As a Deputy Headteacher try and gain as much experience as you can within the different areas of school leadership. You know, go and spend time with the bursar or the business manager and find out exactly what goes into constructing a budget – Alex Wilson

Alex began her teaching career in a girls’ full boarding school, living in and working with them. After six years, she moved to teach at her alma mater, North London Collegiate School, one of the top-performing schools in the country, where she remained for the next seventeen years. When she first moved to NLCS, she taught Religious Studies and History. Over the years, she progressed to become Head of Department and then Deputy Head (Pastoral) for six years before taking on the role of Acting Headmistress in the Autumn Term of 2017. Alex then moved on to her current Headship at Hull Collegiate School in Yorkshire.

You can here within this interview how Alex is truly passionate about teaching and learning. To the point that they are currently running open lectures on topics and subject of specialty which can be attended by both staff and students!

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

[0:48] Alex’s route into teaching

[1:47] Learns in the early years

[5:36] How Alex built a successful department

[7:17] Moving into Senior Leadership

[10:33] Advice to aspiring Head Teachers

[12:10] Supporting staff as a Head, its the little things that matter

[15:14] Alex give her advice to NQT’s and student teachers

[18:40] Alex’s favourite interview question

[21:21] The biggest influence on Alex’s career

[22:04] Schools new Academic Lecture Programme initiative

INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT

Lee Stanley 0:06
Hello and welcome to Hadfield Education good to great webinar series where I interview the leading teachers and education specialists in the UK and talk to them in terms of their experiences and paths to their current successes. Today, I’m joined by Alex Wilson, who is the headmistress at Hull Collegiate School in East Ridings in Yorkshire. So good afternoon, Alex, how are you?

Alex Wilson 0:36
Good afternoon. I’m very well. Thank you.

Lee Stanley 0:38
Excellent. Excellent. So Alex, what I like to do is always start by just finding out what actually took you into into teaching and into education.

Alex Wilson 0:48
So I think it was something that was always with me. I think even going through school, I always knew I wanted to go into teaching. And so I followed a fairly traditional route from school to university to PGCE and then back into schools.

Lee Stanley 1:06
And wherever else did you initially train? And where was your first first job?

Alex Wilson 1:11
Okay, so I did my PGCE, my teacher training at Cambridge. And my first role was actually in a boarding school down in Berkshire. And it was an all girls full boarding I lived in, and it was full on 24/7 3 weeks at a time. So it was a great launch into teaching

Lee Stanley 1:33
Sounds Sounds intense.

Alex Wilson 1:36
Yes, it was a bit, but hugely fun and actually getting to know the pupils in a completely different context. Obviously, outside the classroom was was good as well.

Lee Stanley 1:47
Sure. And in terms of your initial learnings and moulding of your your teaching styles. What What were your what were your big sort of learns within the first couple of years of teaching

Alex Wilson 2:01
I think because of the subject areas that I teach, so I’m I graduated in theology in history. And for most of my career, I’ve taught both religious studies including philosophy of religion, and history. And I think the biggest thing for me was learning how to deliver discursive lessons and actually, to give the people space to have those discussions and to not be afraid sometimes to you know, where we go off the syllabus or where a discussion takes an interesting turn, and not feeling all the time that you have to stick to a very directed lesson plan.

Lee Stanley 2:41
And he moulded your style who would do your biggest influences in the early stages?

Alex Wilson 2:51
I think there were a couple of other staff that I worked with, fairly early on who I really admired. I obviously do quite a lot of lessons observations in the early days and just watching them in terms of the level of confidence and how relaxed they were in a classroom was was really what, what looked at that for me.

Lee Stanley 3:11
And in terms of successes, did you have any particular like, early stage successes with your teacher?

Alex Wilson 3:17
And yes, I think my the one of the proudest moments was in year three of teaching, that was my first A-level cohort to actually go through. So I started teaching them in my second year, the end of my third year, my first a level cohort that went through every single one of them went off to read Theology at university, which, you know, I think that said quite a lot about how much they’ve enjoyed what we’ve been doing together.

Lee Stanley 3:43
Excellent. And in terms of the next step for you, and where did that take you?

Alex Wilson 3:49
So I then moved into a day school. I moved from that boarding school in Berkshire to a large London day school, very academic school. And it happened to school I been to as a child. And going back there 10 years after I left school to join a staff room where the staff many of whom have taught me when I was younger, was it was an interesting learning curve. And that’s where I spent the next 17 years.

Lee Stanley 4:22
Fantastic and how did you settle into that environment? Because that must have been quite unnerving in some respects.

Alex Wilson 4:30
It was, I mean, having, you know, walking into the staff room for the first time were obviously as a child might have been a room you never went near and using first names of teachers, it was quite daunting, but actually there was so welcoming that I very quickly settled in and it was such a busy school that actually you just have to get on with it really and through yourself into it.

Lee Stanley 4:53
And so in terms of the the path there is that is that why you took what What was the next stage tech head of department role?

So yeah, I, I went there as a classroom teacher. Four years later, I took over his head of department. And then a few years further on, I became deputy head. And then Head of School, which was a senior deputy role. And then in my last term before I moved up to Yorkshire, I was the acting head so,

Excellent. And in terms of of taking a head of department role, how did you build, you know, a successful team? What did you What did you put in place?

Alex Wilson 5:36
I think for me, it was looking at what we were actually teaching across the school and looking for particular subject areas and courses that we were running and appointing subject specialists in those areas. I mean, I was very fortunate in the school that I was in that we had the money and the resources to be able to employ really high quality staff. And we’re also you know, being in London we attracted a very high calibre of staff to, but I think it’s getting the new really confident subject specialists who are passionate about this subject rather than, you know, worrying too much about sort of the science side of teaching, if you like.

Lee Stanley 6:23
Sure. And what were your what were your achievements within being a department head?

Alex Wilson 6:30
And well, for many years, we had the best results in one of the top schools in the country, and certainly at A-level, we had over 85% a star at a level every year. So we were academically very successful. We were also given we were in an academic day school to have two thirds of the year group taking our subject for GCSE, given that it was religious studies, which I know some parents and don’t always valued at the same level of something, say like history,

Lee Stanley 7:03
Sure.

Alex Wilson 7:04
But for me, it was the fact that the subject had that credibility within that very high achieving school.

Lee Stanley 7:12
Brilliant. And then what took you into into senior leadership?

Alex Wilson 7:17
And I just sort of felt ready for the next step. I saw I was appointed pastoral deputy, I’d always been very keen on the pastoral side of school. And I, the roles happen happen to come up really and I knew I ultimately wanted to run my own school and this seemed a natural step. And if we able to,

Lee Stanley 7:41
sorry, I was just gonna say was that something that was always always in the back of your mind that you you did always aspire to be a head teacher?

Alex Wilson 7:48
I did. Yes. Yes, it was something I always really wanted to do. Having sort of, you know, worked with some incredibly inspirational heads.

Lee Stanley 8:01
Fantastic. So tell me about the the step up. What sort of challenges did you find there?

Alex Wilson 8:10
And I think I probably had all of the the best steps up in some ways, but having a term at a school that I’ve been at most of my life as an acting head, so it allowed me to sort of step up and experience life as a head somewhere where people trusted me and I kind of knew how everything worked and was able to try things out a little bit before moving into a school where, where I was completely new. And so I think I was just, you know, the timing of that was very fortunate. But I think, you know, when you you step up to being ahead, the suddenly everything being on your shoulders, I mean, I I was given a huge amount of responsibility as a deputy. I was allowed to take the lead on things that I know many deputies weren’t and that’s not saying anything about me it was the style of headship that my head has had. And she very much believed in empowering her team and preparing them for the next step. So I think for me to be in a process from the moment I became a deputy, I almost felt I felt I was being shaped for the next step of my career.

Lee Stanley 9:23
And in terms of the difference from being a deputy or Head of School, and what did you feel was was was the difference? Did you did you feel again, from the way in which you’ve been trained and supported? Did you feel that that that benefited you becoming Head teacher?

Alex Wilson 9:47
Definitely, very much. So it definitely benefited me and I felt confident that I knew all the challenges that were going to come up I may not have actually dealt with them personally. But I’ve been involved. in conversations, for example about, you know, writing budget or, you know, I was allowed to lead on things like high profile media cases, I think the experience I’ve been given meant that actually, within a sort of school context, there were very few things I haven’t at least had an insight into, even if I hadn’t been responsible directly for them.

Lee Stanley 10:25
And what advice would you give to any sort of aspiring heads, currently assistant head or deputy head in school?

