. Okay.

Lee Stanley 11:26
And then taking the next big step into headship

James Hodgson 11:31
Yeah.

Lee Stanley 11:31
Who moulded who moulded your, your senior leadership experiences.

James Hodgson 11:39
A man called Tim Haynes at Tunbridge school, when I was on his management team. He was the headmaster then he was incredibly supportive and encouraging of me going in that direction. And then at in Oxford, it was a man called Tim hands, who was the head there who had had both of them had about 20 years of headship experience. You know, they were, they were very experienced working for Tim hams as his senior deputy was an absolute privilege and very good fun as well. You laughed every day. But it was also, you also included you in everything that he was going through. So I had a few like full access to what he was going through. So it was with open eyes, although it nevertheless it’s a huge leap.

Lee Stanley 12:31
And in terms of your, your deputy Deputy Assistant experience, and I’ve spoken to previous other head teachers who if they’ve they’ve in their time within senior leadership, they’ve moved around different sort of areas within within school. Is that something that you had experienced? Or Or was it a case of from one deputy roll you then moved into headship?

James Hodgson 12:56
In a sense, I mean running the admissions was quite an important one for me in terms of independent education because it’s highly competitive, you know, you’re competing for what is probably a actually is not a, it’s a it’s not a shrinking market, it’s a market that holds still. But if you don’t compete strongly in it, you’ve you’ve, you’re in trouble because that’s where your income comes from. So working in admissions for three years was incredibly helpful. And then being a senior deputy, you see all sorts of things, you know, effectively the day to day running at the school. So you’re dealing with all sorts, staff members, and you’re picking up a lot of difficult issues which you would be picking up as a head and I have to say, as a head, I haven’t actually seen anything which has surprised me at all. Because of that experience as a deputy as a senior deputy. However, the level of responsibility is greatly heightened and that’s the bit that is very different. Going to get used to.

Lee Stanley 14:02
And in terms of your your biggest sort of learn, or the one bit of advice you would give to any sort of aspiring heads out there. What would that be?

James Hodgson 14:17
I think go into it with your eyes open, get as much training as you can beforehand, and I don’t mean going to courses really I’m only you can get two courses. And I’m sure they’d be very helpful, but actually get as much on the job training as you can. And, and as I did, effectively, some mentors who, who will help you understand what it’s like. But don’t rush it. You know, there are a lot of people who want to be ahead by the time they’re 30 or 35. And, and, and they come and tell me that and I said, Well, that’s great. I said, once you become ahead, what are you get to do for the next 30 years. And when you look at it like that you’ve got a 40 year career. Part of that, I think is being a head. But there are so many other wonderful jobs you can do along the way and so many different pathways, you can take an education, why wouldn’t you spend your time and join those when you can?

Lee Stanley 15:11
Absolutely. Absolutely. And in terms of building your team, your senior leadership team, and what what’s the importance? And how have you have you achieved that?

James Hodgson 15:24
I’ve been really lucky with that. I’ve got a fantastic team actually, very, very motivated, very intelligent, pretty experienced, but also quite ambitious, both of themselves and in school. And actually, I like that, you know, you as a head you don’t necessarily want people are going to sit on your senior team for years and years and see that as their end goal because there’s a risk of staleness and so on, you want new ideas coming in all the time. You want people who are going to be keen to make a difference. In the space of time that they’re with you, and and, and and I’ve got that. So I’ve been, I’ve been very lucky in that regard. So so so recruitment put as much time as you can into recruitment. If you’re not happy with the first round of applicants, then don’t take them. Don’t Don’t compromise on that front. Go back again. And just keep going until you’ve got someone that you feel is right.

Lee Stanley 16:27
Excellent. And what initiatives He currently running in school any any successful and sort of clubs or associations?

