Reflections of an ex-head teacher

On this Christmas day 2024 I wanted to share with you my the life of a head teacher in the form of a not-so-traditional carol. Have a great day everyone! On the first day of Christmas, my school it gave to me, A lot of anxiety. On the second day of Christmas, my school it gave to me, Two angry mums and a lot of anxiety. On the third day of Christmas, my school it gave to me, Three snow days, two angry mums and a lot of anxiety. On the fourth day of Christmas, my school it gave to me, Four different SENCOs, three snow days,  Two angry mums and a lot of anxiety. On the fifth day of Christmas, my school it gave to me, Five wasp stings, four different SENCOs, three snow days,  Two angry mums and a lot of anxiety.  On the sixth day of Christmas, my school it gave to me, Six stressful SATs tests, five wasp stings, four different SENCOs,  Three snow days, two angry mums and a lot of anxiety. On the seventh day of Christmas, my school it gave to me,  Seven lunch provide...

Waking up this morning I am reminded of that old end-of-term feeling, one that thousands of teachers will be experiencing today, the first day of the Christmas break. Yesterday was December 20th, which means that there is only a short time now for teachers to decompress before the big day arrives. However, the latest I can remember breaking up for Christmas was on the 23rd, so at least it isn't as bad as that this year. My use of the word 'decompress' in the last paragraph is deliberate, as for me the end of term always felt like the completion of a deep sea dive. I would feel physically and mentally exhausted and I would need a couple of days to decompress whilst slowly coming up to the surface and feeling normal again. I am pretty confident that 99% of teachers would say that they experience something similar, and that they only start feeling human after around day three following the end of term. It is for that reason that I have given todays post the title 'why teac...

Today's Christmas tale is the story of how the phrase "That's a gingerbread village" came to be part of the lexicon in my school. Every year we had a number of Christmas traditions, many of which I am sure were common to lots of schools, but there was one in particular that I had not heard of happening elsewhere. I think that after reading my post today you will understand why that was. One of my teachers was a keen baker and I always enjoyed cooking in school with the children, so one year in a particularly jolly staff meeting the idea was hatched to hold a Christmas Bakeoff in school. Please note that we combined the words 'bake' and 'off' to ensure that we would not get into trouble with Paul Hollywood et. al. for stealing their idea! We decided to keep it simple (as we weren't stupid, at least we thought we weren't) so we decided to stick to one round, which for the purposes of copyright we shall refer to as the show-ender. Further adaptati...

Today I am going to consider the impact of the new bill for your average primary school. I am therefore going to focus on part 2 of the bill, as that section contains the information directly relating to schools. There is a huge amount in just this section, but for me there are several key takeaways. The appropriate authority of a relevant school in England must secure that breakfast club provision is available, free of charge, for all qualifying primary pupils at the school. This is obviously huge but although the burden of providing this service is clearly placed on the local authority, rural schools in particular are unlikely to be able to meet this expectation due to a lack of staffing and or premises availability. I am concerned for my colleagues in rural schools as parents may vote with their feet if things are not put in place quickly and my experience of local authorities suggests that change will take time. There does appear to be a 'power to exempt' a school from hav...

A few weeks ago my parents bought me a card which contained the slogan, 'dogs have owners, cats have staff'. The events of last night / this morning have certainly reinforced the fact that this statement is true, but I will get to that in a bit. I should state at this point that I am the proud owner of two incredibly fluffy 4-month old Ragdoll kittens, named Lennie and Leo. They are brothers, and the original plan was only to purchase one kitten, but that would have left Leo on his own and I just couldn't do it. I had previously thought that a cat, or cats, was not an option as living in a maisonette means they would have no access to outside space. Being out of the house myself was also a factor, as it would not have felt right leaving them alone all day. The latter issue is no longer relevant since I finished work back in July, and thankfully the only other thing preventing me from taking the plunge has been overcome after learning about Ragdoll cats, a breed which are mo...

As the head of a primary school I found assemblies tricky. Sometimes a subject would be obvious and I wouldn't have to spend too long preparing what I was going to talk about, but there were many occasions when the muse did not strike and it became a bit of a slog.  I am aware of those '365 Assemblies' style of books, which certainly simplify things, but I always felt that it was important to make my assemblies personal and relevant to the children and our school, which you simply cannot do if you rely on a book. Trying to come up with something that is understandable and appropriate for the younger children whilst also having something in it for upper key stage two also added to the challenge.  I understood the tremendous potential of assemblies and wanted to make the most of them as a time when we could be together as a school and reinforce the concepts and values that were important to us. Some training I went on several years ago really helped with the quality of my ass...