Alex Wilson 10:33
I would say, try and gain as much experiences you can have the different areas of school leadership. So if you’re an academic deputy, make sure that you don’t just become sort of stuck on the academic side. You know, go spend time with the pastoral team, and learn about safeguarding and pastoral care in schools equally. You know, go and spend time with the bursor or the business manager and find out exactly what goes into constructing a budget and that sort of thing. And I was we were certainly very much trained that at any point were we to be rotated within the senior team that we could step into each other’s shoes. And I think that was a really wise way of training people up for headship that you, you, whilst we had our fans, almost users of Cabinat analogy, we all had our sort of portfolios that we were responsible for. But at any one time we were across what each other were responsible for to in terms of, knowing what was going on being part of the discussions around those areas.

Lee Stanley 11:42
Brilliant. And in terms of within school now, what successes have you had initiatives or what happens is something that I didn’t notice within your school and in particular on your school website, as an awful lot of mindfulness and well being Which obviously, in current circumstances is quite, you know, at the forefront of employment and employability.

Alex Wilson 12:10
Yes. So I was fortunate when I joined here that there was a real focus on well being, and not only just for the children, but actually the staff well being as well. And I mean, that’s thanks to a very strong pastoral team. They’re absolutely second to none, I have to say. But I think either the pastoral care and the fact that we very much encourage children to speak out they feel comfortable being a smallish school. I mean, whilst we’re over 600, in total, and within the senior school were relatively small. And it means that every child is known by name and is known as an individual. And I think that has been instrumental in making sure that we’re able to cater for them as individuals rather than as your nine or as a group.

And, sorry,

Lee Stanley 13:03
I was just gonna say in terms in terms of the staff well being, because it seemed that there was there was quite an emphasis and a focus on that. And what what initiatives do you run?

Alex Wilson 13:16
So we have and so for any new staff join us that we have a new staff supper close to the beginning of the autumn term where all the staff go along. We have staff, Christmas parties, they sound sort of silly little things. But for example, you know, if I have a member of staff who has a child whose child is graduating on who has something, you know, an important milestone in their life, I tried to facilitate them being able to be there for that. I tend to try to be flexible with people and perhaps with young children so that if that they are free, towards the end of the day, they may be able to go and pick up young children occasionally from school and that sort of thing. And just those little things seem to make quite an impact on the staff and it’s certainly been commented on.

Lee Stanley 14:08
Yeah, definitely. I think I think that’s certainly something that if you get that right, and your staff are considerably happier arnt they, and they feel bought into and they feel supported, and if you could change anything within the education, setup and system, what would you change?

Alex Wilson 14:35
I think I would, I will try to put more emphasis on subject passion and teachers being able to teach subjects and being less bogged down in terms of syllabuses and specifications and sort of almost hoop jumping. And, you know, I would like to think that my history teachers are trading up the next level. You know, the next generation of his Historians rather than just teaching them to pass GCSE history. And so I would want to allow a degree of freedom within the curriculum within timetables for teachers to inspire people’s with the love of subjects.

Lee Stanley 15:14
Excellent. And in terms of advice to an NQT or somebody who’s thinking about going into teaching now, what would you give them?

Alex Wilson 15:27
I would say, go into some observation and look at a different range of schools and get a feel for the sorts of school you might be comfortable in. I mean, there’s such a range of schools out there. And different people’s characters perhaps might suit different institutions. But I would also say if you are passionate about what you have read at university and you want to instil that into the next generation, go for it. Because actually, there’s no more satisfying career. I don’t think not that I’ve experienced of anything else but for me, it’s very much, you know, it’s been about at subject inspiration really

Lee Stanley 16:08
brilliant. And if you could change anything, you know, click of a finger, where, where school is concerned? What would that be?

Alex Wilson 16:17
My the current school I’m in at the moment.

Yeah.

Um, I think I would update some facilities more quickly than than perhaps, you know, obious normal financial planning would allow for. We know we’re incredibly strong in terms of things like drama school, I would love to have a theatre here. And so, you know, rather than wait a couple of years to build up funding for that I, you know, I could kick my fingers I’d have a new fit.

Lee Stanley 16:48
And in terms of your, the outside of school, what kind of what kind of interest you have.

Alex Wilson 16:56
Okay, so I love cooking. So that’s how I tend to unwind. So I love cooking even during the week, I will always take time out to do that. And then in the holidays, I mean, this is also part of the reason for moving to Yorkshire. In the holidays, we like to be outside. So I particularly enjoy sea kayaking. Andjust being outside in the opener generally Really?

Lee Stanley 17:24
Yeah, there were some good locations for that around Hull arent there.

Alex Wilson 17:29
There are you know, so where we are sort of 10 or 15 minutes to the coast and there’s a, you know, a huge coastline here, varying from chalky cliffs right down to, you know, to sandy beaches. So we’re very lucky.

Lee Stanley 17:43
Yeah. Nice part of the world. Very nice. And in terms of book, what book are you currently reading at the moment?

Alex Wilson 17:49
Good question. I’m currently reading a book by somebody called Winifred Holtby and it’s a classic. It’s called South riding it essentially it’s about Except in this part of the country, by somebody from from this part of the country and it’s about Headmistress who I was just gonna sound such a cliche, but I have mistress who moved up from London to teach you to school in Yorkshire and try to do her thing up here. I’m enjoying that very much.

Lee Stanley 18:20
And how does it compare

Alex Wilson 18:23
what to my story? Yeah. There are some quite surprising similar similarities. But of course, it’s then it’s about a century ago, so not too many.

Lee Stanley 18:35
Okay, and what’s your favourite interview question?

Alex Wilson 18:40
Oh, gosh. I can tell you my least favourite interview. I think probably the one about something that you’re most proud of or you know, a success or a pupil or something that you’ve dealt with, that you’re most proud of.

Lee Stanley 19:05
And in terms of holiday destinations where jobs go away to

Alex Wilson 19:09
Oh, I’m very unambitious when it comes to holidays and I, I like to holiday in the UK. And so I you know, I, we we count as a family we do a lot of camping and so we we’ve been all over England doing that and we have a lot of fun. I mean, I have travelled to the far east I have you know, we’ve spent a lot of time in France in previous years but actually I, for me, there’s nothing better than getting out into the British countryside

Lee Stanley 19:37
is quite interesting. The more heads that I speak to in terms of you know what they do during the holiday time and break time The more I see that do prefer staycation and staying local or within the UK at least anyway so it’s quite interesting either thought that you’ve just wanted to cut free and you know got as far away from from school as possible.

Alex Wilson 20:02
No, I mean, I think because I camp. And, you know, we tend to do it in a fairly basic level in terms of you know, we don’t have electricity or anything. So when the phone dies, it really dies. So for me, I do feel quite cut off unable to really switch off from school.

Lee Stanley 20:17
That does some good to be honest. Yeah, to get away from technology, what would be a brilliant thing in terms of technology, and what what’s your favourite app that you use within school within your work?

Alex Wilson 20:30
Gosh, I’m probably the very last person you should ask that question to I’m a total Luddite.I probably couldn’t answer that, to be honest. It’s something we’re looking at as a school at the moment and looking at whether we might want to sort of develop more of a digital strategy. Because we are, I would say it is an area we need to do work on.

Lee Stanley 20:54
Okay. Okay. And in terms of, if you weren’t a teacher What career path Do you think you would have taken?

Alex Wilson 21:05
I probably would have done something like law had I had I not been a teacher something sort of fairly traditional, sensible, probably.

Lee Stanley 21:14
Okay. And he’s been the biggest influence on your teaching career.

Alex Wilson 21:21
Probably the head I worked for in London, and both in terms of her as as a leader, and then as a sort of direct boss when I was on the senior team,

Lee Stanley 21:34
Brilliant and in terms of life, who’s been the biggest influence in your, in your life?

Alex Wilson 21:41
My dad, absolutely no doubt about it. Yeah, I mean, he’s not with us anymore. But he was very much my sort of role model and hero as I was growing up.

Lee Stanley 21:53
Fantastic. Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for your time, and is there anything in particular and the current Working on any initiatives within schools that people need to know about.

Alex Wilson 22:04
And I think probably the only thing that we have launched recently that is going sort of better than I expected. So I will share this with you is we’ve launched an academic lecture programme for the staff. So the staff are giving lectures on areas that they are interested in beyond the syllabus that they teach. So I launched it with a lecture on the history of clocks. Little bit niche. I know but, but actually, you know, lots and lots of staff have signed up for these these talks. So every couple of weeks, a different member of staff will be giving a talk for the staff, but pupils are invited along as well. And it’s really nice to have that sort of joined to sort of adult children, time discussing some some academic things.

Lee Stanley 22:49
Fantastic. Fantastic. And in terms of how can people get hold of you? what’s the what’s the best way for them to communicate with you.

Alex Wilson 22:57
I just contact the school. either by phone or by the an email link on the school website and I’m happy to talk to anyone who would like to have the conversation.

