If it really matters what you look like as a headteacher or a principal, then I must apologise: I should not have been doing this job for the last 20 years. I am overweight, very plain and I am now in a wheelchair, thanks to a long-term condition I never asked for.
There is a very worrying trend coming from leadership training that it does matter what you look like. No wonder fewer people want to be school leaders if this is the message that is coming from these courses.
Long-term problem
The first seeds of my concern started nine years ago when my daughter was completing her GTP training. She was in the second school placement at a church village school, doing a great job and getting good marks - she was headed to qualify as an outstanding trainee at the end of the year. She was enjoying the challenge of being in a different school and spoke of how much she was learning with her mentor.
It was when I was having a catch-up with her after she finished her placement that she told me that the headteacher had spoken to her on the last day of the placement about her weight and appearance.
My daughter is not overweight, but is statuesque and (fortunately) has her dad’s genes, not mine. Despite this, she had been told that she needed to lose weight and smarten up her appearance - otherwise, she was informed, she would not succeed in the profession.
You can imagine how I felt about another colleague saying that not only because she was my daughter but also because she was a young, bubbly trainee teacher.
Happily, my daughter was strong enough not to take her totally inappropriate comments to heart and went onto pass her GTP as outstanding.
But other young people may have taken those comments seriously. They may have done some damage to their health by crash dieting - they may have even become unwell mentally or they may have left teaching altogether.
A change needed
Nine years on, the same message is still coming through leadership courses. I have a lot of my staff studying for various leadership courses; they always come back excited and working hard on their projects, but, every so often, there is this worrying theme about superficial appearance.
My daughter, undaunted by those previous comments, is still in teaching and has recently been doing her leadership course. She came back from her second day with the same message: it matters what you look like to get a headship.
This attitude is being shared by our system leaders.
I fully understand being smart and tidy. Indeed, we have a strict uniform policy at my academy for staff to stop the modern trend of showing too much flesh creeping into the classroom. And I also understand the need to be strong and healthy so you can be at school every day to steer the ship. But it should not matter in this day and age what you look like.
You do not need to be thin to be an effective school leader. You need passion, resilience, vision, energy and compassion.
To all of you leadership trainers out there, stop and think before you speak. Smart, tidy and healthy should be the message not thin, glamorous and appearance obsessed. Otherwise, you are going to put off some talented future leaders that our schools desperately need.
If I had listened to those damaging messages, then I would not be the outstanding school leader I am today and would have given up in 2011 when diagnosed with a life-changing condition.
Yes, I have a disability, but I don’t do giving up. Let’s give out the right message: we need resilient leaders who are great at their job…whatever they look like.
Julie McDonald is Academy Principal at Hillcrest Early Years Academy
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