Leadership Focus Magazine (April 2024)

FOCUS

Putting education centre stage

Getting general election ready

Heart of the union

How one NAHT branch is supporting school leaders through inspections

Ofsted calling

How school leaders are dealing with inspection

SIMON KIDWELL: NAHT president

Looking forward to conference

I hope this issue of Leadership Focus finds you well. By the time it’s arrived on your doormat, we’ll be just a few days from NAHT’s Annual Conference, which will take place this year in Newport, where I will start to hand over the presidential reins to Rachel Younger. Rachel, a long-standing member of NAHT’s executive committee and a leading voice for school business leaders, will address the conference in her first duty as incoming president, and know there’s plenty she wishes to achieve. NAHT will be in safe hands throughout her term in office. I’ve spent some time reflecting on the year just gone, and it’s fair to say it’s not been without incident. The prospect of industrial action and NAHT’s member ballot was not just a landmark in the union’s history; it also marked a distinct change in the collective identity of school leaders. As a profession, we have never shied away from pointing out what is wrong or speaking truth to power, but mobilising in the way we did, along with the result of the ballot itself, sent a clear message that we were no longer prepared to ‘make the best of a bad situation’ or ‘do more with less’ or do any of the other things that were compromising the future of our children or the profession itself. While ultimately, we didn’t need to take industrial action, the decision we took in going to ballot gave rise to an opportunity for school leaders to speak up, and that was pivotal in securing the government’s revised pay offer. We know we have a long way to go, but it is worth reflecting on the distance we’ve travelled so far

and recognising the progress we’re making when we come together. Last year, we also uncovered the reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC) crisis within schools, a headache many of us didn’t need and certainly didn’t ask for. But what it has done is allow us to forge open a wider debate on the school estate and the condition of our buildings in general. This issue has been continually kicked into the long grass when highlighting why we need additional funding. It’s reprehensible that it’s taken something as serious as RAAC for the wider issue to come to the fore. Still, I’ve been heartened to see how proactive NAHT and our members have been in ensuring we grasp the opportunity to own this narrative and paint a clearer picture of how things really are and what we need to be able to fix it. The campaign to improve school buildings is a welcome addition to NAHT’s multi-faceted ‘For Their Future’ campaign.

If you’ve not yet checked out the ‘For Their Future’ campaign, you can do so by visiting www.naht.org.uk/ourpriorities. The campaign focuses on six areas that we believe require the most attention when it comes to the betterment of

The prospect of industrial action and NAHT’s member ballot was not just a landmark in the union’s history; it also marked a distinct change in the collective identity of school leaders.

Above: Simon Kidwell education and the profession. It’ll be no surprise for you to learn that pay and funding remain one of the areas, along with the aforementioned campaign to improve school buildings and estates. Recruitment and retention, inspection and accountability, workload and well-being, and special education needs and disabilities comprise the rest. Do take a look at the pages for each area to get an idea of what it is we’re calling for, and feel free to either contact your branch or region to get involved with campaigning locally or contact us with any suggestions if you think there’s anything else we should be doing in these areas. With an election not far away, it’s more important than ever that, once again, we come together and make our voices heard. It’s the only way we’ll see progress.

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Editorial strategy board: Ruh Alford, Kate Atkinson, Stuart Beck, James Bowen, Dave Church, Mark Cornell, Iman Cornwall, Alan Dane, Laura Doel, Danielle Egonu, Graham Gault, David Gilmore (chair), Magnus Gorham, Clare Fisher, Lee Moscato, Sam Phillips, Garry Ratcliffe, Martin Ruddy and Paul Whiteman. @nahtnews

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7 Putting education centre stage

We look at NAHT’s priority campaigns.

18 The beating heart of the union Shining a spotlight on one of our branches and its role in setting up a support scheme for inspection.

22 Celebrating our membership

Journalist Nic Paton talks to NAHT president-elect Rachel Younger.

26 Ofsted calling

We talk to school leaders about their experiences of inspection.

38 Colour and flavour

School leader Sarah Wordlaw shares her experience and tips for applying for head teacher positions in our member blog series, #ImASchoolLeader, celebrating the diversity of school leadership.

42 Northern Ireland policy update Graham Gault, NAHT national secretary (Northern Ireland), looks at the review of workload impact on school leaders and a new approach to inspection.

Wales policy

NAHT national secretary (Wales) Laura Doel provides an update on the work being done in Wales to protect, support and empower NAHT members.

Paul Whiteman

A message from the general secretary.

48 Menopause and the workplace NAHT national secretary (advice) Kate Atkinson looks at the common symptoms of menopause, workplace challenges and strategies for offering support.

49 Defending democratic rights NAHT international secretary Helena Macormac outlines how your union is standing firm for education and working to protect school leaders’ rights to strike.

51 Protecting your compensation Fiona Belgian from Thompsons Solicitors examines why your union’s legal services benefits matter.

52 Continuing professional development designed by school leaders for school leaders Our summer programme.

54 The final word Journalist Susan Young. 38

Do you think artificial intelligence (AI) will rapidly transform your job and the everyday processes of school life? Or are you sceptical about how far and fast any revolution might go?

I

Putting education centre stage

Journalist NIC PATON takes a look at NAHT’s priority campaigns.

s your money on it being called in May? Or, as prime minister Rishi Sunak has strongly hinted (but it could be a feint, of course), is November more likely? Or, if the polls fail to improve for the Conservatives, might the government even try to tough it out to January next year?

Whenever our prime minister decides to call a general election, one thing is certain: NAHT will be ready to do its damnedest to ensure education is at the heart of the campaign.

PAUL WHITEMAN, NAHT GENERAL SECRETARY

As NAHT general secretary Paul Whiteman makes abundantly clear:

“We already have an education manifesto drafted; we’re ready to publish it as soon as an election is called. You don’t want to publish it too early, or you risk it getting lost in the noise.

“Our objective is to ensure education is centre stage in the coming campaigns. You only get political parties to make promises about what they will deliver when they’re in government when they’re campaigning to be in government.

We need to be on the front foot to ensure that education remains centre stage.”

However, before we get to that point – when campaign messages have to be crystallised down to a few catchy slogans

or soundbites – NAHT, at the beginning of this year, took the opportunity to revisit, refresh and revitalise its priority campaign messages for members.

Most eye-catching is that from four original core campaign areas – inspection and accountability, recruitment and retention, workload and well-being, and pay and funding – two new priority areas of focus have now been added.

These are school buildings and estates and special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). The panel at the end explains

all the priority campaigns in more detail.

“Why six campaigns rather than four?” Paul explains. “It is because we are in such a mess in education. They are all interlinked, but we felt we could no longer cover them in four campaigns.

“Take SEND, for example; SEND, arguably, runs through every other campaign. If you haven’t got the right buildings, if you haven’t got enough funding or enough money to pay for the people you need, then SEND is going to suffer.