Lee Stanley 23:10
Brilliant, brilliant, what I’ll do I’ll put links into the into the video and also into the the role below. And yeah, thank you so much for your time. Really appreciate it and great insight into being a Headmistress in your career today.

Alex Wilson 23:26
Thank you very much. No, no problem.

Lee Stanley 23:29
Take care.

Alex Wilson 23:30
Bye

SELECTED LINKS FROM THIS EPISODE 

Headship is all about leadership, it’s about changing policy, it’s about questioning whether we could do things better all the time – Andrew Hampton

Andrew Hampton is the Head Teacher at Thorpe Hall School in Southend-on-Sea. He has been teaching for over 25 years, initially qualifying as a Music Teacher. Andrew has been Head at Thorpe Hall School for over 12 years seeing significant growth and changes in the school, currently looking to make the school 100% sustainable and promote his fantastic “Girls on Board” initiative.

If you haven’t had a chance yet, check it out here https://www.girlsonboard.co.uk/ it is a truly brilliant program and something Andrew is incredibly proud of.

Listen to more of Andrew’s fantastic experience and how he became the Head Teacher he is today.

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:

[2:42] Andrew’s insights into being a teacher.

[6:37] Andrew’s progression into Senior Leadership.

[12:00] Advice to any aspiring to get into Headship.

[13:48] Biggest influence as a Head.

[14:57] Current challenges as a Head Teacher.

[16:36] What would you change in education if you could?

[17:47] Girls on Board Initiative.

[21:30] New Boys initiative.

INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT

Lee Stanley 2:16
Hello, and welcome to had Hadfield Education’s Good to Great webinar series where I interview the head teachers and senior leaders within the UK education sector. Today I’ve been joined by Andrew Hampton, who is the head at Thorpe Hall School in Southend. Good afternoon, Andrew, how you doing today?

Andrew 4:09
Very well. Thank you very much indeed. Yes. Great to be here.

Lee Stanley 4:12
Excellent. Excellent. So Andrew, um, I always like to start off by just finding out about you and how you got into education.

Andrew 4:20
Yeah.

Lee Stanley 4:20
So what took you into into teaching?

Andrew 4:23
I when I was about 11 years old, I want to be a teacher, which makes me very sad. And I think probably the age 12 probably wants to be a head teacher, which makes me even sadder. But I went to university, I kind of fell into show business at that point. There was one moment just as I graduated, that I actually did apply to teaching Teacher Training College to become an English teacher was offered a place but actually, the leader of the grease makeup on stage was too great and I went on to do acting major TV things and did lots of stage work. And at the end of that, I thought, well, actually, my parents spent a lot of money on my education. I was educated privately, there I was in on a stage in Liverpool, you know, basically being directed not not to bump into the furniture, speak louder and get off. And that was it. And I thought this is no job actually, for the intelligent and well educated person. So I kind of thought went back home and thought and I will try and get into education at this point. I did actually have a career a little bit of a career as a composer then, but started teaching claranet and saxophone that was my first job in school. So taught at the King Alfred school in North London, for one day week teaching saxophone, did that for five years, became head of music. And then decided at that point, that’s when I wanted to kind of you know, reignite my ambition to become a leader of education. And so I qualified through doing a master’s degree in education, leadership and management the OU various other qualifications including NPQH and got my first headship when I was 45. I ran a small school in Nottingham for four years and then I come down to Southend so I jumped over deputy headship and Yes, I’ve been a head 16 years this Christmas.

Lee Stanley 6:03
So when you were initially teaching as just a normal music teacher and what? What were your biggest insights? What were the learns and experience that really sort of probably, they structured a moulded you into the teacher that you were.

Andrew 6:25
I was a music teacher. And I think that’s a very particular subject and sort of your teaching, you’ve got effectively kind of two types of music teaching to be done. First of all, the key stage three, which is music for all, so you have to kind of tailor them what you’re doing to make sure that everybody whether you’re musician or not can do it. And then when you take it to GCSE and you’re dealing with musicians, I think for me, it was always good lesson planning was important, and a good structure whereby there would be an exposition as for lesson and then making sure that the lesson was really active and had things that the children can participate in and demonstrate that they’ve done. And certainly, the plenary at the end was great, very real. And they will take away the things that we’ve learned from that lesson. And I thought that, you know, that’s what I tried to do pretty much lesson after lesson every single time, just varying the topic, but always trying to get them to do make music, do something very active and send them on the way.

Lee Stanley 7:21
And in terms of mentors and real sort of guidance, yeah, who influenced your your teaching?

Andrew 7:27
I think that I learned a lot by doing the master’s degree because I didn’t do a teaching qualification. And it’s been, it’s been a strange career. I watched colleagues, I employed people who I then became very influenced by at one point I, as a music teachers, you know, trying to get 10 things done in the lesson, and I watched this other teacher, and she was like doing two things. And actually, I could, but they did them really well, you know, and they can way having learned those two things. So I thought that was that was pretty influential for me. But I think Yeah, the first year at my master’s degree, we looked at teaching and learning and how learning takes place. And a lot of that stuff really went in so that they got skin cache, and lightning finger and the peripheral participation theories. So quite a lot about those kind of learnings. There was a kind of really enjoyed and took two, and then went on to do quite a lot of management theory and second two years, that master’s degree in that was very influential to

Lee Stanley 8:23
brilliant and then obviously, that the natural progression is to then lead a department when when did that happen?

Andrew 8:29
That happened after I mean, slightly odd career. So I was actually working two schools working at the King Alfred school under the Hall school, which is a prep school and Swiss Cottage as a claranet and saxaphone teacher, but gradually getting invited to come into the classroom to take lessons. And then it King Alfred school they had a crisis with the head of department that they had appointed on to people who didn’t stay for more than a year. And I put my hand up and said, Look Ill do it, and they said, Yeah, you should, which was lovely, it was really nice moment. And so at that point, I kind of had to write all my schemes of work throughout all the years I did very rapidly and get myself into the classroom and pretty much taught myself how to be a teacher. But obviously you’re talking to colleagues along the way, and just just learning on the job as much as anything else.

Lee Stanley 9:14
And in terms of department was a standalone role or did you have other musicians with you?

Andrew 9:20
I think being a head of music is a great learning ground for becoming a head teacher because it was a very big department, by far the biggest in the school if you include the 11 or 12 instrumental teachers that I had to manage. So I had a part timer working with me and he says three, four and five. I was also the head of music for the lower school, which was a prep school, a key stage one, stage two. So those were the kind of music teachers I was managing, because I saved them managing 11 peripatetic teachers and periptetic teachers actually very difficult to manage because often they are musicians first, and teachers second. So they kind of roll up, you know, three hours late going, Yeah, well, I did late night last night, okay. You have no idea. The problems you’ve caused me. So yeah, there’s a real kind of batons by fire music and yeah, it prepares for Headship extremely well.

Lee Stanley 10:11
And so where did you move from head of department?

Andrew 10:14
Yeah.

Lee Stanley 10:15
How did you then progress into the senior leadership and then into Headship?

Andrew 10:19
Painfully, I think is the first one.

You know, after I’ve been headed music for about six years, I decided that I had the master’s degree and I was in the process of doing NPQH. But I would like to move on to deputy headship for the next four years, I think it took I applied to well over 90 applications. I had 16 interviews, I was offered two jobs, turn them down. I was turned down internally four times, you’d have thought I’d learned by them. And then actually, a couple of people just said to me, the problem that you’re experiencing getting a deputy headship is that your not a Deputy Head, you’re a Head, one person particularly said to me I would never employ you are a Deputy head you are to Far too scary, knowledgeable, you know, you’ve got a very, very, very clear what you want to do in education and so not absolutely not. And it literally got the first headship applied for so.

Lee Stanley 11:13
And how was it taking the main chair in school?