James Hodgson 16:36
Yes, quite a lot. Actually. There’s always something going on up. So we had, at the moment, I’ll tell you about three things really, when we had a like most schools are doing at the moment a really good look at what the future of the world of work is going to look like. We’ve got an amazing governing body who’ve had extraordinary careers and all sorts of different fields, but not anybody. Well, one of them. I think went to Education and the rest of them are in different careers. And we thought as a management team, the way they could be most useful to us is by telling us what they felt the future of their world look like. And the sorts of people coming into their businesses, and the attributes that they had to have. And we could extrapolate backwards from that to our seven year olds and say, Well, what what will our seven year olds need in 15 years time to go into that world of work? And we did a lot of reading around this as as anyone would be doing now. And went to a lot of certainly we have speakers in and so on. And we came up with two not very mind blowing things, but they are nevertheless shaping what we’re doing over the next few years. One is that is blatantly obvious that these children are going to be entering a highly technological world. Yeah. And therefore, and that has to knock on has to knock on country consequences for us. The first is that every 18 year old who leaves Here must have a certain level of technological awareness and knowledge, you know, basic level if you like. And so understanding what that means is part of our mission. And secondly, if you’ve got boys who really like and we are, we’re an all boys school, sorry. So if I mentioned boys, you know where I’m coming from. If you’ve got boys who absolutely love technology, how are we going to really let them fly? And because there’s going to be a huge number of opportunities, job opportunities for them in the future, if they are strong on this one. So those so we hired in a Director of Digital Learning about 18 months ago, to look specifically at this area of school life, and we’ve had an absolutely amazing 18 months, I have to say and in terms of letting children fly, I think we’ve we’ve created a whole load of initiatives whereby boys who love this sort of thing can really Shine. And then the flip side of this, or the other side of this whole technology thing is that it’s never is the human side. And so, you know, it’s never been more important to accentuate the wonders of being human, and to lift the qualities that are specifically human. So things like empathy, compassion, creativity, imagination, humour, all of these things are really important for the next generation more important than they’ve ever been before. And we’ve been important. So the other two strands to our next few years involve the human side. One is to do with community engagement. So we’re in a town of Bedford School when we’re on the most magnificent site. If I turn this camera around in a minute, you just see acres of land with rugby pastes up and it’s the most beautiful green, open site with magnificent buildings. A great place for boys to grow up, but it’s not the real world. You know, the real world. is outside these four walls if you like, we’re in a town, we’re lucky enough to be part of it, we have a lot of interactions with the town. But we’re now increasing that significantly, with the idea that all boys who come to school here have have had a meaningful, meaningful relationship in one way or another with, with the world outside our four walls. So we’re creating a whole load of partnerships with local schools, local charities, and so on, that our boys can help become involved in. So that’s the second part. And the third part is we’ve got less of a of a is less prescribed at the moment, but it’s to do with entrepreneurial thinking. So we want to create an environment where boys can not only have ideas, but can then run with them, and actually bring them to fruition. And that that might be might mean running businesses and we’ve had lots of boys who run their own businesses was there at school. In fact, we had a boy he left last year he was earning More than the national average salary by the time he left school, which was pretty cool, I thought he went to university didn’t last long because he didn’t rate it very highly and, and thought he could do better himself and actually so he’s doing absolutely brilliantly, but we want so might involve business but it doesn’t have to involve business. So, if a boy is got a particular passion, and he wants to get a club or a society up and running in get a club or society running up and running, if he wants to build a project around it, and then present it to the entire school, he can present it to the entire school.

So something which which brings, which boys can an environment where boys can just run with things, yeah, and let them let them take off and let them fail frankly, as well as succeed because if you’re going to be an entrepreneur later on in life, or if you need to reinvent yourself several times, which I think is one of the shots of the modern world, you’re going to fail several times you have to be able to so that so that that in a broadly speaking, that’s what What we’re aiming at at the moment,

Lee Stanley 22:02
sounds brilliant. And it’s also like you say, it’s really, really current in terms of the, the trends, the number of of employers that are struggling with, or they’re not sure how to deal with what, obviously everybody refers to as Gen Zed or millennials or whichever because that the way in which they’ve been educated and brought through to being a teen is completely unique. In terms of like you said, things like technology and the access to to the world, really, and with the World Wide Web and what have you. So we will probably see the next Steve Jobs from your school then by the sounds of it.

James Hodgson 22:46
You might you might do you never know but where this particular lad I was talking about might well be one of them. But you see, he’s he’s a good example because he doesn’t need an office anywhere and he doesn’t need a boss. You know, he what he’s doing is, is is on social media and it’s running social media. sites for businesses initially was he was at school he did it for local a lot of the local businesses around here who didn’t know much about social media. Sure. And and he’s now doing it for sort of minor celebrities as well I think and, and, and he’s very good at it and he doesn’t need anybody else for that. And he’s a 21 year old now and he you know, he’s got very good future ahead of him because he’s a great communicator.

Lee Stanley 23:24
Fantastic. Okay. And in terms of outside of work and being ahead, you’ve obviously mentioned you’ve clearly got a love of cricket. So I suppose going to Australia must have been fantastic for you really,

James Hodgson 23:35
it was a great opportunity to drag Australia and cricket away at the grassroots levels. My my first team that I coached one, the first game by miles and by the last game have been bowled out for 42 so I consider that quite an achievement.