PAYAND FUNDING SEND

2024 is going to be a critical year. Not only for our 50,000 NAHT members but the entire profession.

“But, at the same time, just having SEND as a thread within our existing campaigns didn’t feel like it was doing justice to the depth of the crisis schools and school leaders face. It needed to become a priority campaign on its own to focus attention on this crisis,” Paul adds.

“Obviously, 2024 is going to be a critical year,” agrees Rob Kelsall, NAHT assistant general secretary. “Not only for our 50,000 NAHT members but the entire profession, not to mention the children and young people we care for in our schools and the families and communities our schools serve.

“The issues around schools – pay and funding, SEND, recruitment and retention, workload and well-being, and

inspection and accountability – continue to play out. As we’re in this critical election year, we want to ensure education remains one of the top political issues on the doorstep. We know that parents listen when members speak out about the issues impacting them, their schools, pupils and communities. And it is when parents speak out that politicians, in turn, listen.

“So, what we’ve done to assist our members and campaigners is to create toolkits, short videos and resources. These are designed to equip everyone (members, non-members and governors) to undertake quiet yet very effective things – for example, calling roundtable events with MPs. There are also letterwriting tools and PowerPoints – a whole plethora of resources to bring to the fore the problems we’re facing across England.

“We want members to apply their local circumstances to our broad priority campaigns, their local feel for what’s happening in their particular school or community. This is a campaign that will be won in every school community. So, we are urging members to work with us, with their local communities and professional peers, and to bring these priority campaign areas to life,” Rob adds.

“We were very clear that when the threat of industrial action in England passed last year and when the industrial action in Wales ended, it did not mean these issues had been resolved,” NAHT assistant general secretary James Bowen continues.

“These core issues we have long campaigned on absolutely remain the case.

“If anything, we see this period as us needing to redouble our efforts as we

ROB KELSALL, NAHT ASSISTANT GENERAL SECRETARY

JAMES BOWEN, NAHT ASSISTANT GENERAL SECRETARY

INSPECTION AND

ESTATES

move into a general election year. To that end, we looked at the existing four priority campaigns; all of them remain absolutely relevant. But we went out and consulted members; we spoke to regional officials, branch members, national officials and national executive members.

“The two extra issues of SEND and buildings and infrastructure came through loud and clear from that listening exercise. Firstly, the crisis in SEND is very much focusing minds right now.

“SEND has always been an important part of our campaigning and campaign messages, but it has often wrapped into messaging and concerns around funding. Yet, things have become so bad and so urgent; this is now such a singular crisis. We felt we needed to separate things and articulate a separate priority campaign.

“The school buildings crisis was the other pressing issue members highlighted. Obviously, we had the reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC) crisis unfold last summer and autumn. This campaign is not about RAAC alone but the state of school buildings and the school estate generally. RAAC is the emblematic symptom of what is going on, but it is just the tip of the iceberg,” James continues.

“We have asbestos in schools, and we have schools that may not have RAAC but are still in a really poor state of repair. So, this, again, was something we felt we needed to bring to the fore in terms of campaigning: the erosion of capital funding over the last decade. We felt it had to be the sixth priority campaign.

“The fact we have six priorities – and that they all cut across, feed into and drive each other – just shows the level of challenge schools and school leaders face. But it is important we highlight all of these issues and give them a clearer focus for campaigning,” James adds.

For NAHT president Simon Kidwell, the profession’s recruitment and retention crisis remains very much front and centre. While he emphasises his 30-year career in education, latterly as head teacher at Hartford Manor Primary School and Nursery in Cheshire, has been “an absolute joy”, he concedes it is getting ever-more difficult to present teaching – and senior leadership within that – as an attractive, sustainable career.

“It’s becoming harder to recommend teaching as a profession for our young people because of some of the challenges we have. The average teacher is reporting

SIMON KIDWELL, NAHT PRESIDENT

working more than 50 hours a week.

We also find it very hard to build flexibility into teachers’ work, which graduates have in other professions,” he points out.

“Recruitment and retention are massively important,” agrees Ian Hartwright, NAHT head of policy (professional), also pointing to NAHT’s Crisis Point school leader survey, published in December, as an indicator of the growing severity of all these pressure points.

“All the indicator lights are no longer flashing red; they are just on solid red. We know that last year, the Department for Education (DfE) missed its recruitment targets in 12 out of 15 subjects; it missed the target for primary again, even though that was reduced by 21%.

We know that we lose roughly a third of school leaders within five years of being appointed,” he tells Leadership Focus

IAN HARTWRIGHT, NAHT HEAD OF POLICY (PROFESSIONAL)

“We also know that the aspiration to lead is declining sharply. Sixty-one per cent of assistant and deputy head teachers say they do not wish to become head teachers and take sole responsibility for a school. If we’re going to resolve the recruitment and retention crisis, we have to start dealing with the things that are causing it. And they are high-stakes inspection and accountability, workload, the health impacts of those things coming together and, of course, pay,” Ian continues.

“SEND is another source of extraordinary stress for all our members in all leadership categories. Because school leaders know they can’t get the services they need for the pupils they are trying to serve. It is no good having a SEND improvement programme that has no money attached to it.

“All this speaks powerfully to our campaign pieces; the six campaigns,

they interlock. Solving inspection would be a really good step forward because it would be part of solving the recruitment and retention crisis and, most importantly, resolving the crisis around career progression.

“There’s all this stress and pressure, there’s the risk of losing your job, and very often, the pay isn’t commensurate for the risk you’re about to take. The funding element sits with all this, too. These are all parts of the same jigsaw, so they all need resolving,” Ian adds. What, then, should members be doing in response? Paul Whiteman points to Rob Kelsall’s comments about the online tools and resources created for members, which are available via NAHT’s website (www.naht.org.uk/our-priorities).

“A lot of our members are political in their own right, with a small ‘p’. They’re interested, and they might be having conversations. We want them to be able to have informed conversations,” he emphasises.

“Parents and carers can see the crumbling nature of schools; they can see that education is not funded properly. They know there are fewer teaching assistants in the classroom than before, and they know we’re struggling to keep hold of teachers.

“Understandably, head teachers often don’t want to talk about these things because they want to protect the reputation of their schools and education more broadly. But what I am encouraging members to do now is to accept that you can’t hide this anymore; everybody is suffering, so there should be no embarrassment.

“So, have the confidence to tell people, when they ask, what the problems are. So they, too, can then go and make demands of their politicians. Use our campaign packs and toolkits.

“Ultimately, our six priority campaigns speak to the urgent items we will be talking about to an incoming government, whether that’s a different Conservative administration, a Labour administration or potentially even a coalition. We know there are no simple answers and that no matter who achieves power, we will have to work just as vigorously to ensure we get the right result.