Andrew 11:20
You know, there’s no doubt about it. It’s scary stuff. It’s scary stuff. Because particularly because I’ve been at the King Alfred school for such a long time. I think probably from the age of 28 until 45. So you know, there’s a long, long, long time to be embedded particular school that was had its own particularly ethos King Alfred is very funky, they call their teachers by the, by the Christian names and no uniform and then going back into a much more conventional School, which is what it was, was called Dagfa House school Nottingham on which was closed now. But it was scary, but also very, very exciting. So one of the things that happened was that the behaviour was very, very poor in that school, and after I’ve been there about 10 days, I had a knock on the door from the contractors who were working next door on the building site. And they were very polite. And he came in and said, Look, I dont want to make a fuss about this, but perhaps you could ask your children not to throw bricks at my contractors. Goodness me what earth is going on? You know, so I we’d also had an incident before I joined, I joined in January. And I heard that the Christmas tree they put up in the foyer, all the baubles had been smashed by the children. And I thinking wow, you know, that’s, that’s quite a gesture, from the Year 10 children, you know, just smashed things like that. So I thought this is a deeply deeply unhappy school. And indeed, the teachers were saying to me, well, we’re okay in the classroom, but on the corridor and really hanging on by our fingernails in terms of discipline. So it’s a very dramatic moment and because I come from a liberal school as a teacher, but also actually very liberal school as a boy, which is very liberal school. So I called everybody together and I said, So things things not going very well kids, you know, we’re kind of beginning to lose sense of, of propriety and dignity of the skin, we need to sort of do something quite dramatic. So what I’m going to do is I’m going to just stop having detentions. And this is, you know, Penny drop, then a gasp and sort of, you know, two people turning to this guy for real, you know, it’s been here two weeks to do something very dramatic. So yeah, so don’t see the point of detention. It’s not working. What we have to do is punish you. So what we need to do is to go build that trust between you and us and try and break down that language and just say, Would you mind behaving yourself now? And then that’ll be great. And they kind of run? Yeah, okay. I then had to persuade the team, you know, but it did. I mean, they really did. They kind of came with that journey. And then the teachers there was a moment when one of us arts teacher said I just don’t understand the leverage left for the bar, and then the head of English to see what I’ve got Stevie said, I’m so fed up with taking your detention all you ever do to fail to manage the behaviour in your classroom put them into detention on Friday afternoon and I’m the one has to take that detention.

Lee Stanley 14:05
Sure.

Andrew 14:06
So you know I’ve sent to teach you you’ve got to control the children and you’ve got to do that through pace and through compassion. And so you know, go out there and make that happen. I didn’t tell the government’s until after it was a success. I think if I told them they would have gone, what dont do that.

Lee Stanley 14:26
What other successes did you have while you were at Dagfa.

Andrew 14:30
I just had to unravel an extremely authoritarian headship that have been before me. So it was having to reschedule people. So literally, I mean, one thing I did was to try to deploy money sensibly. So I gave person who decided to take on all the displays in the junior school, and I gave her £300 to do that. And after a couple times, I said so so you haven’t spent any of your money? And she said, Well, but that’s not mine. That’s it, but it is yours and she said, I thought I you know, You would spend on my, No no!, I gave you some money go spend it, you know, so that those will be sort of things I was doing and just constantly trying to liberate and lift the lid off the school so that it could breathe as much as anything else.

Lee Stanley 15:12
And what advice would you give to any aspiring deputy that’s looking to take their first Headship?

Andrew 15:18
I think that that’s something I kind of know a lot about. Because I’ve been running with a woman called Jill Perry in the independent sector. I’ve been running a course for about seven or eight years now for aspirant new and aspirant heads in the independent sector. And people can look that up. It’s called leading an independent school.co.uk. So that’s something that Jill and I work with about 60 people a year on precisely that. So I would say the first thing to say is that headship is a very difficult job. I mean, I wasn’t a deputy. So I don’t know from first time but the deputy head is about the status quo. It’s about organising it’s about making sure that the school runs smoothly, that you understand what the policy is and then you make sure that you stamp policy onto the school and make that those policies are running, where’s headship is all about leadership, it’s about changing policy, it’s about questioning whether we could do things better all the time. And also, I think looking at every problem from a strategic and structural quantity, so somebody makes a mistake. It may be that the deputy head is the one who sort of says, excuse me, um, you know, that went wrong, you know, what are you doing? Why you’re not concentrating, blah, blah, blah to a teacher to hold them to account? Which I think the head is going. So structurally, is this something wrong with this? Is that person overworked? Is that why these things are happening? And quite often you think, no, there is no structural issue. There was just human error. But I’m a great believer in no blame. I think, you know, people beat themselves up quite enough. There’s no need for you to be going. I’m disappointed with you. Because that doesn’t really work. It just makes them feel frightened of you and anxious. So yes, it so again, my style is very liberal. Deputy Head Yeah, so lots of high school experience and be ambitious. Keep your eyes up on the horizon in terms of the wider picture. If you’re looking for a school, look at the community, but it’s em. I was always given a good tip. And if you if you are given an interview and take a taxi or something, you know, ask ask local people like what they know about school, do your research. I think that’s absolutely critical. So it goes to school knowing absolutely everything there is possibly know about that school, and that will impress them, and also give you a sense of what you want to work. Because not every school is right for me.

Lee Stanley 17:25
So he’s been your biggest influence as a head teacher.

Andrew 17:33
I think my father probably he wasn’t a teacher, but he was a he was an industrialist he ran a steel a company up in Sheffield. And he was his style was always not to not tell people to remember he was just like, Okay, all right. That’s really, you know, and that was his style as a dad. And I think that’s what I’ve always done and I think that has liberated people to do what what they what the can want to get the best out of people is to be gentle and compassionate with a huge influence. Something that sense. And to be honest, you know, some say it feels a bit kind of arrogant and childish. But I learned a lot by working on the head teachers who weren’t terribly good look above and think I do it like that.

Lee Stanley 18:15
It’s often the way isn’t it, if, within any employment, if you see good practice, you you likely to mimic and to replicate. And likewise, if you see somebody real, really make a hash of something, you’re less likely to, to replicate that as well. So and in terms of your biggest challenges within your headship currently, what are those now,

Andrew 18:39
currently, I think the school has has grown quite a lot. So when I got here, it’s about 350. Then it went down to 300 games now at 390. And so the challenge is sort of keeping that small intimate school feel going, keeping on top of all the projects that we want to do so I think this term particularly, you know, a lot of people around me saying, gosh, we are, you know, noticeably more busy and that therefore means you’re dropping balls here and dropping balls there. We’ve just decided to become, you know, genuinely sustainable school and actually the amount of work coming across my desk is is considerable on that and it’s really quite hard to keep keep track of that. So it’s trying to keep all the balls in the air, I think always, you know, keeping those kind of long term strategic goals going, but also, you know, talking to a little Oscar who’s being a pain in the playground, you know, and that’s, but that’s one of the joys of Headship but it but it’s very challenging in terms of keeping all those things running concurrently. Yeah, sure.

Lee Stanley 19:38
And in terms of education, what’s one thing that you would change if you if you could?

Andrew 19:44
I think we’ve the education is just possibly emerging from an absolutely hideous period of neoliberalism where everything is measured, and it’s all about the data state sector still is, I believe, like hugely data driven, I think there are still a lot more, you know, warm and fuzzy, but they still still about, you know, well, if the results backwards, you know, I think, well, that’s a real shame because behind every set of results, there are some human stories, and you need to know those human stories. So I think that what I would change about education is, is to remove some of the testing, a lot of countries don’t test anybody really seriously until they’re 16 or even 18, for that matter. So I think putting pressure my wife will have disappeared. My wife works in, in a state primary school, and now the pressure that she’s under to get those results, I’m looking at this child looking at that child in a pressure pressure. And you can see, if you started getting good stuff, you can say like, here’s a bunch of 8 years olds. So what we’ve got to do is measure where they are measuring again in six months and then again and then again, when they get really worried about that and then blame the teacher because they haven’t learned to read. You know, you say something to like the world one day they’ve got it completely. The next day they they don’t remember What they were in school? I mean, it comes with a learning curve, not a straight line. I mean, it’s it’s a bumpy curve and I think if we could really embrace that in education, I think we would, will be a lot happier.

Lee Stanley 21:11
Fantastic. agree completely. And like you say, there’s always a storey behind every child isn’t there? Like I said, we’re all we’re all learning as we go.

And in terms of current initiatives within school, yeah. Do you have any any particular favourite sort of things that working specifically?

Andrew 21:25
Yeah.

Well, I’ve mentioned sustainability that’s just getting off the ground. The other thing that I have been doing successfully school is a thing called girls on board that I want to tell you what I’m doing now for boys, which is the new initiatives that girls on board, I think that I invented here about seven or eight years ago, and it basically is a different way of supporting girls when their friendships go wrong. So I think the hardest thing for girls and supporting girls because when those friendships go wrong. They get very, very upset and they can really struggle to get back into a kind of a, you know, happy state again. And I think the reason that it goes, the reason that adults don’t support them effectively is because when a girl is upset, she starts telling her story and teachers start to write things down on the assumption that because she’s upset somebody must have upset her somebody must have been doing something wrong.

Lee Stanley 22:20
Yeah.