A few minutes ago, after returning from a lovely walk on a sunny mid-December Saturday afternoon, I logged on to my computer to write a blog entry for today, but my original plan has been hijacked.  I have no idea how it works, but when I start-up my internet browser I get a homepage (I think it is called that) with a selection of news stories that the internet gremlins have decided I will be interested in. Most of the stories seem to be cricket related, and there are always loads about the weather too, but I also still get quite a few stories from the education world, along with a smattering of stories that might be termed 'local interest'. Today there was one headline in particular that caught my eye and I could not resist clicking on it. The headline was "Primary school pupils heartbroken after vicar tells them 'Santa doesn't exist.'" In my career I only had the briefest contact with church schools, but as the head of a village community school I really...

Ok, this is going to be another bitter sweet one, but I promise I will end on a positive note... Today I am going to write about a Christmas tradition that I have experienced during probably every year of my career, namely Secret Santa. It is something I would recommend all schools doing, but there are some words of warning and helpful hints I want to share with you so that you can learn from the issues we had. I also want to use this story to illustrate the danger of Christmas traditions being ruined by a drive for 'efficiency'. Finally today I want to get a couple of moans off my chest about gifts that I was given in years past! Lets start with a handy hint, shall we? If Secret Santa is something that you thinking of setting up, or even if it is a tradition in your school already, it is worth double checking that everyone fully understands the rules. By that, I mean that you should be clear that the amount you specify to be spent on a present is not a rough guide, nor is it m...

Every year, the Chief Inspector of Ofsted produces a report which includes a summary of inspection findings from the last 12 months. This year’s report was published after I had finished my book (to be published), which contains a chapter on ‘how to survive Ofsted’ so I thought it would be useful to write a blog post as an addition to that chapter. From the perspective of a head teacher, the findings from the report can be used as a barometer for the focus areas any potential inspection of their school might have in the coming months. I have looked at the report and formulated some key questions that should be considered by any head teacher. Early Years We knew already that curriculum content and the use of assessment was something that Ofsted were focusing on, and the report makes explicit reference to that continuing. The report refers to schools highlighting ongoing concerns about early years language, communication and social skills, and it acknowledges the impact of the pandemic o...

Before I share the final part of the saga of our quest for a school lunch provider I want to write about why I chose to tell this epic tale. Recent Government data states that there are 2034 state funded primary schools with less than 100 pupils. We hovered around the hundred mark for the entirety of my time there. My point is, if we were a larger school we would either not have had this problem because we had our own kitchen or I would have had a team of staff to deal with the issue of provision if it arose. Also, if we were part of a MAT it would have all been sorted without taking up a huge amount of my time.  This is one of many issues faced by primaries who remain with local authorities, and with the reduced support they provide we are being pushed harder and harder into joining MATs. For 90 percent of my time in leadership I was a passionate 'remainer', but the pressure got so intense that I had changed my mind entirely before I left. My local authority was starting to ge...

A Response to TES Daily Blog Monday’s blog post from John Severs, the editor of TES, was certainly quite ‘triggering’ for me, as the young people say now. https://t.co/kYosRmprTN It was an excellent article that succinctly summarised the position of many head teachers, and ex-head teachers in my case, although the down side was that it did serve to remind me of several incidents from the last few years I had previously managed to bury in my subconscious. For me, the heart of his post was his description of a “a shift in perception of education towards it being a service.” and the fact that any perceived failure on the part of the school in the eyes of a parent is seen as a failure of the head teacher. This idea that an increasing number of parents have, that schools are working ‘for’ them, rather than with them, is a thread that runs through a number of the most challenging experiences I have had in the past few years. Now that John Severs has reminded me of them I thought that I migh...

In three decades in school I had lots of experiences with Jolly Saint Nick. The chance for the children to meet Santa in the last week of the autumn term was a tradition for us, and we even managed to keep it going through the restrictions of the pandemic with a 'socially distant Santa' visiting each class over zoom that year! In all my years in school though I can say that the one I experienced yesterday was definitely one of the weirdest. My partner and I were enjoying a lovely cooked breakfast in our local garden centre at around 9:30 am when the spectacle started to unfold. We had noted that there were quite a few cars in the car park but that the garden centre itself seemed almost deserted but we thought nothing of it as we tucked into our breakfasts. It turned out that the cars belonged to families who were waiting for the arrival of a special guest. Just a quick note on cooked breakfasts - are ‘swaps’ a thing of the past now? My tastes are pretty straightforward in that ...