“However, one thing that is clear is that education is in such dire circumstances that whoever is elected to power will have to do this quickly, even with everything else that will be in their in-trays. These six priorities are priorities because they really can’t wait,” Paul adds.

THE RETURN OF DEVOLVED GOVERNMENT IN NORTHERN IRELAND

The long-delayed and historic return of devolved government in Northern Ireland at the start of the year presents a real opportunity for members to push for some of the country’s long-standing pinch points around education finally to be unlocked, argues Graham Gault, NAHT national secretary (Northern Ireland).

“Just as in England, the priority campaigns are very relevant to members here in Northern Ireland, especially now that devolved government is finally being re-established,” he tells Leadership Focus Members in Northern Ireland have been in industrial dispute for more than a year, including taking the “unprecedented” step for school leaders of strike action and, most recently, a mass day of strike action in January, Graham points out. “I think that was, in part, something that helped push the political leaders over the line. That was a big day, a big day of protest, but also a big day of public support for public services,” he says.

Unblocking the barriers that have led to the current situation, therefore, needs to be a priority for the new administration, he emphasised, and NAHT is already pushing hard to take engagement right to the doors of Stormont.

“We have already appealed to the new minister and reformed executive,” Graham says. “We’ve said that their first priority needs to be to remove the industrial barriers before any further work on education can be done. That means a resolution to the industrial dispute and, secondly, to address the outstanding issues around workload.”

Eight reviews have been completed on workload and workforce issues in Northern Ireland, including a review on school leaders’ workload chaired by NAHT. But the recommendations of all of these have been gathering dust with the Department of Education. These now need to be implemented, Graham emphasises.

“Members are deeply frustrated. But I am hopeful that, as we come to a resolution on pay, we will also see commitments and timescales for the delivery of some of those recommendations.

“We accept that our political leaders have been restricted by the lack of government. We accept they have also been restricted because of the depth and ferocity of our industrial campaign. But we won’t accept that there would be any more delay if we now move out of the dispute.

“Workload and well-being are front and centre for school leaders in Northern Ireland. We are moving into a new campaign chapter; we now want to see delivery,” Graham concludes.

LAURA DOEL, NAHT NATIONAL SECRETARY (WALES)

MAINTAINING THE PRESSURE IN WALES

Even though industrial action in Wales ended in November, members and NAHT continue to campaign hard on pay erosion and funding shortfalls, as the corrosive impact of both are so closely interlinked, highlights Laura Doel, NAHT national secretary (Wales).

“We’ve got ourselves into a place in Wales where members have had a pay rise for 2022/23 and 2023/24. However, there is the age-old problem – as it is in all the nations NAHT represents – of how that is funded,” she tells Leadership Focus, with the country’s 22 local authorities doing things 22 different ways.

“Some local authorities fully funded the pay award, and some part funded it. Schools have to balance their books, and rightly so, so what we have now is an unprecedented number of schools setting deficit budgets. Because they simply cannot afford to balance the books,” Laura emphasises.

“We cannot deliver the world-class curriculum for Wales that our learners deserve if we don’t have the skilled teachers and leaders in place to do that. And the only way we will do that is if we pay them a decent wage and ensure their workloads are manageable.

“We are faced with a situation in Wales where we have the ambition of the government, which we fully support. But we don’t have the school infrastructure that supports that delivery. That is a huge challenge for us,” she adds.

With a new first minister, Vaughan Gething, and a new secretary for education, Lynne Neagle MS, NAHT will be starting fresh discussions with the Wales Government to see what this cabinet reshuffle means for education.

“Just as with the priority campaigns in England, we will have some very strong messages for the new first minister on what priorities need to be set for Wales,” says Laura.

“One will be funding; another will be to make sure we have a plan in place

to deliver the new curriculum. We will be pushing to pause any and all vanity projects that the Welsh Government has thought up, things like reforming the school day and year.

“There may well be ways of restructuring the school year, particularly in Wales. But when we’re in a recruitment and retention crisis, where funding is badly impacting the day-to-day delivery of schools, where senior leaders are stepping back into classrooms to fill the gaps, where we have a new curriculum to bed in, a new ALN [additional learning needs] legislation and when people are being turned off from the idea of going into leadership because they see the toll it causes, these are significant issues we need to address before we even think about looking at anything else,” she adds.

On ALN, while the situation is perhaps not as much of a crisis as in England, there nevertheless remain significant pressures that need to be worked through, not least the fact there is currently no set pay scale for ALN coordinators (ALNCos).

“With ALN, we are probably a little bit ahead of the curve compared with England in that we’ve identified the challenges and put a system in place to address them. But what we haven’t done yet again is put the infrastructure and support in place for schools to be able to deliver,” Laura says.

“Just as in England, members need to be shouting from the rooftops about the issues concerning funding and pay, recruitment and retention, school buildings and well-being in Wales. School leaders can be their own worst enemies by putting on a brave face and not talking about these things to parents, governors, their communities and local politicians. But the time has come for all members to stand up and be heard,” she adds.

GRAHAM GAULT, NAHT NATIONAL SECRETARY (NORTHERN IRELAND)

NAHT’S 2024 PRIORITY CAMPAIGNS

NAHT’s website now lists all six priority campaigns and a range of other policy focus areas.

There are also downloadable resources for members to use, such as template letters for writing to their MPs, a guide and template for holding a roundtable discussion and a slide deck to help with talks with colleagues and peers about NAHT’s campaigns. Each campaign area is accompanied by a video explaining the priorities in more detail, including members articulating why each area is so important to them, of which snapshots are included here.

“The layers of accountability are now so multiple and many and diverse that it’s an endless cycle of monitoring and accountability, which has an enormous impact on leaders’ workloads but also teachers’ workloads and their mental health.”

Inspection and accountability

High-stakes accountability measures are driving unsustainable workloads, teacher and leadership wastage and damaging the health and well-being of education professionals.

1

Pay and funding

School leaders have suffered among the most significant realterm pay erosion of all workers. The value of school leaders’ pay has fallen by about a fifth in real terms since 2010, negatively affecting both leadership aspiration and retention. Even the September 2023 pay award was insufficient to arrest the decline in real-term pay.

2WHAT NAHT WANTS TO SEE

NAHT is campaigning for immediate system reform, including the following:

• Root-and-branch review of Ofsted’s inspection framework, methodology and notification periods, the abolition of single-word and graded judgements in favour of accurate reporting of a school’s strengths and areas for improvement, and the creation of a fully independent complaints process

• Reduction of the excessively published performance measures and removal of the ‘all schools and colleges comparison tables’ from the performance data website to avoid the damaging consequences of encouraging the public to compare institutions in league tables

• Fully funded support to safeguard school leaders’ and staff members’ mental health and well-being.

points and pay portability

• A comprehensive review of the factors that determine leadership pay and work to tackle inequity in the pay structure and close the ‘pay gaps’

• A professional pay continuum that supports new career pathways and delivers pay progression for teachers and school leaders.