Andrew 22:20
So upset. But actually that is rarely the case. Sometimes that is the case sometimes bullying were bullying is taking place, but actually, a lot of the time. It’s it’s just turbulence in the friendship groups. You know, they’re all really worried about their friendships. They’re anxious about those friendships and things have happened. And that girl has chosen to come and talk to you about why she’s upset. So instead what we do within the girls and boys school is we listen to that storey we check that she’s not being bullied. It may be that just listening is enough. I’m just kind of feeling okay how you feeling now? Yeah, feel. Got it off my chest and get back out to the corridor show or If not, we’ll call it go support session because I’m your session is really just an empathy raising moment. Where we say, look, all girls have this anxiety, every girl must have a friend. So let’s just look at this the things that happened in the school day. So you’re walking down the corridor, three, three side by side, and you have to go single file and kind of got the front of who’s going in the middle. And of course, the girls got my God, this is a real problem. He tells the boys like kind of going to watch the question. Seriously, this is Miss you where you’re going, Wow, that’s amazing. For the girls. Like we could talk about this for half an hour. And we do we analyse it. So why would you go to the front, okay, here because I only got a middle, and they’ve all got reasons, even as young as seven years old, they can tell you why they would get the front middle back. So at the end of that, you would have effectively kind of raised that empathy. So they looking across the group thinking, you know, she’s unhappy, someone’s got to sort this out, she’s gonna have to join a friendship group. So with them having to go source stuff themselves grown ups stay out of it. And that’s been very successful here. I was given permission by my governors until about two and a half years ago to commercialise to monetize that. So I’ve as a head teacher, I go out to other schools and invite people to join me in those schools, my host training sessions, we’ve got 110 schools across the country and doing girls on board. So if you want to do that girlsonboard.co. uk. Thank you. So, brilliant.

Lee Stanley 24:17
So you cover the entire UK where that’s concerned, not just a locally

Andrew 24:22
Going up to Scotland next summer.

Lee Stanley 24:24
I’m just thinking from a from a I mean, I’m a dad of two girls, and I can 100%

Andrew 24:31
Yeah,

Lee Stanley 24:32
and I appreciate everything you’ve turned around and said, and I also compare that to my friends who’ve got boys and they are so different and like you say, the way in which they take on board the emotional state, and the worry and the anxiety which is really significantly heightened nowadays. So much like every everybody’s got, you know, huge problem. They face and trying to deal with. So sounds like a terrific initiative.

Andrew 25:06
It is a very powerful, we want a couple of prizes for that. So that that’s going very well. Because along the way, obviously people keep saying to me, so what are you doing the boys? And I do have finally an answer to that. And it was taking a very, very long time to kind of work up what I want to say about boys. So the first thing I’d say is that friendship isn’t the issue for boys the most intractable or difficult problem is engagement is motivation is disappearing down the wormhole of grotty, Moody, depressed, you know, I don’t care about anything, Baba. So basically, what I’ve done it in a similar way is kind of codify that and so the first of all the qualification would be it’s about it’s not about ice and for girls, it’s about isolation. It’s about avoiding isolation for boys. I think it’s about avoiding humiliation.

Lee Stanley 25:52
Yeah.

Andrew 25:52
It’s about retaining dignity, and that will drive them to behave in ways that they’re not always entirely proud of, in order to avoid condition it humiliation on certain people, then I think you’re looking at the emotional literacy generally of understanding that you’re not annoyed. You’re furious, you’re really angry. Once you get angry about well, actually, boys all get angry about some things that get angry with siblings, with parents to patronise them. teachers who are boring, football, full stop, you know, gaming that goes wrong. And again, you’re kind of raising the apathy in the room by having this kind of conversations, whether that doesn’t necessarily change the way they relate to each other. So what I’m trying to do more is to create a new kind of ethical and moral framework around the way they relate to each other. And what I’ve been going on in the past is doing that too late. So I’m trying to kind of go, Oh, look, whatever, all the boys in Year 9 hideous and they mean to each other and they’re miserable, but it’s too late. I’ve missed the boat. They have established the culture with which they will address each other, particularly when it comes to banter and things like that. So what I’m doing now is working with year seven were actually they understand what I’m saying, but they haven’t yet become grunting horribles. So literally working with your seven this week, and asking them to tell me about the older brothers, boys and girls, and they kind of said, you know, it’s really moody and really mean to me. And so I’m just similar skills about I liked that teaching of just getting people to reflect. So it’s not didactic, it’s just like, I use a phrase a lot. Isn’t it true to say, What do you think, if you experienced that, so they’re digging around in their own experience and putting and making connections between things that they have experienced? So that I’m hoping that by doing that, I’m looking at a banter, looking at sensitivity to banter looking at what’s acceptable isn’t, you know, perhaps being a little bit more deliberate when it comes to things like sexualized language and saying, actually, I’m going to disagree with that. I just don’t think we should do that. You know, that’s not dignified. So there is a kind of a model, of course, but there’s a lot of just getting them to reflect on the fact that if they allow their banter to become very harsh, it has a ratchet effect. It’s very difficult to come back from the humour that was gentle it will no longer is gentle. Yeah And at the heart of that then after got pretty much completed my thoughts on this is his masculinity so I’m hanging it all on the kind of what is gentle masculinity? What is sour masculinity is a great podcast called boys don’t try. They use the words tender monotone and I’ve kind of converted that for myself. And we start with lessons throughout the school. Just saying so what is gentle and what is sour? You know, it’s harsh, its kind, it’s respectful, it’s considerate, or it’s, it’s tough and it’s over competitive, it’s arrogant. It’s selfish, it’s rude. And just yeah, let’s just reflect on those things. And what kind of body what kind of man Do you want to be? And then the boys are kind of go over all these things. We’re finding the sweet, lovely, then it goes kind of go. Yeah, now you’re not having the girls there? Absolutely not. So I guess you know, it’s early days for this but I’m hoping that that will have an effect. Looking at, as I say, the way in which boys relate to each other

Lee Stanley 28:57
sounds fantastic.

Andrew 28:58
I’m really interested

Lee Stanley 29:01
If we can, perhaps have a follow up, you know, around about an end of end of term or end of year, whichever, whichever you see fit

Andrew 29:09
In terms of masculinity probably ended year because I think it’s going to take time to kind of embed that and have several lessons I’ve got one of my teachers is doing NPQSL and she’s going to do it on masculinity. So data and see if we can, you know, prove prove a point, I think what we’ll do is probably take what what I’m recommending for her to do is to take maybe 10 boys have a look at attitudes towards say homework and see if we can change the attitudes towards

Lee Stanley 29:36
Sure. makes sense

Andrew 29:38
to work. Not a bad thing. You know, it’s cool to work my uncool. Yeah.

Lee Stanley 29:42
Well, yeah, it is interesting because I seem to be given the impression within my peer group that nowadays, being clever and being a bit of a school geek is actually seen as cool. Which when I was at school, it was completely the opposite you know that it was a complete pole apart. So, again, quite interesting where homework and things like that a concerned.

Andrew 30:09
Yeah, exactly. You’re right. Geekiness has become cool way which you know, which is a great thing yeah

Lee Stanley 30:15
yeah definitely well, there were so many there are so many niches now and children are exposed to such a vast variety of influence and it really is an influence and you know, we I probably would say that with my upbringing and my education, it was very much a meat and two veg it was this way or that way you’re either clever or you were sporty. There was nothing really in between and yet now. You know, every every child is so unique and it’s good but it’s incredibly difficult to cater for. Obviously from from within within school. Fantastic Excellent. So in terms of moving forward, then was just a couple of other random questions. But what are you currently reading at the moment? Whatbook? Are

Andrew 31:09
Reading a book called The interestings. It’s an American book, my daughter gave it to me. She’s very good at finding new authors. For me. I can’t remember the name of the author, but it’s a lucky book of life in America and growing up and I love it. Yeah, it’s great.

Lee Stanley 31:23
And what’s your favourite interview question?

Andrew 31:27
I like to like talking about girls on board.

Lee Stanley 31:31
And in terms of, if you weren’t a teacher, where where would you be? What would you be doing?

Andrew 31:36
You know, I have I have another life which is in music. So I play saxophone. And I’d love to do more of that be able to compose more and play more that that’s always been, you know, something Ill do when I step away from headship should do more of that. But I hope also to have the chance to come up with furthering education, of interest separation headship is as well as consultancy and song Yeah,

Lee Stanley 31:58
brilliant, brilliant and favourite holiday destination.

Andrew 32:01
I like home. I’m a staycation guy. I really am. Yeah.

Lee Stanley 32:05
Excellent.

Andrew 32:06
Going away very stressful.

Lee Stanley 32:10
And in terms of apps, because we live in an app culture Now, what’s your favourite work app?

Andrew 32:17
Well, I would say that. Twitter, I mean, you know, is that an app? I don’t know. I mean, I spent a lot of time on Twitter. And I think across the board, it’s been very useful. So I do enjoy time on Twitter.

Lee Stanley 32:30
Is that something that you have within school specifically?

Andrew 32:33
Not so much. I mean, the school has Twitter accounts and so on, as everybody does. We’ve had we tend to use Facebook a lot more than Twitter. But girls on board on Twitter has been very successful because an awful lot of teachers on Twitter who are doing their own thing, so fantastic English educators. community that is very, very powerful. So I think that’s been really, really good. Yeah, absolutely.