Lee Stanley 23:52
And do you still get involved in cricket school?

James Hodgson 23:55
Unfortunately, not very much. To be honest. I’d love to be able to catch crickets And, and teach classics. But I feel like I’m letting people down all the time if I do that part time, because a lot of the time, I just can’t, I can’t get there and someone has to cover and the boys get shortchange. So I go out and support them. I go out and watch them outside, but it’s really hard to get out and do sessions.

Lee Stanley 24:19
Sure, sure. Okay. Well, just a couple of other quick questions, really. So what’s your what’s your current book that you’re reading at the moment?

James Hodgson 24:26
I’ve just finished a book by Cesaro vz, called the beautiful summer and before that, I was reading a book by William William Dalrymple called the holy mountain which I love. I really liked Dalrymple’s writing.

Lee Stanley 24:40
Yep. And which favourite interview question

James Hodgson 24:44
that I asked prospective candidates to me. Yeah, my favourite interview question it was, it was stolen from my previous headmaster who always asked a question about he said, if if you have 24 hours free, unlimited funds, and you could be anywhere Can the world what would you do? And that’s fun because it just taps into people’s passions Really?

Lee Stanley 25:07
And your answer to that question was,

James Hodgson 25:10
I’d go to Calcutta to watching them play a test match against India, Eden gardens, and the reason for that was the last time they had a test there. The fans, there’s 100,000 in a concrete bowl, they set fire to the stadium. Must be quite an amazing atmosphere. Anyway, he enjoyed that because I think he was trying to prove sport at the school at the time.

Lee Stanley 25:30
So, um, what about holidays? Where’s your favourite holiday destination?

James Hodgson 25:36
I love going back to Sydney. I’ve got a daughter in Sydney now and I’ve got two brothers in Sydney now. So I like going back there. It’s a great place. I love Australia. In fact, we went to Israel last year, that was an amazing place to go every square metre of that territory has extraordinary history or current politics. And that was that was brilliant,

Lee Stanley 25:58
brilliant and in terms of Work, what’s your favourite app?

James Hodgson 26:03
I don’t have one. I’m very bad myself having talked about technology. I’ve got a lot of people around me and I’m very In fact, this is a good thing to learn about headship I think you don’t have to be an expert in everything to be ahead. In fact, in fact, you awful Oh, it sounds you probably don’t have to be an expert in very much. As long as you’ve got the ability to create an atmosphere around you whereby the experts themselves can flourish and have a head and, and and can pull together in the same direction. So I’m really bad at technology. I you know, having taught classics all my life, that probably gives you a fair idea of what I’m like. But we’ve got some brilliant people around me who keep me involved on that sort of thing. So asked me what my how I how I go on social media. I’m not so good on that either.

Lee Stanley 26:52
I’m sure Mandy, you’ll be able to help you with that.

James Hodgson 26:54
She sent me Well, she does all the time. She’s brilliant. Yeah.

Lee Stanley 26:57
And if you weren’t a teacher, what would You have been?

James Hodgson 27:01
Well, I’d like to play cricket. But I don’t think I’d have been good enough for that. I think I think the short answer to that is I’d have been a lot more miserable than I am now.

Lee Stanley 27:10
And who’s been the biggest influence in terms of your, your life?

James Hodgson 27:16
My wife, definitely.

Who’s, who’s been incredible and has put up with my jobs moving geographically, quite, quite regularly, but also is I told you about the PGCE teacher who was who was constantly challenging, she’s constantly challenging what to do, but in a very good way. Not a bad way. And she’s got a lot of experience in in her backgrounds marketing, and she’s been in schools marketing as well. So she’s got a lot of experience which is helpful in a career from a career perspective, but also she’s been amazing as well.

Lee Stanley 27:54
And you’ve mentioned quite a few influences in your in your teaching career. But if you were to pick one out Who would you said being that like the main influencer?

James Hodgson 28:08
I really don’t think I can pick one actually. There have been so many people and to be honest, if you and now even now, you know, I’m learning from I’m learning from lots of different people now, including most of my own staff. So if you if you go into a day where you think you can’t learn something new, then then you’re struggling. And actually, that’s one of the lovely things about being in an environment like this, because you’ve got you’re surrounded by so many great people.

Lee Stanley 28:35
Excellent. And if people need to or want to get in touch with you, what’s the best way for them to do that?

James Hodgson 28:41
Probably to email a school or to Bedford School or to phone Bedford School and just asked to be put through to my pa who is amazing to have that in my life online.