WHAT NAHT WANTS TO SEE

NAHT’s immediate objective for the 2024 pay round is to secure a fullyfunded ‘inflation plus’ uplift from September 2024 to protect current salaries against further erosion by inflation and begin the restoration of salaries to their 2010 value, setting a course that could be completed within the life of parliament. NAHT is also pressing for systemic reform of the pay structure for teachers and leaders. This needs to include the following:

• A reformed national pay structure with mandatory minimum pay

School funding is set to remain below 2010 levels in real terms until 2024/25. NAHT is therefore campaigning for the following:

• Sustained investment in pupils through year-on-year real-term increases to core funding and funding for high needs (in both mainstream and special settings)

• Investment to ensure that the health, therapeutic and social care services are readily available and accessible to all schools to support pupils

• All future pay uplifts to be fully funded.

“Everything comes down to funding at the end of the day. If we don’t have enough funding, we don’t have enough staff, which means we can’t provide those extra things that children need.”

Recruitment and retention

3

Lack of professional recognition and trust, unsustainable workload, high-stakes inspection and falling real pay drive leadership attrition and undermine aspiration to lead. These pressures exacerbate the existing lack of diversity across leadership roles and the challenges faced by leaders and aspiring leaders with certain protected characteristics.

WHAT NAHT WANTS TO SEE

• Restore leaders’ real pay, restore the leadership pay differential and press for a School Teachers’ Review Body’s remit to consult with trade unions to devise a new professional pay structure to support all teachers and leaders throughout their careers

• Restore trust by empowering school leaders to make the decisions that best meet their learners’ needs, free from centralised diktat and control

• Reform inspection and accountability measures to remove drivers of

unnecessary workload, fear and stress

• Commit to full and meaningful engagement, consultation and collaboration with the profession’s representative bodies when developing policy

• Value school leaders and teachers by removing the drivers of the mental health and well-being crisis and providing accessible, fully-funded support (including the delivery of supervision and measures to increase diversity in leadership).

KATRINA

“Young people are saying, ‘But sure, the money’s not good, the conditions are really poor, and you’re not treated properly; why would I go there?’.”

SUZANNE HAMER, NAHT CYMRU PRESIDENT AND HEAD TEACHER AT MONMOUTHSHIRE COUNTY COUNCIL, SAYS:

AMY LASSMAN, HEAD TEACHER AT NELSON MANDELA SCHOOL IN BIRMINGHAM, SAYS:

MOORE, PRINCIPAL AT MALONE INTEGRATED COLLEGE IN BELFAST, SAYS:

Workload and well-being

4Crushing workload driven by highstakes accountability measures, funding pressures, spiralling pupil need caused by poverty and the disintegration of the social, health and care services that schools need access to are driving a mental health and well-being crisis among school leaders and their staff.

This further undermines leadership aspiration and retention, exacerbating the leadership supply crisis. Almost a third of school leaders appointed aged under 50 (31%) leave their post within five years, and more than half (53%) of them quit teaching in state-funded schools.

WHAT NAHT WANTS TO SEE

• The removal of performancerelated pay progression

• A statement on reasonably expected working hours for school leaders

• Protected leadership time for school leaders

• An immediate reduction in workload associated with high-stakes accountability and performance measures and reform of the way schools are inspected

• A set of tangible actions to reduce working hours by five hours a week through the DfE’s Workload Taskforce (of which NAHT is a current member)

• Better cross-departmental accountability to ensure any future initiatives are fully assessed for their impact on the workload of teachers and school leaders and their impact on retention

• A reduction in direct contact by the DfE with schools – including careful assessment of whether new guidance, ‘expectations’ or statutory requirements are needed and whether they are clear, of appropriate quality and issued in a timely manner. Any such developments should be progressed through full and genuine engagement with the teaching and leadership unions.

School buildings and estates

NAHT is pressing for an ambitious and long-term school estate strategy to ensure that every pupil is taught in a school that is safe, structurally sound, accessible and fit for purpose.

Last autumn’s ‘crumbly concrete’ (RAAC) crisis clearly shows the appalling state of

disrepair to which too many of our school buildings have been reduced. Ambitious sustainability and climate change goals should be integrated within capital programmes to deliver investment in school buildings that will play a significant part in our journey towards net zero.

NATALIE HILL, HEAD TEACHER AT MANOR COMMUNITY PRIMARY SCHOOL IN SWANSCOMBE, KENT, SAYS:

“Many schools have had to be inspected by health and safety inspectors and deemed not fit for purpose. That has resulted in children being displaced, and that displacement has had a significant impact on funding. Leaders are having to find money for resources, which they haven’t had to find before, so that means something is affected by give and take somewhere else.”

WHAT NAHT WANTS TO SEE

• Reverse the long-term cuts to capital funding for maintenance, refurbishment and rebuilding to bring the school estate back up to at least a minimum ‘acceptable’ level

• Ensure capital funding increases, in real terms, year on year

• Ensure dangerous RAAC and similar materials are removed from every single school site in a safe and timely manner with as little disruption to learning as possible

• Ensure schools that need appropriate temporary accommodation and other financial help and support are provided with it as soon as possible by the government

• At the same time, take this opportunity to remove lethal asbestos, which is shockingly still present in more than four-fifths of school sites, starting with the most dangerous first.

6

Following the launch of the government’s SEND and alternative provision improvement plan and despite years of compelling evidence, school leaders are now facing a perfect storm of chronically underfunded highneeds budgets and an underinvested system of wider external SEND support, all while the number of pupils requiring SEND support continues to increase.

NAHT is campaigning for a significant shift from the government’s resourcelimited policy approach to a genuine, needs-led SEND system.

There is an urgent need for increased and protected new funding for children with special needs, which should be for more than a single financial year to maximise meaningful support in the longer term.

WHAT NAHT WANTS TO SEE

• A high-needs funding strategy that ensures long-term sufficiency to meet pupils’ needs properly

• Cancellation of local authority high-needs deficits to stop the debt from consuming funding set aside for children and young people with SEND

• Greater consistency in high-needs funding nationally to meet SEND provision costs fully

• Long-term investment in specialist external support services to build capacity and improve the speed of access for pupils with SEND

• An education, health and care plan system that ensures schools do not have to cover the insufficiencies in health and social care capacity.

NAHT is also pressing for wider reform to ensure that education benefits all children and young people. This includes the following:

• A reformed model of SEN funding for mainstream schools, special schools and alternative provision that provides certainty for a minimum of three years

• A fundamental review of placeplanning, sufficiency of specialist places and admissions to ensure that pupils with SEND are able to attend the schools that best meet their long-term needs

• An improved accountability system that properly recognises and acknowledges the progress that all pupils make, including those with SEND.