Lee Stanley 32:53
Um, what about your favourite app in general

Andrew 32:59
you caught me out there. I don’t know. I don’t know.

I don’t know. But the world is sort of changed him away isn’t it because everything is driven through app so you might want to watch TV if I want to watch you know, Amazon Prime, it’s through an app and email so that everything’s okay. I’ve got some great music ones that I must admit this and this ones that you can buy as a saxophone player where it gives you the music and then it plays a great the acompanyment months and then it turns the page over for you. There’s one called Ireal where you could programme in the chord sequence and then close it download thousands and thousands of songs and we can play it many key and tempo them style. They’re amazing response in terms of being able to to be a home and practice and have something interesting to play rather than just playing C major all the time. Yeah,

Lee Stanley 33:44
sounds good.

Andrew 33:45
Ireal well that gets my vote.

Lee Stanley 33:47
And who would you say has been the biggest influence in terms of your life?

Andrew 33:52
Overall

Lee Stanley 33:54
Yeah.

Andrew 34:01
Difficult one. My wife I think probably is influenced me a lot. My children have influenced me a lot. But they’re not my children has never been shy to kind of go Yeah, yeah, but no, no, you’re wrong. You know, you got all this wisdom but I just think you’re wrong and I loved I love that kind of relationship. I have an all three of them actually, that they are more than happy to correct me. But they do it very, very gently. And so I think I’ve learnt to sort of, you know, not be arrogant. I think my dad sometimes it’s like, well, yes, Andrew, but do what you may need to understand this new concept I’m doing. Okay. But my, you know, I’ve learned not to do that to my children because they just don’t think so. I’ll teach you now

Lee Stanley 34:39
is the interesting like you say that the respectfulness that the difference in respectfulness that you have from when a parent will give you a negative or a suggestion compared to when when your children do Definitely, yeah, yeah, I can fully relate to that having having two girls as well. It’s

Andrew 35:00
They’re very gentle. I’m writing the girls on board book now. And I did a 40,000 words first draught, and I showed it to Holly. He’s 23. And she is, you know, she’s like, yeah, doesnt work at all and bless her, she kind of spent the next four days going through every single sentence with me trying to work out where it’s going wrong. And we, you know, we labelled every paragraph and then restructuring the book from from the ground up. So she is prepared to put the legwork into kind of support. That’s brilliant.

Lee Stanley 35:27
Brilliant. Excellent. So thank you ever so much for your time and being a part on this webinar? And what’s the best or where are the best places for people to find you

Andrew 35:40
on Twitter or on called girls on board UK and Thorpe Hall school? I got a blog on thorpehallschool.co.uk again, and those are probably the two best places to find me. Yeah.

Lee Stanley 35:52
And what was the head teacher

Andrew 35:55
that’s a good one actually. It’s called Leading an independent school, which is all one word .co uk. and gentlemen, I run that for four weeks into half term every term. And we used to take on around 25 people. And yeah, we’ve had probably 500 people go through the years of for over 100. And now in post brilliant, remotely interested independant education coming up, I strongly suggest to do that. It’s quite well known as you can imagine as a course. And I think if you put that on your CV, people are recognising that you’ve gone through that common quality mark.

Lee Stanley 36:29
Excellent. Well, what I’ll do, I’m add the links under here and also in the in the real below. So if anybody wants to get in touch with you, they can, and thank you ever so much for your time.

Andrew 36:41
My pleasure. Thank you. Take care. Okay.

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?

Building your SLT team is like trying to build an aircraft while it’s in the air – Liam Powell

Liam Powell is the Head Teacher at Manor High school in Oadby, Leicestershire. He has been teaching for over 24 years, initially qualifying in 1993 as a History and Politics teacher. Liam has been a Head for over 7 years and taken Manor High school through significant changes, in particular, becoming an Academy and part of Oak Multi Academy Trust.

If you haven’t had a chance yet, check out Liam’s “Hot Choc Friday” pics on LinkedIn, they truly are brilliant and show how as a Head you can have a huge impact on your students.

Listen to more of Liam’s fantastic experience and how he still believes being a Head Teacher is the best job in the world.

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:

• Liam’s route into Education [00:36]
• Advice to Student teachers entering the profession [01:36]
• Is Teaching still a vocation? [02:44]
• What makes a good senior leadership team in a school [03:53]
• Moving from SLT to being a Head [04:55]
• Advice on becoming a Headteacher [06:00]
• Recent Manor High School Initiatives [08:52]
• Manor Highs Partnerships [11:30]
• Hot Choc Friday [13:03]
• Where will Education move to in the next 5 years, being a MAT [14:34]
• Primary Secondary Transition improvements [16:15]
• Being process driven, not outcome driven [17:46]
• Students are our greatest resource [19:25]
• Recruitment needs for September [22:20]
• The importance of having “Core Values” [22:48]

Interview Transcript

Lee Stanley 0:55
Hello, and welcome to Hadfield Education’s webinar series of Good to Great where I interview the leading educators in the UK and today, I’m very fortunate to have Liam Powell. Liam is currently the head teacher at Manor High School in Leicestershire, and yeah, welcome, Liam. How’s school treating you today.

Liam 1:17
Yeah, very good. Thank you. nice, sunny day here in Leicester.

Lee Stanley 1:20
Excellent. And tell me Liam, and what, what actually took you into teaching and into education?

Liam 1:28
Well, I finished my degree. And I went off and did some postgraduate studies. And then I worked for British Telecom for a couple of years. And then I realized that was really missing the subjects that I’ve studied for all of those years, which were basically history and politics. And I had a real desire to get back into those subjects and share that passion and share all the knowledge and learning that I built up with young people.

Lee Stanley 1:52
Fantastic. So when did you start out

Liam 1:56
I started teaching in 1993, in the Leicester area, teaching history and politics through from 11 to 18 year olds that are headed over to Rugby to Ashbourne school in rugby, were there for about six years and 12 years, at Kingsthorpe in Northampton. And then I’ve this my seventh year here in Manor High, Leicester.

Lee Stanley 2:15
Brilliant, Brilliant. And in terms of new student teachers that are entering into the profession, obviously, there’s been a real change from when you first qualified, what kind of advice would you give to them?

Liam 2:30
I think the main thing is to enjoy the job above all else, remember why you’re doing it, and enjoy it and make it interesting, bring your own life experiences into your learning, plan your lessons well, plan lots of pace and try and concentrate on the good things about the job. The media, we sometimes hear negatives about it. But actually, it’s a fantastic job and the relationship you build up with young people. And I’ll just give an example about I’m I am now back in touch with someone that I taught 25 years ago. She’s the head of a law firm now, and those kind of connections, she comes in and talks to my students now. And that’s something I never would have imagined 25 years ago, when I was I was teaching her GCSE that, you know, 25 years later, I could be a meeting up again, and she’d be working with me support young people. So the relationships you build up in those early years or so important?

Lee Stanley 3:19
Absolutely, absolutely. And in terms of education, from my own personal experience, I always believe that my teachers or the teachers that taught me they saw teaching as their vocation, it was sort of a meaning to them. And do you still think that’s the case within education?

Liam 3:40
Yeah, I think there are lots of hoops that you have to jump through lots of things that you have to do to be effective. And to make the quality assurance and the inspection processes, you have to take lots of boxes. But unless you’re doing it as a vocation, with a sense of purpose, the job will be too hard. You have to have that passion, they have that sense of civic public duty. And I feel sorry for people, they don’t have that because it’s critical. And as a head teacher, you really rely on people coming into the profession and going the extra mile and a lot of the work that people do, in fact, it’s actually unpaid. It is staying behind after school to help someone who’s stuck, it’s going to watching the cross country of the weekend, or the sports teams, or it’s rehearsing with the kids in the orchestra after school. Those are the things that can’t really be included in the job description and the hours of the job. But there are things that make a difference. And that’s what the children really appreciate. They can tell the people who go the extra mile for them. So you have to have that vocation.

Lee Stanley 4:37
Absolutely. Absolutely. And talking about your team, what do you feel makes a good sort of senior leadership team within a school?

Liam 4:49
I think that’s a really good question. The jokes that’s often made about building a team is that you try and build an aircraft while it’s in the air. And that’s what you do, when you will go to school, or anywhere organisation, you inherit a team, and you have to look for people’s strengths. And you have to try and build on them. And then there are some people who, for whatever reason, don’t fit into that vision and the team that you’re trying to build. So it is quite it is quite difficult to do. And but it’s really important, I would say, relationship building and team building is absolutely critical. And what you’re looking for really isn’t necessarily think with the qualifications you’re looking for people who have that can do attitude, and that they really have share that vision with you. And they’ll take things on. And they’ll come to you with ideas and solutions, rather than just looking at each problem on its own, and being stuck on it. And having that attitude. Collectively, you all sort of feed off after a while. And that builds its own momentum.