Lee Stanley 28:55
Yeah, and what I will do as well for the links and whatnot. I’ll put the some of the school social media within the video. So there’ll be links and pop ups and what have you at the end and people can connect and, and have a look at themselves as well.

James Hodgson 29:13
So be really helpful like this. There’s one thing on there actually, you might see on the website, there’s a YouTube channel, yes, but a school and at the moment, this is a school that goes in very heavily for Movember. And the boys if they want to allowed to grow a moustache is about 60 or 70 of them doing that the staff are allowed to grow moustache. Were regularly the top school fundraiser in the country for this. So we raised over 10,000 pounds for charity, and Movember charity. But much more importantly, the boys aim to the older boys aim to educate the younger boys and also in fact, people outside the school on men’s physical and mental health. So today, for instance, we’ve got one of our citizenships days we don’t do PSHC on a weekly timetable, we collapse the whole time table five days a year. Okay. So I’m a member citizenship day is all about men’s mental health and mental physical health and the older boys run lessons with the younger boys. And we get various keynote speakers in and so on to build that brand. So I’m back to go back to that in a second. But they put together a video. And there’s a video each year and a couple of years ago, it went viral over the weekend, we had about 200,000 views in two days. So I would draw whoever’s interested in it their attention to Movember at Bedford School. That’s quite an occasion.

Lee Stanley 30:30
Well, what we can do we can link to that as well. And like you say, people can have a look for themselves on there, but it sounds like a fantastic cause.

James Hodgson 30:38
It’s a it’s a great quote, especially in an all boys school, obviously. It’s a great course.

Lee Stanley 30:41
Yeah. Brilliant. Well, thank you ever so much for your time. I really appreciate you sharing your experiences and your learns along the way. And I look forward to looking at the YouTube video that I’m going to click on now.

Pleasure.

James Hodgson 30:56
Nice speak to you. Thanks very much.

Lee Stanley 30:58
Take care.

James Hodgson 30:58
Bye.

SELECTED LINKS FROM THIS EPISODE

Contact James at school

Bedford School Twitter and Facebook

Movember YouTube video

Are you a Headteacher or Senior Leader within a UK School?

Feel like sharing your experiences and insights ?

Help the next generation of NQT’s Senior Leaders and Head’s?

PREVIOUSLY

Mike King – Releasing Potential

PREVIOUSLY

Alex Wilson – The Hull Collegiate School

PREVIOUSLY

Andrew Hampton – Thorpe School

Good to Great Webinar Series – Mike King – Releasing Potential

November 27, 2019 by Lee Stanley

I think aspiring leaders need to listen to the people that are there, but set a vision for people to follow. Be determined about that vision, but at the same time, to be able to bring people with you, you’re not leading if no one’s following. – Mike King

After leaving school at 16 Mike fell into Outdoor Pursuits and subsequently into Teaching. Listen to his unique path to Executive Headship and becoming a CEO. Identifying a true “gap in the education market” Mike set up as a charity, that formed into the school Releasing Potential and now offers a teacher training business with one goal, to enrich all children’s lives.

Mike has truly learned the hard way, Releasing Potential is going from strength to strength listen to his fantastic account of what you can achieve if you put your mind to it!

Releasing Potential Website

Listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts.
Stream by clicking here.
Download as an MP3 by right-clicking here and choosing ‘save as’.
Watch the video on YouTube.

QUESTION(S) OF THE DAY: What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let me know in the comments.

Scroll below for show notes, transcript and links…

SHOW NOTES:

[00:36] Mikes insights into becoming a teacher.

[03:53] The Launch of Releasing Potential.

[05:00] Is teaching a vocation?

[06:19] Biggest advice to NQT’s.

[08:19] Becoming a Head Teacher and building Releasing Potential.

[13:15] Current initiatives.

[18:34] Advice to aspiring SLT.

[23:47] The next steps for Releasing Potential.

INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT

Lee Stanley 0:06
Hello and welcome to Hadfield education good to great webinar series where I interview and speak with the teachers and senior leaders within the UK education sector. Today I’m joined by Mike King, who is the CEO and executive head of releasing potential and releasing potential schools. Morning Mike, how are you?

Mike King 0:28
Morning?Good. Thank you.

Lee Stanley 0:29
Excellent. Mike. Why I always like to start off by finding out how you got into teaching. And so where did Where did you all begin?

Mike King 0:36
So I left home 16 and did the old youth training scheme which is like an apprenticeship and all the instructors there were teachers and that started me on my journey. So if I was gonna make it in the outdoors, I need to become a teacher and that was really influential for me.