“The role has changed significantly over time. We’re finding that we’re having increasing numbers of pupils with special educational needs coming into the school; social, emotional and mental health issues, cognitive and learning issues, and some significant health issues, too.”

“Teachers’

workloads are increasing all the time. It’s not necessarily the planning and the marking for teachers that’s increasing; it’s the demand on their time from our children that need more support pastorally and, due to schools not having huge pastoral teams, it’s falling to the teachers.”

JEFF CONQUEST, HEAD TEACHER AT WOODLAND MIDDLE SCHOOL ACADEMY IN FLITWICK, BEDFORDSHIRE, SAYS:

NICOLA KEARNEY, HEAD TEACHER AT EAVES PRIMARY SCHOOL IN ST HELENS AND NAHT NORTH WEST VICE-PRESIDENT, SAYS:

The beating heart of the union

Journalist NIC PATON shines a spotlight on one of our branches and its role in setting up a support scheme for inspection.

ith nearly 50,000 members across England, Wales, Northern Ireland and the Crown Dependencies, NAHT has grown rapidly in recent years. This is partly a consequence of under-pressure school leaders recognising they need support, protection and the strongest voice possible and partially a response to the government’s ongoing failings over workload, pay, funding and accountability, going back as far as 2010.

That growth gives NAHT valuable extra heft and influence nationally, in the corridors of power in Westminster, Whitehall, the Crown Dependencies, Cardiff and now, with the welcome return of devolved government, Belfast.

But NAHT is not just about its national work and presence. The beating heart of the union is if anything, its 12 regions and, within that, its network of branches.

NAHT’s branches in England (normally centralised around local authority areas), the Crown Dependencies, Wales and Northern Ireland all look to channel members’ voices on the ground.

At a practical level, NAHT branches bring head teachers and senior leaders together to share knowledge, network, recognise they are not alone and channel their expertise to tackle and campaign on issues affecting them, their schools and their learners on

Branches are a conduit for members to bring local issues or calls for change to the national arena, including NAHT’s Annual Conference and AGM. Branches nominate members to hold office in NAHT as part of the national executive, as national officers or even as general secretary. Just as importantly, branches can effect genuine local change that can make a real, tangible difference.

A good example of this has been the work of the Southampton branch in Hampshire in helping to drive the development of a ‘Caversham Covenant’ to provide support for school leaders during Ofsted inspections.

Named after Caversham Primary –the school, of course, now tragically associated with head teacher Ruth Perry, who took her life following an Ofsted inspection – the ‘Caversham Covenant’ is a public declaration of how schools within the city can work together to support each other.

However, NAHT Southampton branch secretary John Draper is at pains to emphasise that the covenant is not

NAHT SOUTHAMPTON

Right: John Draper being interviewed about the Caversham Covenant.

As anyone who runs a school knows, bringing about cultural change is a lengthy process and takes time.

in itself an NAHT branch initiative. It has very much been a joint effort between Southampton City Council and the school leadership teams of the maintained schools that operate within four cooperative foundation trusts within the city.

“Like many people, we were shocked and horrified by what happened at Caversham. What perhaps shocked me the most was that my reaction was not ‘I can’t believe this has happened’ but more ‘I’m not surprised this has happened’, which speaks volumes, I feel,” John, who is head teacher at Swaythling Primary School in the city as well as chair of the Aspire Community Trust, tells Leadership Focus.

“Obviously, the moves that Ofsted has made and talked about since then are welcome but, as anyone who has run a school knows, bringing about cultural change is a lengthy process and takes time.

“We all felt we couldn’t just sit and wait and hope that things would improve; that, actually, was there a way that we could actively make things better for local head teachers and support each other better in the meantime?” John explains.

The covenant, therefore, comprises a series of promises and pacts, including the following:

• A supervision and support offer for all head teachers, with a ‘buddy’ arrangement in place for those who are in the Ofsted ‘window', so that head teachers know there is someone they can talk to before, during and after inspection

• A directory of staff with Ofsted experience that can be called on in the event of concerns about the conduct of an inspection arising while the inspection team is still on-site

• Recognition that school improvement work is a ‘broad church’, encompassing peer review, working with specialists and negotiation between trusts and the local authority, not just a dress rehearsal for Ofsted

• An understanding that for negative Ofsted inspections, the default solution is to support the head teacher and current leadership team in addressing the issues causing concern.

The schools and organisations involved in the scheme are as follows: Aspire Community Trust, Bridge Education Trust, Reach Cooperative Trust, Southampton Co-operative Learning Trust, Southampton City Council, NAHT, Southampton NEU and Southampton NASUWT. One advantage the branch was able to bring to bear was the ability to tap into NAHT’s wider national resources, including its press team, to get the word out about the initiative to national, local and specialist press and media.

CENTRAL)

As NAHT regional head (south central) Elizabeth Salisbury points out: “The Caversham Covenant is a really good example of the power of doing things at a local level. NAHT, both through the branch and nationally, was able to support the head teachers on the ground.

“Through, literally, one phone call, we were able to develop a press release and get local, national and sector coverage,” she adds.

“I think the success of the Caversham Covenant demonstrates the value of what can be achieved by school leaders coming together and collaborating at a local level, whether via their NAHT branch or simply informally. You can still have local solutions to either local or national problems,” John agrees.

“We’ve been working hard to raise the branch’s profile on the ground. We’ve been speaking to local head teachers and school business managers.

“It is almost impossible to be a ‘hero head’ these days and do everything on your own. You need a good network and support structure around you. NAHT – whether locally or nationally – offers that ready-made for people to tap into,” John adds.

ELIZABETH SALISBURY, NAHT REGIONAL HEAD (SOUTH

Celebrating our membership

Journalist Nic Paton talks to NAHT president-elect

Let’s get one thing straight first.

Rachel Younger, school business manager at St Nicholas Church of England Primary School in Blackpool, is very clear that she will not be NAHT’s first non-head teacher president when she assumes office this September.

“As far as everybody knows or can remember, I am the first president who is not a head teacher,” she tells Leadership Focus “But I’m very deliberately not using the words ‘non-head teacher’ because I think defining people by what they don’t do is wrong. You hear the term ‘nonteaching staff’ used a lot, and it sets my teeth on edge every time.

“Qualifying people by what they don’t do, or what they are not, is, think, quite derogatory and even demeaning. So, I will be the first president who is not a head teacher, not the first non-head teacher president. It’s a subtle difference, but I feel an important one,” she adds.

Taking over the reins from Simon Kidwell, head teacher at Hartford Manor Primary School and Nursery in Cheshire, Rachel intends to use her presidency as a platform to show how, just as school leadership has become more diverse and complex, NAHT is now reflecting the everbroadening definition of ‘school leader’.

