I’ve read a lot of books on education in my time, but none has provoked an emotional reaction in me quite like Risinghill: death of a comprehensive school by Leila Berg.

It was published before I was born and I had been a teacher for 20 years before I became aware of it.

It charts the short but extremely eventful life of the eponymous Islington school, which opened in 1960 and closed in 1965. 

It details the battles its controversial headmaster Michael Duane had because his principles and values clashed loudly and publicly with the local authority, Her Majesty’s Inspectors (as was) and, it seems, many of his own staff. 

The corporal punishment question

Central to this clash was his resolution to not use corporal punishment, counter to the prevailing orthodoxy that order could not be maintained without the ability to beat children (“The press officer at County Hall said…‘Hitting, slapping and pushing children, ordinary things like that...Mr Duane talks as if that kind of thing is corporal punishment!’”). 

I was hooked from the beginning. Page 2 details an incident where a teacher in a primary school hits a girl with a piece of wood with a nail in it (the nail ending up in the child’s leg), and the girl’s mother attends the school to berate the teacher, advising her to hit her with her hand instead, rather than a piece of wood.

This book resonated with me so strongly because I was rooting for this headteacher and, unlike him, I knew at the beginning what the outcome was going to be.

Duane was prepared to stand up against overwhelming and powerful opposition because he was convinced that they were wrong. He clearly had supporters and followers in some parents, staff and many students, but none of them held any power. 

As the book progressed, I kept trying to imagine what it would be like today to stand up so strongly against some of today’s accepted norms, and I am not sure that it would be possible to the same degree. My experiences of suggesting on social media that there are alternatives to fixed-term exclusion are a very minor case in point. 

The importance of values

But the thing that struck me most was the complete absence of the importance of values in the opposition to Duane’s work and beliefs. 

He continually stressed his values and how these informed how he wanted the school to be. To me, that gets to the heart of what it is to be a leader. But it is all too often missing in discussions about how we want schools to be and what they are for. 

A sizeable minority of the general public (and some teachers too, let’s not forget) support the return of corporal punishment to schools. Even if it could be proved beyond doubt that it was the swiftest, most effective way to improve behaviour, I would still refuse as it is contrary to my values to hit children. 

Questions about what works are useful, but without lived values that drive the culture and are used to test policies and decisions against, they are blind.

Questioning values

There is also a place for governors and trustees here. They can use their role in reviewing and adopting policies by asking “How is this policy consistent with our values as an organisation?”, particularly when it comes to policies around behaviour, curriculum and assessment.  

When was the last time the values of your school were really tested or overtly discussed when you were faced with a thorny issue and were conflicted about how to proceed? Values help clear the fog of stressful decision-making for leaders, and are a solid defence against criticism.

The most authentic leaders appear comfortable in their own skin because their values are deep-rooted, giving them a strong inner resolve. They don’t do what I heard one school do recently, which was to hire a consultant to essentially work out the values of the school for its leaders. That team is behind the wheel of a self-driving car and I worry that they may well end up miles from their intended destination.

Values should set an unbreakable boundary between what leaders will and will not do for themselves and their school to be successful. 

In our current culture of performativity that can corrupt, and when the tenure of headteachers feels more like football managers than in Michael Duane’s day, your ironclad values will be your best friend.