Lee Stanley 0:55
Fantastic and in terms of of your study, what what subject did you did you begin teaching?

Mike King 1:01
So I studied P and PSE and those were my strengths. And that’s where I went with.

Okay, um, but you’ve moved into the SEN sector How How did that come about?

So all of my teaching practice says, were with special needs children, they It was either inner city or independent special needs schools where my teaching practices and it just happened to be was good at my friends, they were more academically minded, they would be really good at the a level and stretching back into that side. Whereas I was much more influenced by how do we engage young people and how do we enable them to be part of the education setup?

And do you think activities and sport play quite a large contribution in engagement with that?

Yeah, I mean, there’s a lot of studies isn’t there about movement and activity can change someone’s mental health and self awareness. And obviously, you know, we all have year 8’s on a Friday afternoon. You don’t want to be out on the wet football pitch during their activities. However, it did always give you a platform to talk about weights, diets, social care, as well as talk about Okay, how are studies going? So it gave you a platform to have conversations beyond the academic attainment.

Lee Stanley 2:34
Excellent show, so which schools Did you initially trained within.

Mike King 2:39
So I trained in a few schools around Swindon. So, Harriet Parkway was one. And also we worked in Breeden special school, which is over Tewksbury. We are trained in children. So those were that was the area that most of my teaching practices, were in

Lee Stanley 3:00
Within the special needs itself, is there a specific niche that you specialise with? Or have you just worked across the board?

Mike King 3:09
Over the years I’ve worked right across the board. Every single special needs that you can imagine I’ve worked with, but releasing potential is particularly about the child who is more social, emotional, or mental health or emotional behavioural or emotionally vulnerable? And obviously, some of them are autistic spectrum and some of them will have other medical syndromes but we don’t focus on the physical.

Lee Stanley 3:43
Okay. Okay. And what led you to Releasing Potential? Was that was there like a light bulb moment or a specific time or decision?

Mike King 3:53
Yeah, so there was so I was teaching in Chicester college which is where I live I, you know, I go to church, I have a face with that. And actually in the culture that I was living in at the time with friends and family, there was a real sense of calling to have a social purpose, not just a career. And so in amongst that there was the challenge of well okay if I believe in something, but also have a passionate about social justice, what am I going to do? So I distinctly remember we lived in Portsmouth at the time, and talking to my wife thinking right? We need to start a charity we need to see how particularly outdoor education can be used to engage more young people than the few hundred that we were doing at the time.

Lee Stanley 4:48
Fantastic asked one question that I often ask is, is teaching still a vocation or seen as a vocation? What do you think?

Mike King 5:00
Well as I is really interesting, so one of my other roles voluntary is I’m the chair of the Institute for outdoor learning. And recently I was in Ireland at the European outdoor education conference. And one of the things that academics there talks about quite a lot is how training now is very specific to creating technicians of education and not educators.

Lee Stanley 5:29
Yeah.

Mike King 5:30
And I think that is not the individuals fault. I think that is probably the quickest and most expedient way to get someone from zero to hero in education terms, by think we do to lose out on putting people in the variety of teaching environments that enables them to become educators. So I did the old four year B Ed. Yeah. And that meant that I was in up to five different schools over a four year period, as well as my holiday periods spending time doing activities. So, by the time I came out, I was an educationalist. And the technician second,

Lee Stanley 6:15
what advice would you give to NQT’s and student teachers then?

Mike King 6:19
Oh, so it would be get yourself in as many different schools and settings as possible. Whether that is you have to travel, whether you have to go to a primary school when you’re actually secondary trained, whether you volunteer in a special school. What I mean when I set out Release Potential, I worked in secure units, children’s homes, anywhere and everywhere, where there were children who I could teach, and it was just to learn about what to teach, teaching climbing in a secure unit is not going to be a lesson that works. However, I have to be able to have to expand my teaching remit to get other things in. So it’s exposing yourself to as many education opportunities as you can particularly in those younger years. Yes, you have debt Yes, you want to get in career. But when you become a head teacher or wherever your career takes you, you can draw upon all those experiences.

Lee Stanley 7:27
So when you initially decided to set up releasing potential, did you have senior leadership experience?

Mike King 7:36
No, I was 26. I no, I was a teacher in a special needs family and a college. I I’ve had leadership training through other choices and in the outdoors, you do a lot of outdoor qualifications so I was a canoe coach by that time and sailing coach as well, so I have those types of experiences but I haven’t had senior leadership experience in the education setting.

So talk me through your past them from the start of releasing potential through to then heading up and really developing the organisation.