“It is exciting times, and having a president who is not a head teacher is not just new for me but everybody else within the union,” Rachel says.

“For me, I think it speaks of how far NAHT has come as a union in terms of opening its arms to all the various types of school leaders we have. Education is now a lot more complex than it used to be, and school leadership is equally more complex than ever.

“My presidency is an obvious opportunity for us to celebrate that diversity of membership, that range of membership, that we now have within NAHT. And to get more of the ‘other’ categories of membership – not just school business leaders (SBLs) but also deputy

and assistant head teachers and middle leaders – more involved in the union.

“Everybody has their own style, personality and way of doing things. What I think is key is recognising this is a three-year commitment – from being vicepresident to president to immediate-past president. I am learning a lot from Simon [Kidwell] and Paul [Gosling], who have gone before me.

“It is not just about thinking, ‘What will be my priorities as president?’ It is a continuing journey for all of us. So, I will be embracing and continuing Simon’s priorities as president as well as adding my own,” she adds.

Rachel came into education in 2003 when the idea, let alone the nomenclature, of a distinct ‘school business leader’ barely existed. “My first job in education was at a very small primary school in the north of Lancashire, where I lived at the time. It was the school that my son attended. There were around six children in each year group; about 40 on roll altogether,” she recalls.

“A job had come up in the office because the previous administrator was retiring. I had done similar jobs and thought, ‘It looks really interesting. Plus, it’ll help with childcare because we’ll be arriving and leaving at the same time, so why not?’

“The idea of school business managers was very much in its infancy at the time, and certainly not within such a small school. But loved it. I loved the family feel of being in a tiny school, where you know not just every child but all the families, even the dogs and chickens! You are so much a part of the community.

“I worked there for four years, and I learned so much, not least because was the only person in the office most of the time. You did everything from counting the dinner money and helping the head teacher plan the budget to learning how to fix the boiler when it went off; absolutely everything,” Rachel explains.

“When my son entered year six, I started looking for school business manager jobs. I got a job in Blackpool in a primary school, not my current school – I was the first business manager they had ever had, which was exciting.

“I did some training, became part of the senior leadership team, ran some projects, and then, in 2010, applied for the job here at St Nicholas. We’re a two-form entry primary school with around 400 children on roll.

For me, I think it speaks of how far NAHT has come as a union in terms of opening its arms to all the various types of school leaders we have.

RACHEL YOUNGER.

Again, am the first person – so far, of course, the only person – to do this job at the school, so I have been able to grow the job as have developed into it,” she adds.

Although an NAHT member from the beginning, Rachel concedes it took her a while to grasp the importance – and value – of stepping up to become an active member. “My head teacher, who was Blackpool branch secretary then, asked me to fill in for him at a branch meeting with the local authority on behalf of NAHT.

“I went along and thought, ‘Oh, this is quite interesting; this is a whole new world I didn’t know existed’. I had been a member of NAHT for a few years already but was not an active one at that point,” Rachel says.

“It just carried on from there. I kept standing in for him, and eventually, I was elected branch secretary. I was hooked.

Then, when NAHT was setting up the school business leaders’ sector council, I was invited to join because of my links. Again, I loved that; it was really exciting to be involved from the beginning and setting the priorities for SBLs within the union,” she adds.

One natural focus of her presidency will be the fact it will coincide with a general election, whether that happens this coming May or (most likely, according to most commentators) November or even next January if prime minister Rishi Sunak decides to hang on to the last moment.

“The fact my presidency will overlap with a new government makes it an especially exciting time. It brings an opportunity to set out new priorities, forge new relationships, for NAHT to articulate our vision for education and try to get whatever the new government is to share that vision,” Rachel outlines.

As highlighted elsewhere in this edition, NAHT has kicked off 2024 by refreshing, rearticulating and expanding its core priority campaign messages as we head into an election year. These now include special educational needs and disabilities (SEND)

and school buildings and estates alongside pay and funding, workload and well-being, recruitment and retention, and inspection and accountability.

These messages have been refined into a pre-election education ‘manifesto’ (currently in draft) and, in turn, will be where NAHT looks to turn up the heat on the new incoming government, whatever its political persuasion.

Moreover, Rachel makes clear all these priority campaigns resonate with SBLs as much as teaching leadership. SBLs, clearly, are at the sharp end of making school pay, funding and budgets actually work and eking out every penny that can be found or saved. This, in turn, can feed into and affect recruitment and retention, with SBLs themselves increasingly hard to recruit.

As Rachel highlights: “Recruitment and retention issues are the same for SBLs as for any other kind of school leader. We are of an ageing profile, under intense workload and accountability pressures and struggling to recruit good people to follow us.”

The SBL role may affect the access to funding that is (or more likely isn’t) available for things like the school estate or even SEND provision. Increasingly, a school’s finances and governance are also part of the Ofsted inspection conversation, meaning how inspection and accountability are reformed is just as important for the SBL community.

“We have those discrete strands within the priority campaigns, but they are all interlinked. Like everyone, we’re just trying to make ends meet, to pay for everything without enough money; we have the same recruitment challenges that you hear from everybody else, particularly with support staff,” Rachel says.

“Ofsted impacts head teachers in a particular way; it also impacts SBLs, just in a different way. And deputy and assistant

I want people to get more involved in their branches and regions and attend the Annual Conference.

head teachers and middle leaders in further ways, especially with the current framework. All these things are important.

“I want people to get more involved in their branches and regions and attend the Annual Conference. Now we have quite a mix of members, it is important that all our voices are heard. Because we all have our own perspectives on things,” she adds.

Rachel’s nominated charity for her presidency is Buttle UK (www.buttleuk.org).

“It’s a charity that gives small grants to children and young people who have experienced some sort of crisis. And they are quite individualised grants, providing everyday items that all children need,” she explains.

“It just really chimes with me. Its aims, objectives and what it’s doing to support children are very positive,” Rachel adds.

Finally, what of the Rachel Younger outside the world of education and school business leadership? “Like everybody in education, I struggle to have time for hobbies!” she laughs.

“I am currently learning Welsh, partly because NAHT’s Annual Conference will be in Newport, Wales, this year, and I felt needed to be able to say at least a few words. I have an app, and I’m doing 10 minutes every day and really enjoying it, I have to say.

“I like going to the gym. It is something I discovered late in life but now really enjoy; it is useful for managing the stresses and strains of being in education as well as keeping healthier and physically healthy, but it also helps massively with mental health. At the end of a stressful day, I can go to the gym and take it out on the machines!” she adds.

Last but not least, if you happen to be driving around Blackpool and pull up beside Rachel, perhaps at the traffic lights, you may find yourself doing a double take.

“This is a slightly odd one,” she laughs.

