“I still like to think that I’m a very good cleaner. I still have an obsession with litter when I go around the school.”
Tom Hayter is currently assistant headteacher at Glyn School in Surrey. But he has had a much wider experience than many others in his role. He began his career as a school cleaner.
Now, having been everything from floor mopper to teaching assistant, newly qualified teacher, advanced-skills teacher and senior leadership team member, Hayter believes he has a rare perspective on school life.
“As the cleaner, I really enjoyed the conversations with the people I worked with,” he says. “The teachers and the caretaker and I would be in tears of laughter some afternoons. It all comes back to relationships, I think. Now, as assistant head, I try to be a positive force - influence - in the school. To try and laugh every day.”
He believes that his career has taught him about all aspects of school life: from messy classrooms to Ofsted inspections.
Hayter’s career began at the age of 17. With his A levels and a failed maths GCSE behind him, he needed to earn some cash. When a £5-per-hour cleaning job came up at the Surrey school at which his mother was headteacher, he took it.
“I can still smell the cleaning stall and the cleaning cupboard,” he recalls. But he found something else in those classrooms.
A unique perspective
“Even then, I recognised a really positive learning environment,” Hayter says. “Primary schools in particular - they make their classrooms look like Disney World.
“Even though I was there for £5 an hour, that stuck with me.
“In every single classroom I went into after school, the teachers were still there, and I’d chat to them.
“The cleaner and the caretaker and the dinnerladies were all part of the school community. We’re all a cog in the machine.”
Those two things - the sense of something valuable going on in the classrooms and a feeling that he was part of something important - convinced him that he wanted to continue working in a school.
Hayter does not see his rise through the educational ranks as complete yet. “Headteacher - that’s ultimately my career aspiration,” he says. “Once you start on a career, you keep on until you reach the top of the field. It’s the natural conclusion.” He pauses. “That’s not going to be my answer in the job interview.”
The job-interview answer came to him while he was still working his way up the career ladder. “As a classroom teacher, you maybe have an impact on 100 children. As assistant head, you have an impact on 1,000 children. As headteacher, you have an impact on 2,000 children. Knowing that, at the end of the academic year, a group of young people will leave the school with the tools to make the next step in their lives - that has to be the best job in the world.”
Meanwhile, Hayter continues to focus on building the kinds of relationships that drew him into teaching in the first place. He makes a point of stopping to talk to cleaning staff, cover assistants and learning-support staff.
“I feel I can empathise with them because I did it as well,” he says. “I’m not saying every teacher needs to be able to do that. But does it help? Well, if it helps to improve at least one person’s day…
“And if there’s anyone who’s at the start of that journey, I’d say to them that they’re about to start on one of the best journeys that they possibly could.”
