Andrew O’Neill: ‘A school usually fails due to its systems, not its staff’

Andrew O’Neill is school policy and delivery adviser to education secretary Bridget Phillipson. He is currently seconded from his role as a secondary headteacher. He writes:

I grew up in the North East of England, mainly in Darlington. My Dad became the headteacher of a school there that was in a really bad way. He ended up leading it for 18 years, completely turning it around. I was a pupil there, and it was a fantastic place to be. It had incredibly high standards, but it was a fun school, too. We shouldn’t be afraid of having fun: it’s critical that there are moments of joy for every pupil and every member of staff, every day.

I was diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma when I was nine years old and then again when I was 11. I grew up very quickly. I had to face my own mortality at a very young age. There was a protectionism around me, too, because, with the treatment, you are so weak, and you are in and out of hospital for tests. Obviously, it did shape how I grew up, but in a positive way. I threw myself into everything. I had this deep resilience. My memories of when I was young are really happy ones.

My Dad gave me a front-row seat to watch how a school can transform a deprived community. It took time. It was three or four years until we could really see how much had been achieved. It wasn’t just the results: I remember these amazing musicals, these huge productions, and people who did not even have kids at the school would come and watch. I don’t think I truly understood the power of that school and what it did for that community until I looked back on it as an adult. I knew I wanted to continue to be part of something like that.

I got my first job as an RE teacher at 22, but I looked about 12 years old! I loved that school, it was just like the one I had attended - full of joy. But towards the end of that first year, my Hodgkin lymphoma relapsed. It was extremely rare for it to return after so long. I had six months of chemotherapy. It was touch-and-go at points. I was in intensive care at one stage. I was wrecked, incredibly thin, had lost my hair. And the school was amazing. It was a proper community, a family. It reacted as good schools should. It showed me what good schools should be like.

I’ve been in a hurry since. This feeling of having limited time is always there in the back of my mind. So, yes, I have been very ambitious. I knew I wanted to be a head. Thanks to some hugely supportive colleagues, I was able to progress to head of sixth form at 25, to become an assistant head at 27, to go on to be a deputy, and at the age of 33 to become a head. I wanted it so badly, I wanted to have an impact and I was incredibly lucky that some fantastic people mentored me, looked after me and believed in me.

I’ve learned that there is a balance in leadership, and people too often get it wrong: they think they need to either be really, really, nasty or really, really soft. You have to be somewhere in the middle, but, more importantly, you have to be the one with the ideas and be able to get people on the bus to roll those ideas out. My dad’s gift was his ability to innovate and get buy-in to those ideas. I strive to do the same.

I sought out a challenging school for my first headship. I wanted that impact. But I also wanted to show that you can get that impact in a different way to what many leaders seem to think. There are too many examples of headteachers who go into failing schools, and they think the answer is just to sack a load of people or to just go as hard as they can. They have decided before they even get through the door that the adults are always the problem. It’s very, very rarely the adults. Usually, a school is failing because the systems are not very good, and if you fix the systems and the structures, suddenly you find those adults have much more capacity than you realised - they just needed proper systems in place.

I’m obsessed with using objective strategy tactics as a methodology for how you improve things over a long period of time. When you go into a really challenging school, there are often a hell of a lot of tactics you could use, because you’re playing “whack a mole”. You have to step back from that. I had four pillars. We had to sort our behaviour, we had to have consistent quality teaching, we had to have secure finances, and we had to focus heavily on enrichment: kids had to want to come to school. And if we did those things together, that meant - and I told my team this - we would be the best school in London. I believed that, and I made sure they believed it.

I pledged from the start of my headship that we would always end each term with something joyful, something that showed we cared about the kids and that we trusted them: a big Christmas dinner served by all of us on the staff, a school site full of inflatables, something as simple as non-school uniform days or an ice cream van. A non-uniform day doesn’t feel from the outside like an important thing, but, as a kid, that’s us saying we trust you. As a sector, we need to understand that we don’t have to make children miserable to have high standards. You can have both: joy and high standards can work in tandem. And you do need both: to do the fun stuff, you have to be doing the bread and butter incredibly well.

Schools are very, very good at reacting under pressure. Covid showed us that - we had systems in place in schools so quickly, and that was down to heads getting the job done despite the challenges in front of them. In a crisis, schools are simply phenomenal places in how they can adapt and keep children safe and supported.

Grenfell Tower was so close to us and when the tragedy happened, it was catastrophic for the community. We had pupils who escaped. We had pupils who lost relatives. I got there to the school early that morning, weaving through the emergency services, who were covered in soot, and I turned and saw the building and it was just so terrible. It took your breath away. That community came together in the days and weeks after in a beautiful and necessary way, and everyone in school in that area can be so proud of what they contributed.

I am work-obsessed. I know that about myself. On my first day as head, it was my eldest’s first day of school and my twins were 2 years old. My wife has been unbelievable. The job is so all-consuming. But I don’t have regrets. I don’t think the job overtook my life. I didn’t do the school drop-offs like some of my friends, but I was there for the nativities, there for the big moments. I had balance. Or maybe my wife has made sure I have had balance!

As a leader, you are only as good as your team. And that team has to be able to tell you the truth. My deputy, Oonagh, has always done that. She would say, “Andrew, it’s too much…” and I would know she’s right. My other deputy, Paul, is now acting headteacher, and the school is getting even better. I get as much out of that as I would any success I have myself.

It’s important to recognise when you are coming to the end in a job. It’s that moment when you are unsure where you can take things next. It’s the moment when you realise the organisation needs some new ideas, and that you’re not best to provide them.

My current role is a secondment. I was very happy as a head. But this felt like a huge opportunity - not just for me, but for a representative of heads to have that role at the centre of policymaking in a way that has never happened before. I have felt that responsibility and I can say, honestly, that having the perspective of a serving headteacher has had an impact: the DfE does want to make policy that works, and my job is to help make that possible.

Being on the other side has been useful: there are 8,000 people who work in this organisation, it is a £100 billion-plus department. It is extremely complex. I get frustrated still that things cannot go quicker, but I understand why now. The cogs can be slow to turn, for good reasons, but I hope that my perspective has meant they are turning a little quicker, and driving things in a way heads can see makes a difference.