As with most senior leaders, 24 August 2016 was prominent on my calendar, especially since this was my first year with responsibility for whole-school GCSE outcomes. Sleep was fitful the night before, as the data team downloaded results from midnight.

The head’s email came in at around 8am. “Cautiously positive - comfortably above floor targets,” it said. “Get in there!” I thought.

It was a light-hearted drive to work and I was excited to see my students’ results, as I had picked up a Year 11 group in my PE specialism. This had given me a chance to put into practice the strategies that I was implementing across the whole school.

The leadership team settled and my headteacher passed around the subject-by-subject results…My stomach lurched and I felt sick. My class had bombed.

I stared in disbelief. In front of me was the unarguable data. Everyone had a copy. I had taught the worst-performing Year 11 subject.

I was swirling in a whirlwind, unable to function in the meeting or see outside the bubble of what felt like my personal, spectacular failure.

As in the first stage of grief, I felt denial and disbelief. “The exam board made a mistake, the students’ coursework grades were too high for these outcomes - it was clearly an error,” I told myself. I telephoned the board. A patient employee explained that they had calculated the marks correctly.

I felt I had failed the students and this shamed me professionally.

I’ve taught for 18 years. As a senior leader, I hold middle leaders to account by challenging them to be more effective, aspirational and efficient. The results hit me hard.

Colleagues were kind, but I still felt terrible. Seven of the cohort who could have got Cs got Ds. This brutalised the subject’s percentage. I felt I had failed the students and this shamed me professionally.

With a week to go before the new term, I took my family on a prearranged camping trip to Dorset. During this time, I could not shake an overwhelming feeling of crushing disappointment and confusion. This was intensified by the fact that I couldn’t identify what I could have done better or differently.

I tried to gain some perspective. Since becoming head of progress for key stage 4, I had immersed myself in the role. The overall outcomes for the cohort were positive, but I could not get past the results of my own students - I had let them down.

I am lucky to have a fantastic partner who knows when to listen and when to give me a “tune-up”. And so, a few days later, when the night before school began I was still moping around, she told me my behaviour was now bordering on “vanity”.

This was just what I needed to snap out of my wallowing. From that moment things got better. Re-marks were submitted, targeted papers were recalled and the post-mortem began in earnest.

A plan of action

The Year 11 outcomes presentation to the governing body was a surprisingly cathartic and positive experience. It was tough standing in front of the governors, listening to their kind words of congratulation, while my subject was at the bottom of the pile.

This, however, enabled me to account for the underperformance by showcasing my analysis - using specific examples of students who had missed their forecast. I presented their coursework grades and the marks they needed in the exam to achieve their target grade. This was then supported by their final mock performance, which comfortably showed that each student would achieve their grade. I then showed the actual exam performance, which was 15 per cent lower.

To explain why this happened I was able to show shots of the students’ exam scripts - ie, student A got 5 out of 6 for this challenging banded question, showing really sophisticated understanding of some complex terms. The national average for this question was 1.9 out of 6. Yet for the most accessible questions, they gained 0 marks because they misread the wording. Ultimately, this provided the blueprint for strategies to improve future outcomes.

Maybe I had taught the course well. Maybe the students did understand the content. Maybe I can reflect and develop my practice to ensure future performance is improved. Maybe I am not a complete failure.

If the worst happens

If you find yourself in this situation, here are the four things I would do:

• Gather as much data as possible about the exam performance: recall papers; submit scripts for re-marks; analyse all information from the exam board in relation to national performance. This generates a clear picture for understanding what went wrong.
• Scrutinise the data that led you to make the forecasts that the students ultimately didn’t attain. Was this reliable? Were you as professionally cautious as you could have been? What can be learned from this?
• Own it. Accept that this is hugely disappointing, be open and honest about how you feel with your line manager but then move on - the job is hard enough.
• Take the lessons learned, improve practice and move forward to the next challenge.

Simon Postlethwaite is head of progress for key stage 4 at the Bridge Learning Campus in Bristol