“But I love singing in the car, which I also find very therapeutic. My commute is about a 30-minute drive, so half an hour singing at the top of your lungs is very de-stressing!”

Ofsted calling

Journalist NIC PATON talks to school leaders about their experiences of inspection.

“It wasn’t fair; it was traumatic. It was four months of sleepless nights of working 60-70 hours a week. It was totally unnecessary, and I just can’t move past that. We can’t trust the system we’re working in anymore.”

After 18 years as a teacher and school leader, ‘Anil’ (not his real name), a secondary school head teacher in the south of England, will be leaving his role this summer despite describing his school as still “a joy to work at”.

What’s more, he’ll be joined at the school gates by his deputy head ‘Sam’ (again, not her real name), an equally experienced and passionate school leader whom the profession can ill afford to lose.

Why are they departing? The reason isn’t the punishing workload of school leadership, the poor pay, the constantly negative government-driven media narrative, the crumbling school buildings, the lack of funding or the erosion of specialist provision – though it could have easily been any of these. No, it will be their experience of England’s high-stakes inspection and accountability model – perhaps more accurately, England’s toxic model of high-stakes inspection combined with a lack of Ofsted accountability.

For Anil and Sam, the Ofsted inspection of their ‘good’ school last summer had started promisingly.

“The inspector actually said, ‘Rarely do I get to this stage in an inspection and everything is so good’,” Anil recalls, until it all started to unravel.

We’ll return to Anil and Sam shortly, but suffice to say, on one – arguably

subjective – interpretation of safeguarding data, the school was plunged from ‘good’ to ‘inadequate’. Even though the school has since retained its ‘good’ status, it was an experience that – in their imminent departures – has resulted in two talented and dedicated leaders leaving the profession, exacerbating an already deepening recruitment and retention crisis.

‘Ofsted pressures’ were perhaps the biggest trigger for mental and emotional ill health among school leaders last year, as NAHT’s Crisis Point school leadership survey reported in December.

An astonishing 49%, so nearly half of the NAHT members surveyed, said they had identified a need for mental health or well-being support in the last 12 months.

Almost four in 10 (38%) had taken the next step of accessing professional support, with ‘Ofsted pressures’ the factor they felt had had the greatest impact on their mental health over the last year.

The fact such findings now have to be read in the context of the tragic death by

suicide last year of head teacher Ruth Perry makes the corrosive impact Ofsted clearly has on leaders’ mental well-being all the more worrying.

The inspectorate’s tin-eared response (under chief inspector Amanda Spielman) to her death, the subsequent outcry from the profession and, indeed, the damning inquest and ‘prevention of future deaths’ coroner’s report mean that the arrival of Sir Martyn Oliver at Ofsted does present a welcome opportunity for a reset and some muchneeded reflection, as NAHT general secretary Paul Whiteman concedes.

“With Sir Martyn Oliver, it is very early days, but everything he’s said so far has been more empathetic than have ever experienced with Ofsted since becoming general secretary,” he tells Leadership Focus

“He is more open to accepting criticism than have ever experienced with Ofsted. And he is more open to building a dialogue of change than I have ever experienced with Ofsted before. So that sets a good scene and a good tone.

The actions we have seen this year – to pause inspection and implement training –are the first positive steps we have seen.

“But we have to enter that with a good balance of scepticism as well. I’m not going to get too excited, and I know NAHT members won’t be excited by just the promise. That might buy some time, but they want to see actions. The actions we have seen this year – to pause inspection and implement training – are the first positive steps we have seen. So that gives me, on behalf of members, a bit of reassurance. But we have got to do so much more than that,” he warns.

Indeed, in an implicit admission that up to now Ofsted has not been listening to its critics, or at the very least not listening hard enough, Sir Martyn in January announced a ‘Big Listen’ that, he said, would allow him “to hear directly from parents and professionals about the strengths and weaknesses of Ofsted’s current approach to inspection and regulation”.

Nevertheless, the patience of many within the profession is wearing thin – if trust between senior leaders and Ofsted even still exists. “The Big Listen that Sir Martyn talks about, well, it might be a Big Listen, but it has got to be pretty quick. It also needs to address the issues our members are most concerned about,” Paul emphasises.

“And then, the missing part of the jigsaw is what is the government going to do? Because the government relies on the inspection results so much, is the government going to come with a positive attitude to change this, a progressive attitude to achieving a good inspection system? Or are we going to be reduced back to something that just fits their policy ambitions?

“We need to make sure we drag the government into a positive engagement, a positive dialogue. If the government doesn’t play ball then, no matter how hard the chief inspector is working, we’re never going to crack this,” Paul adds.

If Sir Martyn genuinely is open to listening, a good starting point will be the influential Common Education Committee’s report in January on Ofsted’s Work With Schools and, second, NAHT’s Rethinking School Inspection report, also published in January.

The Education Committee, which heard evidence from NAHT, made a wide-ranging series of recommendations and highlighted how relations

sure we drag the government into a positive engagement, a positive dialogue.

between Ofsted and the profession are now “extremely strained and that trust in the inspectorate is worryingly low”.

It urged the inspectorate to ensure its reforms and listening already announced are “the beginning, not the end” of the process. It made the case for a “small” reduction in the frequency of inspection to increase their value, length and depth. It called for a review of the current notice period and the impact this has on school leaders’ stress and anxiety.

The MPs also expressed concern that “the lack of relevant phasespecific expertise among inspectors appears to be a widespread problem, particularly in primary schools and specialist education settings”.

NAHT’s Rethinking School Inspection report updates its 2018 Improving School Accountability report, and certainly does not mince its words about how Ofsted is now widely viewed within the profession.

“Ofsted’s 30-year-old inspection model

characteristics or circumstances.”

The report surveyed 1,890 school leaders in England and found an almost unanimous (97%) appetite for the scrapping of the single-word or phrase overarching judgement. The vast majority again, 92%, want to see the end of Ofsted’s use of a single framework and methodology to inspect all schools regardless of their age range, type, specialist provision or size. Only very few optimists, 12%, still have faith in the idea that inspectors are able to fully understand and accurately evaluate a school in the time they spend on-site.

The report outlines a range of shortterm, interim steps NAHT would like to see from Ofsted, as Ian Hartwright, NAHT head of policy (professional), outlines: “In the shorter term, we feel there needs to be a wholesale cultural change to the way that inspectors work, and we want to empower leaders to be raising complaints as they happen and to feel confident enough to push back on improper conduct or poor inspection methodology, including insufficient or inadequate approaches to evidence gathering.

“We have pressed to move to ungraded inspections and for Ofsted to engage in scoping and building a new, reliable and fair framework that restores

confidence – just to report strengths and weaknesses in a short letter rather than using a single-word or phrase grade. And to extend the notice period. What is clear is that half a day’s notice is just too short; it creates all kinds of operational difficulties for head teachers.

