Ruth Davies is coming to the end of her term as president of the NAHT school leaders’ union during a year like no other, in which the impact of the Covid crisis transformed school life.

She has been involved in education for more than 30 years, having begun teaching in 1986. As well as being a union leader, Davies, who has twice been president of NAHT Cymru, is headteacher of Waunarlwydd Primary School in Swansea, where she has been since 2002. She has also worked for a local authority literacy team and as a peer inspector for Estyn, the inspectorate for Welsh schools.

Here’s how she fared when faced with Tes’ 10 questions …

1. Who was your most memorable teacher and why?

My English teacher, Mr Holcroft. He taught me to think for myself. When I look back, the people who had the greatest influence on the younger version of myself are those who made me feel bold about exploring my own ideas, and not having to conform and be like everyone else. And Mr Holcroft, who was my English teacher at high school, did exactly that.

It’s funny: you look back much later in your life and its only then that you can pick out the differences that individuals have made to you. I loved English and philosophy. They were my favourite subjects and it so happened that he taught them.

2. What were the best and worst things about your time at school?

I loved my time in school, I really did.

Like everybody else, I enjoyed the social aspect but I enjoyed the academic aspect as well. I did what was expected of me. I guess the timetabling and the routine were the worst bits for me because I felt my wings were clipped, and the best bits were just that I was lucky to have some fantastic teachers.

3. Why do you work in education?

I strongly believe in the public sector and my move into education rolls on from there. Education teaches an individual two things: it teaches you the value of your own thought and it also teaches you the importance of always being open to change.

I think the purpose of a public-sector education system should be not just to change an individual’s opportunity for good but also to influence the way in which the country as a whole can work together for the good of all of us.

4. What are you proudest of in your career and what do you regret?

There is not a single thing in the whole of my career that I have achieved on my own. There are things I have led on, initiated and driven forward - increasingly so through school leadership, headship and mature headship - but I can honestly say there isn’t a single thing I have achieved that I could have done on my own. It is the teamwork element of all those achievements that has brought longevity to those outcomes.

So, I think crafting a team, a group of colleagues around me at all times, who shared my passion for the rights of the learner and the rights of everyone to be included and to feel of equal value [at my school], has been my proudest achievement.

I’m a very open sort of person; I will think out loud. But it took me until I was about 50 to realise that you don’t have to say everything that comes into your head; that there is such a thing as a filter and, sometimes, a filter isn’t a coward’s way out - sometimes it helps you, actually, in the longer term. If I’ve got a regret, it’s maybe that I could have found that out a little bit earlier.

5. Who would be your colleagues in your perfect school staffroom?

I’d have to say my current staff and pretty much everyone I’ve worked with. It would be people who made me think, who made me laugh and who challenged me in terms of my established practice because, once you get to my age, you are pretty much fully formed. It takes a lot, sometimes, for you to really challenge your core beliefs because they’ve always worked.

If I had to name two people beyond that, I guess it would be my own kids, Joe and Alice. Neither of them are teachers - they’re both medics - but they make any room they are in a brighter one. They make me laugh, they challenge me every day and inspire me.

6. What would you say are the best and worst aspects of our schools system today?

The very best systems are ones that are responsive to the nurturing of the learner’s voice as an absolute central premise of its whole machinery, not as an addition or optional extra.

The very best of our systems are ones that don’t just have a barren, narrow-minded, knowledge-led curriculum but ones that recognise the needs of the whole learner.

To be really great going forward, we need to think that we’ve had to adapt in the period of crisis, we’ve had to adapt the way our children are tested, examined and held accountable, and ask ourselves: are we any the worse off? Have schools suddenly flopped? Have these organisations stopped being effective and responsive?

If anything, we could argue that, actually, they’ve probably been more efficient than ever before. So we need to be brave about looking at the systems that we’re about to reimpose in a whole new landscape and say, “actually, we didn’t think they were of value and worth before; why would you want to repeat them again in a post-Covid landscape?” Is this our opportunity to reimagine, in a transformational way, the whole landscape of education?

7. Your own teachers aside, who in education has influenced you the most?

I’ve got so many colleagues whom I’ve taught with; colleagues who were there as mature headteachers when I came into leadership, colleagues from across the country through my work on the national executive of the NAHT. I have been hugely influenced by so many of them.

But in the middle of all that, there was one person who was really a constant, who was there when I got my first leadership post and who acted as a mentor.

He didn’t come from education and yet he challenged me - more than any adviser ever has, more than any inspector ever has - to justify why I thought what I did.

He would be incredibly honest with me behind closed doors but just as hugely supportive of me out in the wider arena. He supported me 100 per cent to take those risks, to test new waters, and not to be afraid of failure. That was my chair of governors, Allan Rees.

Allan sadly died last year. His contribution to my school was just phenomenal. He was a very, very dear friend. He was my sharpest critic as well, but my strongest advocate.

8. If you became education secretary tomorrow, what would be the first thing you’d do?

My ambition would be to divorce the school system from the political system. They don’t make healthy bed partners. One is necessarily influenced by the other in a way that isn’t always in the best interest of the population who are actually in school.

My wish list for 21st-century Britain is that we see a school system that becomes more and more divorced from the political system, which is subject to change every five years. As we know, what we need as professionals is a longer run at things, we need a longer proactive plan that is not harnessed and tied to any particular ideology, which can change.

9. What will our schools be like in 30 years?

The best-case scenario is that we have a school system where, as I said, the learners are helping us to make the decisions, because they are living the life that we think we know about but we don’t. I don’t know what it’s like to be a 15-year-old in 2021.

Only people with that lived experience can actually come forward with the solutions, so we have to find systems that are responsive to that voice.

If we don’t make these changes, then my biggest fear is that schools become very barren, very mundane, very uncreative places.

10. What one person do you think has made the most difference to our schools in the past 12 months?

I should be able to reel off names of political figures to you, here, who should have been there to support our schools. Ultimately, when our schools needed them, they let them down - they let them down big time. They either gave wrong advice, no advice or hugely fractured advice. I’m hugely disappointed in the way in which schools have been let down by the people who you might have expected to be able to rely on.

In terms of who has made the greatest difference, it’s got to be our school staff across the three nations that we represent [England, Wales and Northern Ireland].

At times, when they could have easily looked left and right, they just kept their heads down, they’ve ignored the negative press and the unhelpful publicity and carried on in spite of, not because of, government. They’ve not stopped in their efforts to ensure that their pupils and their families emerged from this crisis as well protected as they possibly could have.

So, my big shout out would be to school staff across the three nations, who have done a phenomenal job of just keeping on keeping going.

Interview by Tes reporter John Roberts

This article originally appeared in the 23 April 2021 issue