A mother once told me she had chosen not to travel to India for her own mother’s funeral, as she was conserving funds for the next term’s fees.
That exchange has stayed with me, and it captures something essential about independent education that rarely makes it into the usual media narratives: the profound sacrifices families make, and the weight of responsibility that this places on independent school leaders. We must never forget, even for a moment, the trust parents place in us.
When I sat down to write The A-Z of Independent School Leadership, the monkey on my shoulder kept prodding: “Go on then, what makes you the expert?’” After all, the independent sector has no shortage of high-profile exceptional leaders.
But after twenty years at the helm of , and stepping down in difficult personal circumstances, followed by time living abroad, I found myself with something rare: perspective. Distance. Time to think without a parent at the door or a child in tears.
And with that came an overwhelming urge to make sense of it all – not to issue commandments from on high, but to share a potpourri of distilled ideas that might spark further thought, or be balls for others to run with.
What made me the expert? After, all, the independent sector has no shortage of high-profile exceptional leaders.
The book poured out of me in a couple of weeks with the momentum of something that had been quietly forming for years. The alphabet format – the unifying feature of the A-Z series – became both constraint and delight. How do you channel a lifetime’s experience into twenty-six letters? In the end, the A-Z format worked wonders and I settled on headings that reflected the full mess and magic of independent schools, such as Finances, God, Latin, Quirkiness, and Magpie.
Take “Quirkiness”, for instance – every great independent school has its quirks and eccentricities, and its own way of doing things. These oddball moments are etched into the minds of the pupils. But how does that sit with today’s focus on regulatory compliance, central planning, and organisational systems? That’s the kind of question I wanted to explore.
There are countless books on school leadership, but few focus specifically on the challenges and opportunities within the fee-paying sector. However, my editor Roy Blatchford believes the book will have wider appeal; he writes in his foreword that it’s “for teachers and leaders in any sector, in any context”. I hope he’s right; in fact I know he’s right: we all learn by looking at common issues through different lenses.
I settled on headings such as Finances, God, Latin, Quirkiness, and Magpie.
That said, running through the book are recurring themes that will feel familiar to anyone in the independent sector: the growing commercialisation of independent schools, the rise of mergers and for-profit groups, the tension between educational ideals and financial survival. And then there’s VAT on fees – the full impact of which won’t be seen for another year or so, as children reach natural exit points in their educational journeys.
I also wanted to capture the exploratory spirit that makes independent schools genuine engines of innovation. Free from some constraints of the state system, they can experiment with later starts for teenagers, hybrid learning models, or new AI approaches to assessment and admissions. That freedom benefits not just their own pupils but educational practice more broadly.
I wanted to capture the exploratory spirit that makes independent schools genuine engines of innovation.
If there’s any wisdom in these pages, it comes from the hundreds of children, parents, and teachers who taught me, often without meaning to. The most valuable lessons came when things went wrong, or when someone offered tough feedback, or put a question that made me rethink an assumption.
I’ve packed a lifetime’s experience into this book – and even if the reader doesn’t always agree, I’m confident that there’s something for just about every aspiring, new, and even seasoned, school leader. If any of this leads to one better outcome for one child, then the book will have been worth it.
Guy Holloway’s book The A-Z of Independent School Leadership, which is the latest volume in the Hachette Learning’s exceptional A-Z series, is out on Friday, October 10 2025:
