All The Things I Didn't Do: Lessons learnt on a more sustainable approach to headship.

It will be no surprise that, as a headteacher, I have found March-July 2020 extremely taxing. However, with the exception of two discrete weeks, one in May and one in June, when there were very physical manifestations of stress (eg. random bursting into tears, poor sleep and a huge quasimodo stye) I've largely felt OKAY: in control and confident. This blog is a reflection on this experience.

During the corona pandemic, this is a list of all the things I didn't do:

• Organise FSM provision (or the Edenred debacle)

  • Write 50 pages of risk assessments

  • Design, launch or train staff on the use of a VLE

  • Plan a half-term holiday camp

  • Plan or deliver the socially distanced sports day

  • Phone all our families every couple of weeks as the model changed

  • Submit the ever-changing DfE attendance form

  • Co-ordinate an impressive safeguarding and welfare programme

  • Organise all the daily logistics (break covers, lunch hall seating plans, allocated toilet signs etc).

Having an extensive (far more lengthy than the above bullet points) list of things I didn't do was a significant shift for me as an individual and our school, and had benefits for us all.

Corona forced me to focus on the strategic decisions needed for our school community. On reflection, almost all that I was doing during this time can be sorted into the 4 categories below:

1. Reading the endless guidance and coming up with the list of decisions/questions to take to various groups:

• • • MAT

    • SLT

    • MLT

2. Communication, communication, communication!

3. HR implications

4. Keeping an eye on the 'September school' and ensuring that all the normal work that needed to be done for a new academic year still happened.

The evidence is that as a team, we got this right. We added some covid-specific questions to our annual staff survey in May 2020 and these were some headlines:

• • There is clear communication to staff during COVID-19: 100%

  • I feel supported by the leadership team during COVID-19: 100%

  • There are clear and realistic expectations for my job role during COVID-19: 97%

  • I feel the organisation has responded effectively to COVID-19: 100%

Clearly, I was thrilled the staff felt so supported and well-led during this difficult time.

I do have tendencies towards perfectionism, being a control freak and finding delegation a challenge. I am grateful that leading during a pandemic has provided a catalyst to address some of these habits.

More than ever, the delegation mantra of 'do what only you can do' has become increasingly important. In order to do a good job at the four priorities above, I was given the extra push I needed to delegate and empower others. In a future post, I might reflect further on what I've learnt about effective delegation.

Although I would give a lot for corona to not have happened and 2019-2020 to have been a normal academic year, I believe there have been significant silver linings around sustainability for me personally, and the school.

For me: Sustain and Survive

Having such a strong team of individuals around me to participate in decision making and implement the endless list of actions has definitely allowed me to flex muscles of a more sustainable model of leadership. This not only helped me survive during corona but has given me an insight into an approach to headship that will be needed if I want to buck the trend of an average tenure of headship being less than 10 years.

For the School: Sustain and Succession

I have no plans to go anywhere at the moment: I adore my school and I'm very much in my infancy as a headteacher. However, regardless of your own immediate intentions, I think its sensible that schools think about succession and plan for it purposefully. And I firmly believe, that post-covid, my school is in a stronger position with regards to succession and leadership; it was a joy to watch others lead with such competence and confidence.