Reflections of an ex-head teacher

When I had completed my manuscript I was hit by the realisation that I had no idea what to do next. A bit of quick research online told me that I needed to start by finding out which of the many publishers out there accept unsolicited texts. Once I had a list to work with I quickly found that each of the publishers ask you to complete a proposal form and send it to them. They are all different, but they all include the same sorts of thing information about you synopsis of the book suggested audience what sets your book apart from others on the market This last one floored me, but it made sense to have to answer it. I guess that publishers don't have the time to read all the manuscripts they are sent, so a short proposal form helps them decide which they can look at in more detail and which to reject completely. The problem I was then faced with was to actually 'sell' the idea of my book. In my experience, selling ourselves is not something that teachers are naturally good a...

I am fully aware that this post might be a bit controversial, but please read it in its entirety before judging me. It seems to me that the obsession that schools have with improving attendance at the moment is misguided at best and self serving at worst. Whilst regular attendance is of course what are looking for, I don't understand why are we spending so much time and energy trying to get attendance to 'above average' levels when that effort would be much better spent elsewhere. For a child, 94% attendance means missing about 8 days school over the course of the year. Younger children in particular are often ill and although the expectation on teachers is super high now we haven't quite got to the point where we are expected to provide a medical service. Sending letters and threatening families if attendance drops below 90% is not what we should be doing and the hard line on holidays in term time is a case of using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.  Surely there is room ...

Since leaving my school, as mentioned in a previous post, I have been writing a book. As well as it being a manual for headteachers, it focuses on my leadership journey, and the development of my leadership style, which I have called CULTIVATIONAL LEADERSHIP. In my book I refer to my leadership influences, and to one person in particular, but I do not go into much detail about them, so I thought that my blog entry today could remedy that. Having worked for a frankly terrifying head teacher in my first, thankfully short term, position, I then moved to a school much nearer to home, where I was to stay for the next ten years. A first school, for those of you who have never heard of one, is a school which takes pupils up to the end of year three. That has its pros and its cons, but the school has since changed to a full primary, so they take children up to the point where they transfer to secondary school. The head teacher of this school is the subject of todays post, and definitely my big...

I know in my first post I set out a grand plan for what I am going to write about, but I want to slip this one in first. Here are some things I have learned since leaving the classroom. Parents are right when they complain about school traffic. It is as bad as they say it is. I have found that there are times of day that it is wise to stay off the roads if you live within, or want to get to somewhere within a mile of a school. Its not just primary schools, as I have been caught out visiting a supermarket close to a secondary school at home time. It seems that the children (sorry, young people) are too cool to have mum (or dad!) pick them up at the school gate but not too cool that they mind being collected from the Sainsbury's car park next door. The flip side of this is that, if you time it just right, the supermarkets are almost completely deserted if you can find one that is not too close to a secondary school and get there at about 2:55pm. Mums (or dads!) will be otherwise enga...

After 30 years in education, first as a class teacher, then as a deputy head and finally as a head, I am now an ex-head teacher.  Why is that? I hear you ask. Well, the answer can be summed up in two words, burn out (or is it one word, 'burnout'). I will have to check that. Having lead a small village primary school for over a decade, through covid and through the proceeding collapse in society, I realised that needed a serious break for my own mental health. Initially I thought it might be a permanent break from the profession, but I soon realised that this was not going to be the case, although I think it will be a permanent break from the classroom. So, over the last few months I have been sat in my home office writing my book (as yet unpublished), currently called 'How to be a Head Teacher', which I hope will become a bible for the modern school leader, one which might just prolong a few careers! I have described it in the introduction as the book I wish I had acces...