Vicky - not her real name - is a school leader whom her whole community regards as “one in a million”. She’s leaving headship for good, even though she’s in her mid-50s.
When I visited her school a couple of years ago, Vicky allowed two Year 11s to show me around: their banter with staff and fellow pupils, their tales of what they had done - the school productions, the residentials and a host of other learning experiences - left me in no real doubt about how they felt about the school. “There must be something you don’t like,” I protested.
She takes the blame when things go wrong and gives away all the praise and accolades to others. She’s our moral compass
Puzzled, they thought long and hard before the girl said: “Well, yes, there are only 110 days left before I leave.”
Vicky was “a rock”, explained one staff member. “She takes the blame when things go wrong and gives away all the praise and accolades to others. She’s our moral compass.”
So when I heard last week that Vicky was leaving, I rang her up. It was a complicated story. She had handled the arrival of an unkind Ofsted team, and the school remained “good, with outstanding features” (“Whatever that means,” Vicky added wryly). Budget reductions of £500,000 over three years had been smoothly managed; though she confessed to feeling awful when some of the poorest members of the local community had lost their part-time jobs at the school.
“They were only just managing,” she said as she explained how her school raised lots for the local food bank. In her time, she had taken in her stride gut-wrenching child abuse cases, the tragic death of a pupil in a road accident and other family crises.
“No,” she said, “I can cope with all that and refill my tank with the optimism that comes from seeing countless pupils grow and achieve so many extraordinary things.” So what was the last straw? It wasn’t the funding formula farce or the regulatory torrents from the Department for Education: nor was it the changes in exams at 16.
Fear is the enemy of learning
Was it the behaviour of colleague heads, playing the market by offloading kids or renaming themselves CEOs with a salary hike? “No,” she said. “It’s Bill, the head of history. Whenever I needed cheering up, I’d slip into one of his lessons.
“Well, Bill’s leaving; something one of the Ofsted team did - they were on their mobile during the lesson and obviously didn’t begin to understand group works - one of Bill’s strengths. I told him to ignore it.”
Vicky reminded me of the plays that Bill wrote, based on local history, and then staged with “difficult-to-reach” kids. Apparently, Bill couldn’t get the ill-judged comment out of his head. Bill is moving to Scotland where houses “are cheaper and fear doesn’t stalk the corridors of the schools”.
Vicky’s conclusion was that if she couldn’t protect her best staff from fear, which she described as the “enemy of learning”, it was time for her to go. She’ll do voluntary work in a local hospital. “They are in a worse plight than we are - difficult though that is to believe,” she said.
We can ill-afford to lose them and so many others like them - victims of a climate that doesn’t reflect their generosity of spirit.
Sir Tim Brighouse is a former schools commissioner for London