Yeah, so Release Potential started 18 years ago and what became my daughter’s bedroom. So we had a three bedroom house and there was a tunnel back terraced house in middle of Portsmouth and turned one of those rooms into our office. And we I said yes to everything, you know, so whether it was youth work in the evenings, whether it’s pupil referral unit groups going out during outdoor ed, whether it’s special schools and in the years supply, obviously, and we ended up building this reputation where we could go into pupil referral units and provide alternative provision

Lee Stanley 8:57
sure

Mike King 8:58
and that was great and that works. What we found with the different head teachers and local authority changes, and this was in the early 2000s. So you had labour and government and you you slowly gained towards this different population growth and different financial circumstances and head teachers would change their mind. And they would change their mind quite I don’t blame them, they would change their mind, which meant that you out or for my staff delivering, you know, child A didn’t turn up that day. So they filled the space which Child B which meant that you couldn’t have any continuity in your teaching.

Lee Stanley 9:42
Sure.

Mike King 9:43
So all that led to as well as the government white papers saying every child needs to be registered under the department for education is us creating a school so we looked at that about four years ago, and we tried to mould something around the national curriculum, and it just didn’t work. Children. Our children have failed within national curriculum settings. And, you know, they can barely get into the classroom Never mind go through this little levels of which national curriculum is asking of them of their age group. So we wrote a curriculum, and we’ve written it from scratch. It is based on other people’s learning. It’s not just us it is, you know, people would recognise parts of it. And we finally managed to register the school two years ago. And we then went through a full OfSTED just a year and a half ago, and we got good throughout. And one of the recognitions was the curricullum and the fact that it was appropriate for our children. The journey has been from doing a whole variety of educational provision to focusing on the school and on the journey. We’ve got an outboard engine business, so students work placements there. We have a Rowing Centre where the community have their rowing clubs, but we look after it with our students. We have an alpaca farm someone gave us some alpaca. So we obviously said yes. And and our children learn how to farm. And we have had said yes to some things like Forest School but decided actually, you know, we’re a school we’re not we’re special needs school and that’s what we’re about. We’re not about the whole population and meeting their needs. So we’ve actually closed that down and brought the Forest School into our own curriculum, and delivering within our own setting because that’s our reality special needs. And those children who don’t fit into other settings,

Lee Stanley 11:46
Brilliant. It sounds like you cater for the actual individual which is fantastic in terms of the size of school, so how many children you have enrolled now.

Mike King 11:59
So we are registered for 50. At the beginning, we always come down, we are actual ideal number 34. And we’re at 24. Now and what will happen as the year goes on, and the reason why we’re 34 is our ideal is just purely the amount of space we have.

Lee Stanley 12:18
Yeah,

Mike King 12:19
so we’ve never borrowed any money. We everything’s come from scratch. And so we have two locations where we do our teaching, one is an old college building and the other is two warehouses where we created 20 metre workshops with classrooms and we have motorbikes and all sorts of things and the learning takes place there. So our facilities really are ideal for 34 children on and off site. And we are looking at then facilitating Virtual Education elsewhere,

Lee Stanley 12:52
okay.

Mike King 12:53
Bearing in mind, actually, that then supports children back into their own settings. Ideally, we will have no children at all. And they will go back into settings which are more socially acceptable if you like.

Lee Stanley 13:07
Okay. And in terms of the current initiatives that you’re working on at the moment, what are they?

Mike King 13:15
So first thing is that we’ve, we’re bringing the school to the centre of the charity making that at the heart of what we do. And the enterprise businesses are developing so that all of our children have a place to be in work, and learn about work. As we know, special needs children don’t all fit into the normal place of work and we can, you know, so rather than have that difficulty, we’ve created those and then we also have an academic Institute, and the academic Institute is teaching our staff but also other people around the management of challenging behaviour. And the programme that we use is for all of our staff, they do a level three level The NVQ level three. And it’s based on Glasser and choice theory. And it has a bit of NLP in it and it has other teaching elements to it. And the idea being is that children are able to make a choice regardless. So this requires us to not do any restraint on our children, which might end up with a broken window or broken door. But that’s the risk we take. There’s a massive risk, but we all have a common language by being trained in our management changing behaviour. So that’s now developed from an online course, CPD, which British cycling and the Institute for outdoor learning recognise right we also have a level two online and then we have a level three, level four and a level five. So we go up to degree level. And in our area here, actually, this Friday, we will be teaching all of the primary schools in the locality on this methodology. We’re going to be taking through a course. So that’s. So we’re basing our teaching on the management of change behaviour on our practical application. So we have three things that we want to focus on. We want to be able to provide quality alternative education. We want to resource other people providing alternative education. And we want to stand in the gap between the marginalised and society. So that could be as simple as our children are in an outboard engine business, and they learn how to do customer service. Yeah, can be as simple as that, or we can be a voice in very difficult circumstances. So those are our three objectives. Excellent.