Lee Stanley 5:42
And how did you find the progression from being in sort of a senior leadership position to then taking that the headship

Liam 5:52
it’s a massive jump, and I think it’s not for everyone. And there’s that thing about you are the jockey in the saddle. And ultimately, you have decide, the way I go about it is to share all decision making with my team, because I completely trust them. And there’s that whole thing that if I suddenly we’re out, we’re out of the picture, for whatever reason, they need to be able to carry on keeping the school going in the same way. So it’s about sharing ideas, but ultimately making the decision what I’ve tried to do very strongly is to avoid any sense of the blame culture. So things do go wrong, they go wrong, but ultimately, is the head teacher. Anything that’s wrong in the organization is your fault, one, remember, so there’s no point having a blame culture, you’ve just got to say, right, okay, what’s the issue? How do we deal with it? How do we move this forward? And I think if your team has got that, that philosophy, and you can really the sky’s the limit.

Lee Stanley 6:43
What advice would you give to any sort of butting heads? And there are lots of assistant and, and deputies who I speak to, and contemplating taking a headship, what what advice would you give them?

Liam 6:57
I would say to them, it is still despite the pressures, it is still the best job in the world, it is an amazing opportunity to lead a school in the way that you believe in. And so my advice to them would be, go for it, and don’t back out of the opportunities. If they present themselves, it’s the doors are open, go through them, and see, see where it leads, there’s nothing worse than if you you might find some regretting if you didn’t go for it. The other thing is, look at your strengths, and look at what you perceive to be your weaknesses. And actually, you might find that those weaknesses are actually strengths. So just give an example of that, I’m always quite impatient, I was like to get everything done really quickly, sometimes too much of a perfectionist and, and I thought those were things that were holding me back one time before it became head. But in the end, I realized that that sort of commitment and that determination, those things became really important. And as long as you can manage the impatience, you can turn it to your advantage. And, and that is that it gives you that sense of, I am going to get this done, whatever happens, nothing is going to get in my way. So. So what you might see as a weakness could actually turn out to be a strength. And I really would advise people to go for headship, it is a brilliant job.

Lee Stanley 8:07
Absolutely. And like you say, I think the, the impact that you have everybody from what I remember my head teachers from, from my education and the support, and they knew everybody’s, the thing that really impressed was, they knew everybody’s name and could relate to, you know, each individual, which was really, really important, really important,

Liam 8:34
Absolutely critical. And I run a school of 900, and we’ve taken the school through amazing changes. It started off 50 years ago, from 11 to 14 school. Then 30 years ago, it became a 10 to 14 school. And then two years ago, we became an 11 to 16 school. And, but what we’ve done is we’ve committed to keeping the school at the same size. So our school has 900 pupils we’ve gone from four year groups to five, but we’ve managed it in a way that we keep the overall size of the school the same, we really strongly believe in that now, I’m a non teaching head teacher, I sometimes do get support, you know, support with revisions, sessions, and things like that. But because I do the morning duty, the after school duty, the break duty, the lunch duty or walk the corridors I go into lessons, I actually know, almost sort of my students by name, and they know their families as well. And they wave when they go past in the morning. And the cars when they do the drop off and build up a relationship with the bus driver on the school bus. And all these things really matter. It means that you get to know people. And I think you then don’t get the problems around behaviour and attendance and all those things because people believe in what you’re doing. And they can see that you are actually walking the line yourself and that you believe in it. So people are much more likely to buy in them.

Lee Stanley 9:46
Absolutely. And what other initiatives are you implementing, like new initiatives to move school forward.

Liam 9:54
And we’ve tried to move away from the old kind of judgmental and model of looking at people’s teaching. So we have a very inclusive approach now, which is based on a dialogue. So you’ll observe someone teaching, and then you have a dialogue about it afterwards, a lot of set of criteria, and the person being observed has as much of a say into that as the person and doing the observing. Then we have lots of other things that go on around the school, which you’ve probably seen on LinkedIn, which is things like hot chocolate, Friday, the magic of manner initiatives, a big thing at the moment is we’re trying to work we have more boys than girls in our school, and we’re outside the national average for that proportions. And we’re really interested in the work around mental health at the moment. So we’ve got a huge driver, that guy just managed to hook up with a couple of people on LinkedIn. Luke Ambler is one of them. I’m very, very interested in in some of the stats around men’s mental health. I was really shocked recently when I found out that suicide is the biggest killer of men under 45, and that are ways road accidents, cancer, and lots of other things that take people’s life. So there’s some thing wrong, if that is a step that is real, there’s something wrong in our society. So we’re looking at boys early on now and saying, what can we do to give them the resilience, the strength, the positivity that they’re going to need, with all of the challenges that they’re going to face in their lives, we’re not losing sight of the girls as well. But mental health and well being is a big focus for us right now.

Brilliant, and, like you say, the mental health issue as really in the last 18 months, just just at the forefront of everybody’s minds within not only within education, but within the whole sort of social society and social structure and looking at, you know, the way in which people are sort of that, you know, you see the exterior, but you don’t necessarily know what’s happening behind closed doors, do you exploit

sorry, gone

now, and boys aren’t encouraged to share as well, you know, and, and to share their feelings. And this obviously, we were really trying to get them to talk that’s, that’s where we started and not is the dad of teenage boys. I see it from both sides of the fence.

Lee Stanley 12:04
Yeah, absolutely. Well, I like to say being being a young young lad growing up at school, it wasn’t it wasn’t cool to share your feelings, you know, you had to have that that pretense of being sort of indestructible and nothing bothered you when it’s so it’s so so different now so different and and certainly a really, really good initiative and yeah kind and in terms of the school and you’ve done some work with spark spark Academy

Liam 12:35
Yeah, we do lots of work spark Academy a really good Mital Thanki who’s the CEO of sparkling she was Asian businesswoman of the year, a couple of years ago. And she actually uses our site in the evening. And we’ve done lots of collaborative work together. And she supports with our after school interventions and revision, and this sort of thing, I suppose what I’ve learned from that really is you can never do enough partnership work, these people just come along. And you know, she wanted to meet up initially. And from that we’ve now got this amazing system where lots of lots of children in this part of Leicester are undergoing tutoring every night in our school. And there’s a lot of behaviour with stuff we do a lot of behaviour work is based on relationship building, and the candidate of counterintuitive strategies that we have that worked really well. And we’ve got all over those from pivotal and Paul deck. So I also managed to beat through through LinkedIn as well. And, and that that partnership, if things really important also in the school, we’re now part of the multiacademy trust as well. So we’re working with four local primaries, and the learning across that 3 to 16 journey is incredible there. And then I chair a group called excellence group, which is nine secondary schools, all of whom have gone through age, age range change, and we work really closely together, and we beg, borrow and steal each other’s ideas, and just keep sharing initiative. So for example, we’re in the running to the exam seasons now and we’re sharing ideas of what can you do in that final furlong to just make a difference, to just boost people’s confidence. So all of that partnership work is so powerful, the hot choc Friday thing that I do on a Friday that really came from Paul Dix, and pivotal. And that’s been amazing. And the idea of the thinking behind that is that instead of spending 95% of your time as a head teacher with the 5% to get it wrong, you actually flip that around, and you try and make sure that you spend more time with the kids who just get it right. Every single day, they opened doors, they say hello, they’re friendly, they do the work, they’re nice to each other, they help each other out if they’ve got a problem or anything like that. And, and the other reason for it is, it means I end the week on a real positive. So as I try and fit as many students as I can each week. But you end up having this lovely experience where you go away on a Friday evening thinking, wow, I really do work in an amazing school full of confident young people. So there is there are lots of reasons for it ready?

Lee Stanley 14:53
Definitely. And it really is, it’s just really lovely to actually see students with a hot chocolate having well, an adult situation with their head, which again, can can sometimes be a little bit daunting for for students, because they don’t know I don’t think they necessarily see that see the head in that light. And in that circumstance,

Liam 15:21
they think they are in trouble. You know, come on Friday, they go, Oh, I forgot to go see the head and then you actually have a hot chocolate and they can bring their lunch up in it. And it turns out to be a nice experience.

Lee Stanley 15:29
Brilliant. Well, you talk about Multi Academy Trust and the way that you do that, where do you see the education sector moving forward in in, say, the next five years.

