RUSSELL Crowe knows how I felt. His character in the film Gladiator faced brutish opposition, and, more terrifying still, the painful wait for the Emperor to indicate - with a mere digit - the fate of the vanquished.

But that was Hollywood and this is a secondary school in the Home Counties. Here there were a dozen colleagues, thumbs strangely out of view - to me at least. I, the new assistant headteacher, awaited their verdict as I battled to sell them new initiatives. Terror indeed.

So what of my title: assistant headteacher? How has this role been for others I wonder? Perhaps you think it is timely recognition of the enormity of the senior role, with properly recognised leadership scale pay? Or perhaps the title is as welcome as Captain Blackadder’s luminous balaclava and brightly burning cigarette as he is sent over the top?Perhaps you preferred the more humble title “senior teacher”, with its reassuring “first-among-equals” feel? I would not know about what things used to be like, being just one year into the new role. After that year I have been left licking my wounds and wondering what hit me.

The degree of loneliness was something I hadn’t bargained for. Sure I had read about it, but that was in the old days, before I crossed the vale into senior management.

Gone was the easy cry of “management needs to get a grip!” and the friendly company of old staffroom hands who could take you into their confidence as, with a nod and wink, they gestured towards a senior manager with an unmistakable look that said “watch that one, he’s a wrong ‘un”. Now that I had to get that “grip”, the question remained: could I do it?.

An experienced colleague once told me that she had been trained to “get things right every time before facing the staff”: I resisted this on the grounds that colleagues would surely understand that “we are all human” - after a year I knew what my colleague had meant.

So why do it? Why stick your neck out for a few more pounds, a lot more stress and the loneliness of being one of “them”?

Well, for a start, it is a stonkingly effective transitional phase for those who fancy running their own school one day. The role may lie awkwardly between the authority of the head and deputies on the one hand and the real power of the departmental heads on the other - but it does serve as a sweetened entree in the banquet of real leadership. Working with “stakeholders”, helping to “secure the vision” and other such mantras emanating from the National Professional Qualification for Headship prove absolutely crucial.

More than that, the problems and solutions are not as obvious as I thought: what makes sense to experienced department heads may not be anywhere near as clear to governors, or parents, or the education authority. A governor of considerable clout once told me - which means I can get away with saying it here - “governors meetings call for the best mixed-ability teaching”. And why shouldn’t they?

The management of change is something that none of us can now escape: Curriculum 2000, key skills, key stage 3 reform - a raft of measures dropped with less than laser-guided accuracy - give me a credible reason for this job. I see my role being about helping teachers to teach and trying to be part of the solution, not the problem. Perhaps that is too idealistic by half. Watch this space.

So what of my first year? Surely it was “after all, fun”? It was not. It’s been hard and largely thankless. There was not much room for fun in state schools in 2001, even in an excellent school like mine. The role only ever makes sense when it connects with why I became a teacher: the children.

A knock at the door: “Miss, please can you see if Mr Uttley is there; he’s the business studies teacher”. A smile returns to my face and I wander to the staffroom door, whistling Vivaldi.

Simon Uttley teaches at Aylesbury high School, Buckinghamshire