Lee Stanley 15:45
And what are the bigger term pictures? What what are you looking to to progress on to in the next sort of 3 to 5 years?

Mike King 15:52
Yeah, okay, so we have a three year plan at the moment. This year is about really cementing We’ve established and developing it within our own restraints. Next year is our OfSTED year, which is always good fun. But, you know, that does focus the mind. And so it’s establishing everything around, showing ofsted just what we can achieve with these children. And then the year after, we’re going to be looking at planting new schools, not miles away, they will be connected within 40 minutes of where we are now. So they can still visit the alpaca farm, they can still go to the rowing. So is to do that. But then it’s also to provide more resources in the challenging in the management of challenging behaviour, so that people within their own settings can do things so I’m not interested in having a worldwide web as it were schools, but I am interested in resource and people within the context of where they are and sharing what we’ve learnt sharing the mistakes Sharing the trials sharing the tears, you know, just being able to say this is our reality, and this is what we’ve learned so that people can hopefully learn themselves what works and doesn’t work within their context. So what’s been becoming a school? That was a that was a really triumphant moment, obviously. Yeah, just this week, quite a very quiet, humble organisation. And so the idea of becoming executive heads and things, that’s not our driving force, but be able to have a place where our children can be in a recognised establishment. That was a really big win. I think having the confidence of local authorities in what we do is a is something else, you know, Our reputation in Hampshire and West Sussex is high. And personally, probably outside of education other than family and all of those wonderful things. It’s probably been the chair of the Institute for learning and so having a national influence around things in the outdoors. Fantastic.

Lee Stanley 18:21
Fantastic. And what advice would you give to any say senior leader who is contemplating making the jump and setting up their own school like you’ve done?

Mike King 18:34
Never burn your bridges lies. Number one, you just, you know, you can’t be being nice. People always come in and out of your life, you will always make mistakes, but never burn your bridges because you just don’t know when those relationships will come back into your sphere. Sure, and so it I guess it’s a Never burn your bridges apologise when you need to be humble. Also be determined there’s that you can have a determination without being arrogant. And so I think having a humble determination around what you’re about actually opens doors.

Lee Stanley 19:27
Absolutely. And in terms of now being a head within a school, what what advice would you give to any sort of aspiring head teachers that are just going to follow a normal path if we call it that?

Mike King 19:45
Yeah, I think

Lee Stanley 19:48
because you really

learn the hard way, haven’t you? You know, you really have learned via trial and error and then going out and testing another Probably failing an awful lot in comparison to what 90% of the people who watch this will, they will be in a mainstream or an AP that is already established and already structured. And they will have a route and a path. Whereas your roots been completely unique. You’ve got so much so much sort of information that having to learn it yourself.

Mike King 20:27
Yeah. So I think aspiring leaders need to listen to the people that are there, but set a vision for people to follow. Be determined about that vision, but at the same time, to be able to bring people with you, you’re not leading if no one’s following. Yeah. So you’ve got to be able to lead people who want to follow your vision and I think that you know, people have great means about failure is only a point of learning. And I think that is true. But I would say put support structures in around yourself, whether that’s you play a sport, you do it a hobby that’s going to sustain you through the difficult decision times because you will have those difficult decision times. And you will need to have something that sustains you that is healthy for you. And that is always difficult.

Who’s been your biggest influence within your your teaching career?

Oh, man, I read this question earlier and I was thinking on my life who is it? I think in the early years, I was lucky on my youth training scheme. I was surrounded by brilliant teachers, and they were really good and they were Okay, last. I need to become a teacher. My first boss at the college, she Was formidable in her passion for children. And she understood how to run business of a college and to have a passion for children. So that was that was really influential. I think education Lee, the people who astound me the most is in special needs, you get this thing. Okay, you get this thing where people like to compete about how bad their children are. And we call it the competition of the bad. And it’s an awful, awful things. So, because ultimately, I could regale you all sorts of stories around the depths of which our children are involved with in society and and those people around them. But it’s the humble, it’s the determined it’s the one it’s the chase you come across, who has such a fierce passion and yet Humility about themselves that they’re confident in what they can deliver. It’s the education lyst rather than the technician, it’s the it’s the person who is able to light a room up not because of their personality, but because of what they’re able to deliver. And it’s not about them as a person. It’s about the children engaging with what they’re putting in front of them. Sure. Yeah.