Liam 15:41
It’s interesting, because as 10 years ago, we were all fairly independent schools working under local authority and supervision, that’s all changed in a very, very short space of time, you know, below a decade, ready for all that’s happening. Now, we, we, we were one of the first schools in this locality to academies, then the next day became not not standing alone as an academy and becoming part of the Multi Academy Trust. So that’s the next thing I think what’s going to happen is that we’re going to have a patchwork across the whole country of increasing the large multi Academy trust. And almost what we’ll end up with is, is a replacement for the the old system of local authorities, and you’ll have networks of multi category trusts. Instead, I suspect that larger ones will start to absorb smaller ones, and there’ll be fewer and fewer of them across the country, which I guess from the DfE point of view, would be easier to manage, because it’s fewer sets of elbows around the table, and therefore easier to lead, I would imagine.

Lee Stanley 16:44
And in terms of in school, how do you so with the multi Academy trust that you work with at the moment? Is that did you say that was secondary and primary? Or is

Liam 16:56
it some its secondary and primary, so whether we are the secondary school in that trust, right. And then work with for primary one of which is on our site, and there are two a few miles away. And then in the other direction, there’s another primary and we really came together as ethos driven professional friends who thought, hang on, we’re all teaching the same children in the same community, working with the same families, let’s try and get rid of the disjointed nature of transitions. So children, you know, make these transfers, and it becomes a huge thing for the family. You know, which school am I going to get into, and meeting new people? I don’t know anyone. I wont have my friends with me. So what we’re trying to do is say, right, okay, let’s look at the whole journey then. So we’ve got a preschool setup for three year olds, and then the children leave us at 16, how can we join all the dots through that process. So for example, one thing we’ve got going at the moment is that all of our deputies from all of the schools are working together on a project around literacy and reading, writing, and orally skills and communication skills as well. And already it’s starting to make some ground and we’ve got so much secondary level that we can learn from the primaries, we’ve got to overcome that danger of treating children as if they’re brand new to education, when they come into to get seven aged 11 that actually they’ve had a very rich education before that, how can we build on that, so that it becomes seamless, so that’s really exciting thing to do? Yeah, another thing we’re working on at the moment is obviously Leicester is interesting city historically. And we’ve got the, the whole Richard III thing that happened a few years ago. And they, they found the bones and identify them and the lead archaeologist and he’s going to come and do some project work across our school, but the whole age range 3 all the way to 16, so we can do some really exciting things that as well, I think these are the opportunities within a multi Academy trust all too often you hear about, it’s about finances, it’s about the business side of it. It’s about economies of scale, it’s about centralising resources, which Yes, it is. And that frees up more money for the children in the classroom at the end of it. And, but for me, it’s about professionals working together. I also think that these things example was about outcomes, and you sit down to try and improve outcomes. But what you don’t realise if you’re actually working on process as well, there is something around having a coffee with colleagues with whom you’ve never worked before. And on a blank piece of paper saying, right, what is it we’re trying to achieve, I think the process often inadvertently outweighs the outcome. And if we don’t realize that you’ve got more out of the process than you realize

Lee Stanley 19:26
100% and I think, also to add to that, unfortunately, like you say, I think sometimes the outcome is, is the only thing people focus on miss miss the point and you talk about the integration between primary and secondary and, and by the sounds of the process that you’re putting into place, there be a lot smoother transition, I mean, I’ve got kids as well. And I was quite fortunate. And, and also, I was really intrigued that my youngest, she spent a certain amount of year five going to secondary school. And then quite a lot of time in year six in particular, that the final two terms, you know, at least once a week, going over, and, and seeing and integrating, which I think is is certainly something that that needs to happen so that it’s not like you say, a completely separate sort of scenario and schooling but collaborative collaborative between primary and secondary. There’s, there’s lots and lots of room there for improvement.

Liam 20:32
There is I mean, for example, we’ve got children and we’ve got staff and all the students and we sometimes forget that our greatest resource in a school is the children, we sometimes forget that so what we do, so let’s take the minibus and we go to one of the primarys, and we’ll do some work around STEM, you know, science, technology, and Maths, and engineering these kind of things. And what we sometimes forget, is that we have greater resources in a secondary school that can be shared with the primary so and they have a big focus on SAT’s, which is a big pressure that’s put on primaries, but what we can do in the secondary is we can come down and give them some enrichment that they might not otherwise be able to provide. So you can do some exciting science experiments where you have explosions, and you know, and lots of loud noises, and quizzes and bangs and, and all this kind of thing. And those kind of things are really excited for the children. Also, the languages work, you know, we’ve got language specialists who do take people through to GCSE, they can come down and do a day of Spanish with the children and you can do some artwork The other thing is computing with and I think sometimes children a better better place to deliver that then adults are, they have literally no fear around technology whatsoever. Whereas an adult is always worried if they press a button, they might do something wrong, the children just kind of straight in and they’ll have a go anything they’ve got no fear. The other side to all of this is when we get the children into our school, we have, we have a series of transition events, they have three whole days in the school. And they do lots of other things as well. We do a sport Stay with us. But something I haven’t mentioned yet is a vertical tutoring. So to make us small school even smaller for the children and make it more personal and more familiar, we have vertical tutoring. So every day for 20 minutes, either in an assembly or tutor period, you have children from your set, 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11 all working together. And the older ones who work with the younger ones, they’ll support them, they’ll guide them, they listened to the reading this sort of thing, the younger ones are getting an enormous amount of that out of that. And but the older ones are getting leadership opportunities as well. And they say that the best way to learn something is to try and teach it to someone else. That’s when you know that you’ve really mastered something. So we actually get children from lots and lots of primaries. And in fact, about 40 primaries, we get children and sometimes the child will be the only child coming from that particular primary. So without vertical tutoring, you’ve got the oldest students welcoming the younger ones, showing them around, taking them to the lessons telling them about the school systems, how to queue up for your lunch, all these kind of things where to go and get the right things you need, you know where to get your uniform for everything. So that child already feels before the summer holidays even come that they’re part of the Manor High family and when they come in September, they really hit the ground running. So I think using the children in your school is incredibly powerful. So I think our integration process in our school takes less than two weeks. Whereas in some schools, I think it takes about six weeks.

Lee Stanley 23:21
Brilliant. Brilliant. And obviously we’re coming up to September and recruitment will no doubt be high on the agenda of objectives. Have you got many, many sort of positions that you’re looking to fill for September?

Liam 23:34
Yeah, we’re looking for a second in command of English at the moment, which is a really exciting opportunity for someone and we’re looking for an English teacher as well. And obviously, we haven’t got to May the 31st Yes. So I may have people in my own school here, we’re looking for promotions at this moment, either in school or in other schools. So there will be some opportunities for people to come to work and school and experience a bit of the magic of Manor for themselves. And I, you know, we always manage to recruit really exciting people. When I came to the school The first thing I did in the school was to introduce core values. And I was left at at first people say, you know, why do you want core values, you know footsie 100 company, you know, your school, what do you think about, and again, that turned out to be really important around process. And we came up with excellence, inspiration, and care and respect, and that was after asking children, governors, parents, and everyone. And the inspiration part of that is trying to get inspirational teachers, because that’s what I want as a parent. And that’s what I want as a head teacher. Because if the children and inspired with fast paced lessons that are exciting, they’re never going to misbehave. And they are going to do the work and they are going to do the homework because they want to do it and they care about it. So inspiration came up was one of our core values. But when it comes to recruitment, and it forms part of our line of questioning in our interview process,

Lee Stanley 24:51
absolutely. And like you say that the students wholeheartedly make the school but yeah, the, the teachers that are there and, and working with those students is so, so important now to have the right team and, and it’s not necessarily just in regards to qualification and experience, it is whole, the whole individual, the personality and like you say, the the ambition, the traits, the teamwork collaborative, and, and it really it really does impact on on the year that you have moving forward. So Excellent. Excellent. Okay. And and what’s the easiest way for people to get in touch or connect with you,

Liam 25:39
I would really recommend I mean, obviously LinkedIn is quite good. That’s turning out to be a really good way of communicating certainly to professional level with people and through organizations. I’d also say our Facebook page is really powerful. We have people who can respond very quickly to questions if they ever appear on their. Twitter feed is really good as well. And that’s seven and also through the website and there’s an upcoming email address on there. So anytime people want to get in touch with us, we are really good at and getting back to people as quickly as possible. So I’d encourage people to do it that way.

Lee Stanley 26:10
Fantastic. Fantastic. Well, thank you ever so much for your time. And in having this conversation and like say, if if you would like to get in touch with Liam, I’ll post all of the connection and Twitter handle and Facebook feeds and links in the description below. So thank you ever so much Liam. It’s been an absolute pleasure.

Liam 26:34
Pleasure. Thank you very much.

SELECTED LINKS FROM THIS EPISODE

Connect with Liam Powell Linkedin 

Manor High School Facebook Page – Twitter Feed

Spark Academy

PEOPLE MENTIONED

Luke Ambler – ANDYSMANCLUB – Linkedin

Mital Thanki – Spark Academy – Linkedin

Paul Dix – Pivotal Education Linkedin