
Walking into as principal in early 2021 was the first time I鈥檇 stepped foot into a UK state secondary school since I left my own in 1987. So it would be natural to wonder what on earth the board was thinking when appointing someone who had never taught in a state school, let alone been a middle or senior leader in one.
The following 12 months was the steepest learning curve of my career and that includes having been head of a prestigious Chinese boarding school. Here, I share three of my key takeaways from my years at WA:
UK state school teachers work even harder than I imagined
I once heard teaching likened to writing and performing a series of one-act plays each week. Not only that but the teachers have to assess the effectiveness of their 鈥減lays鈥 and then write a new set of plays for the following week, based ideally on their audience鈥檚 feedback (i.e. assessment data).
I鈥檝e written about this previously but I鈥檒l take any opportunity to restate the obvious: If teachers are 鈥渙n stage鈥 (i.e. teaching) for 90 per cent of a school week, as it鈥檚 , how can teachers possibly do the best possible job for their students?
When I taught in a state school in Canada, the percentage of teaching time was 75 per cent. So teachers had one-quarter of our work week to think about and discuss our lessons with the goal of making them the best they could be.
Budgets for state schools became ever tighter, and what I asked of teachers steadily increased.
In my international schools, the teaching time was typically 65-75 per cent: Even more time to work on being a great teacher rather than a surviving teacher. I鈥檓 sure you can imagine the respective impacts on teacher morale, energy, and 鈥 ultimately 鈥 quality.
During my years at WA, operating budgets for state schools became ever tighter, and what I asked of teachers steadily increased. And that was following the gruelling pandemic during which all WA teachers 鈥 regardless of whatever challenges they might have been experiencing outside of school 鈥 taught full timetables online. And yet, whatever the challenges, the teachers routinely put their jobs and their students first and the students had ongoing opportunities to be successful. It was remarkable.
The demands on UK state school teachers have inevitably resulted in many of them leaving the profession and many never joining it despite numerous initiatives by the previous UK government to incentivise teaching as a profession. All that most UK state teachers want, based on my time in that sector, is the time and energy to do the best job possible.
UK state school teachers are often 鈥渁 product of the system鈥
That鈥檚 what one of my senior leadership team told me when I expressed frustration at the apparent lack of professional open-mindedness on the part of UK-trained teachers. They were referring to the teacher training system, the emphasis on academic results as the indicator of teaching quality, and the challenge for teachers simply to keep their heads above water each week.
Who鈥檚 got time or energy to try anything different? I realise now what a privilege it was to work in international school communities comprising educators from a wide range of professional backgrounds. We learned so much from each other and were able to think about and discuss (because of the extra planning time) various teaching approaches that might best support our students.
Who鈥檚 got time or energy to try anything different?
Of course, it requires a different type of leadership to harness the wisdom of such a diverse group and to determine the most effective educational way forward, compared to leading a professionally homogenous teaching staff. Luckily, there were enough professionally adventurous, skilled teachers and leaders at WA that we did manage to start challenging some of the assumptions around pedagogy and assessment that had been created by their 鈥渟ystem鈥 and I am grateful to, and admiring of, all of them.
The gap between educational research and practice in the UK is massive
Before becoming a teacher, I was a research scientist. The scientific research that I carried out and published was shared with other practising scientists to inform their own research and practice. Research informed practice and vice versa.
Educational research and practice, at least here in the UK, have a different relationship: Researchers and practitioners (teachers and school leaders) operate mostly in their own worlds. Most researchers do not have extensive experience of actually working in schools. Most teachers don鈥檛 have experience of action research and are not sufficiently research- or data-literate to be able to determine how best to make use of the research literature, even if they manage to find time to read any.
Most researchers do not have extensive experience of actually working in schools.
Hence, it seems that the educational community is alarmingly vulnerable to following new trends or being influenced by compelling personalities, with very little scrutiny. I gave up on 鈥淓duTwitter鈥 for that very reason: Too many people with too little credibility who claimed to have found or determined 鈥渢he answer鈥 to a range of important questions in modern teaching.
Surely it would be better if educational research and practice were much more intertwined and mutually dependent and supportive? (And I write that as a proud honorary lecturer at the IoE and I鈥檝e made that same point to several colleagues there!
The model of the at the University of Florida seems so obviously a better example of how educational research and practice can inform each other.
State education is an oil tanker that will always be difficult to turn in a different, more relevant direction. Reflecting on my time at WA, I have ideas about how that could happen. But I don鈥檛 expect it to during my lifetime. Private schools 鈥 with their greater resources and agility 鈥 are much more likely to be venues for a progressive and relevant education in the coming years.聽