Lee Stanley 23:26
And in terms of the, the next sort of steps for you, where do you Where do you see the school sort of branching out? You’ve obviously mentioned the locations. It sounds like you have got a really, really nice niche to develop and to progress.

Mike King 23:47
Yeah, so I think, I think one of the key things is we have focused on looking after the staff team and the family and I’m sure there are some staff of upset I’m sure there are things that I’ve made wrong. But ultimately, we’re a family where close knit, we have the privilege of doing debriefs every day. So we have that time together. And so one of the key things for us is not to over expand, because otherwise we’re going to lose the closeness which we require for our children to engage. So yes, we will expand in West Sussex and Hampshire, I think for us from there then is to develop our institute. So I have some academics who work for me and develop the institute in sharing what we’ve learned so that people can take that back to their own setting. They can be able to deliver what we deliver, but within their own context. We only you know, along our coasts, we have cherished ports of Southampton. There are different culturally, yeah. And so we don’t want to expand into cultures we don’t understand, but we do want to release and resist or people who do understand this cultures. So our expansion, if you like, is around a minimal geographic area for the schools, and then to be able to influence and resource others in their own setting.

Lee Stanley 25:15
Because like you said, you look further around the case towards the Devon area, the actual culture on those, those parts is completely different from the Hampshires. So you are able to train and develop those teachers to get your message across and take them into those schools with that understanding of the culture. Sounds like a brilliant, brilliant strategy.

Mike King 25:40
Yeah, I mean, I come from Devon, actually, interestingly, and I think you’re right, it is so very different. The South East is so fast. And I understand this the arrogance of the southeast as well. So actually, we need to be humble in what we do, because just because you’re in the northeast doesn’t mean that actually there aren’t lessons to learn. etc

Lee Stanley 26:01
Absolutely, absolutely. So in terms of your work and what’s your favourite application within work What do you use

Mike King 26:10
so my favourite app in work it well I looked at this and I have I have to admit there are three one is weather app gets you is tides so a quiet tidle here so it’s looking at the ties for on the water in the summer and then three is WhatsApp. So half seven, seven o’clock generally there is a WhatsApp message saying this staff members got this and so is WhatsApp which is one of our key elements to what we used to communicate amongst the leadership team.

Lee Stanley 26:44
Excellent. And within within your actual teacher what what book are you reading at the moment

Mike King 26:52
I’ve just finished just a run of the mill detective. I’m actually just about to read a biography of a business person. So, last, I’m really looking at hat in professional terms. I’m really looking at what lessons I need to learn in the business world at the moment. Before we go on to this development of the business. That’s one of my focuses at the moment. Okay,

Lee Stanley 27:17
where’s your favourite holiday destination?

Mike King 27:20
Well, depends if it’s with or without children. So I have I have the privilege of being in Kenya again this year. So recline now Kenya, so that was good. But I have to say we’ve just visited Croatia, amazing. Croatia, just people friendly, Sunny. And it was a good place for our children as well. So yes, very good.

Lee Stanley 27:48
Brilliant. And in terms of if people wanted to get in touch with you talk in terms of the releasing potential training and what what’s the best way for them to To get you

Mike King 28:01
so our website www dot obviously releasing potential.com Yep. So that’s all the information is out there and around there, you will find me on LinkedIn. So I will post that too. But I am on LinkedIn Those are probably my two major platforms.

Lee Stanley 28:21
Okay, I’ll what I’ll do as normal is I’ll pop the links into the role below. And also go I’ll pop up here right and and then people can get in touch and speak if they need to. So well thank you ever so much for your time, Mike. Really appreciate your insight. It’s been brilliantly unique and it’s wonderful the work that you do and and yeah, good luck with the with the coming OfSTED

Mike King 28:48
Great. Thank you. Thanks for the opportunity to share my friends happy. All right.

Lee Stanley 28:53
Bye

Mike King 28:54
Bye.

SELECTED LINKS FROM THIS EPISODE

Mike King – LinkedIn

Releasing Potential Facebook Page

Releasing Potential Twitter Account

Institute for Outdoor Learning

Are you a Headteacher or Senior Leader within a UK School?

Feel like sharing your experiences and insights ?

Help the next generation of NQT’s Senior Leaders and Head’s?

PREVIOUSLY

Alex Wilson – The Hull Collegiate School

PREVIOUSLY

Andrew Hampton – Thorpe School

PREVIOUSLY

Jeni Ling – Faulkner Brown Associates