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A post to follow up from my article in Headteacher Update

Being a reflective sort, as teachers tend to be, I had some further thoughts following yesterday's publication of my first article for Headteacher Update. Here is a link to the article if you would like to read it: https://tinyurl.com/yc74jux9 

I want to start by name-checking the headteacher I worked for early in my career, as he helped me see that it was possible to be the kind of leader I wanted to be. All of the ‘ten commandments’ in yesterday’s article could be applied to his leadership, even the one about learning the names of all the children, and that was quite an achievement for him as we had around 500 pupils in our school! So, thank you, Bruce Dale, for inspiring me to follow my instincts and be myself.

Since sending in my article, I have been thinking a lot about why the headteacher-pupil relationship is so meaningful, and I want to mention one aspect I neglected to write about initially. It is a fact that this relationship is likely to be the longest and most significant one that pupils will have throughout their primary education. Sure, they will build a closer bond (hopefully) with their class teacher each year, but that relationship will effectively only last for 12 months before the class teacher has to move on with another group of children. Their relationship with a headteacher, at least with an attentive one, will potentially last for seven years, until they move on to secondary school.

I also want, in this post, to address a feeling that I have, which is that the kind of headteacher I was, might be considered to be an old-fashioned way of doing the job and that in 2025 the head should be more focused on being an effective manager than acting like they were still a teacher. If we look at the ten ‘headteacher standards’ for example, which are made up of 38 bullet points, I can find only one that relates to the kind of relationship I describe in my article.  It’s also a very short bullet point: “Create a culture where pupils experience a positive and enriching school life.” That feels like an important one, and although others are many and significant too, I can’t help feeling that the way that the standards are framed, the DfE don’t think so. Further googling of ‘essential characteristics of headteachers’ mostly ignores having a good relationship with their pupils, too, which is a shame. Thankfully, an article on the ‘The Headteacher’ website from September 2024 does refer to the increased importance of interpersonal skills in the role of headteacher, but I suspect that it is focusing more on their relationships with other adults.

Perhaps I am a bit old-fashioned, but given the societal changes we have seen during and since the pandemic, and with the extra pressures on families impacting their dynamics, surely it is our role as heads to be a constant, dependable, reliable, supportive adult in a child’s life?
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