“We know head teachers carry out grab bags, and we know the worry and stress they feel when they’re ‘in the window’. We think that in the

Ofsted’s 30-year-old inspection model is unsafe, unreliable and inhumane.

interim (and pending a whole new framework), a notice period of about 48 hours would work better. So, if you get your phone call on a Monday at 2.30pm, you won’t have your conversation with the inspector until Tuesday, and your on-site inspection won’t happen until Wednesday.

“That would just relieve a lot of the pressure and tension around it. But also, if, for example, the head teacher has a

president Simon Kidwell, head teacher at Hartford Manor Primary School and Nursery in Cheshire.

I think one of the challenges with the current inspection [regime] is the inconsistency that my colleagues are reporting to me.

safeguarding issue they’re dealing with or a serious case review, or perhaps they’re on a school trip, there is a little bit more time there. And notification should definitely not span a weekend,” Ian adds.

“We should have inspection; inspection is an important thing to make sure that children are safe and that schools are teaching to the required standards. However, that should be proportionate, and I think the new inspection regime isn’t proportionate,” agrees NAHT

“I think one of the challenges with the current inspection [regime] is the inconsistency that my colleagues are reporting to me. Some colleagues are describing it as the most intense, worst experience of their headship career, while others describe it as quite light touch. So, there’s not a consistency there with a new framework, which is unsettling a lot of school leaders,” he adds.

The Rethinking School Inspection report then outlines what, in time (but not too much of it), NAHT would like to see in the way of much deeper reform. This includes removing graded judgements and improving inspection reports, revising the inspection framework and methodology, reviewing the notice schools receive for an inspection, separating safeguarding checks from inspection, improving inspector expertise and experience, introducing inspection at trust level and designing a new complaints process. See

the panel at the end of this article for more on this important report.

“We do think there is a real opportunity here to fundamentally rethink how inspection works, and there are undoubtedly some immediate changes that could be made, too,” argues NAHT assistant general secretary James Bowen.

“There is a need to have a safer, fairer, more humane approach to inspection.

I think you can achieve all those things but still have a system that gives parents the information they want. A system that still holds schools to account in the way that an inspection system always will do, but at the same time is safe, fair and humane. And we’ve tried to outline some recommendations that we think will help to move towards that.

“The main headline is the removal of the single-word judgement, which we think, while not the only problem, is probably the most significant factor in terms of the negative impact on the well-being of school leaders. We’d like to see a move towards a more strengths and weakness-type approach, more of

a narrative report that, if anything, gives schools greater information about what they need to do to improve further and what they already do really well,”

James tells Leadership Focus

“What we’re trying to do, very simply, is set out a vision for a better form of inspection. We’re not saying no school

now. No school, whatever grade they’re in, trusts it anymore.

should ever be inspected. We understand there is a role for inspection. But we think it can be done in a much fairer way that doesn’t put excessive pressure on leaders,” he adds.

James is also at pains to explain and caveat one of the more eye-catching and perhaps surprising findings of the report: that there is some support among school leaders for more frequent, lower-stakes inspections. “We were very nervous about this section being misreported or misunderstood,” he emphasises to Leadership Focus

“What we have to remember with this finding is that if we can fundamentally change the whole culture of inspection –if we can change how inspection works and if we can reduce the high-stakes nature of it – then, actually, school leaders would be comfortable with it happening more frequently on a lower-stakes basis.

“The analogy strike at the moment is that Ofsted is a little bit like the Olympic Games or World Cup. It only comes around once every four or five years, and

there is so much at stake, so much on the line for school leaders, that the build-up becomes enormous and overwhelming. It becomes ‘make or break’.

“But if the stakes were lowered, if inspection was far more supportive and constructive and if the consequences were not so significant, then more frequent inspection and feedback that allowed schools to develop, which wasn’t in any way punitive or stressful, think that is the approach our members were talking about in the responses to the survey.

“But – and this is the crucial bit – what we have to be really, really clear about is an awful lot of change needs to happen before we get to that point if indeed we ever do. Under the current framework, we’re definitely not saying that inspecting schools more frequently would be acceptable! At the moment, it is simply an interesting – but very long-term –conversation,” James adds.

For Anil and Sam, who have been driven from a profession they loved, any reform and change to Ofsted will come too late. But they both strongly agree reform has to come and is long overdue.

“The one-word judgement is totally flawed. It is meaningless now. No school, whatever grade they’re in, trusts it anymore. That has gone. The Big Listen, yes, we welcome it. But it must not be a slogan or a gimmick; Ofsted really does need to listen to leaders,” says Anil.

As their inspection unravelled around them, Anil recalls him and Sam looking at each other. “We knew where this was going. Despite quality of education and behaviour and attitudes being ‘good’ and personal development being one point off ‘outstanding’, he judged that safeguarding was not effective, used a limiting judgement and took leadership and management – and, therefore, the whole school – to ‘inadequate’.

“When they fed back to us on the final day, there wasn’t a dry eye in the room. When the inspector went onto our safeguarding platform, he started to look at incidents and follow the actions down the pathway; he really started to pick at things.

“But there was no child unsafe; there was no child in danger. We could prove that we’d done what was required for every instance brought up, although some of it was written down in other places. But he said, ‘If it’s not on the system, it didn’t happen’. And that was that,” Anil adds. Ironically, it was the tragedy of Ruth Perry’s death, the upswell for reform and advocacy by her sister Julia Waters that came to the school’s aid, in that, in the wake of the tragedy, Ofsted pledged to re-inspect schools that had been downgraded within a 12-week window.

“We’d made the changes to the system the inspector wanted within the next two days anyway,” highlights Sam. Nevertheless, even now, having decided to leave, the scars remain.

“Having that word ‘inadequate’ used –I know they say it isn’t describing the leadership but the school. But we are the leadership, and it does feel personal. You have absolutely called my head teacher ‘inadequate’, which is appalling. If I described a member of staff or a parent like that or a pupil, I’d be on a disciplinary,” Sam says.

You have absolutely called my head teacher ‘inadequate’, which is appalling.

“Without what Julia Waters did, we would still be ‘inadequate’, just waiting for them to tell us what they would do to us next,” agrees Anil. “Why are we so frightened of our inspectorate? Yes, they’re 100% necessary, but why do we fear them? Why should we fear them? Something has gone wrong. It should be a collaboration.

“I’ve spent 13 years in this school, bringing it up to a point where it has never been stronger. To think they called that ‘inadequate’ doesn’t make sense,” he says.

Finally, what is the ‘ask’ here of NAHT members? Especially those ‘in the window’ and still spending the first half of each week with a knot of anxiety in their stomachs?

Ian Hartwright emphasises that members should familiarise themselves with what has already changed on inspection, and there is an advice page

“WHEN WE FINALLY GOT THE CALL, I’D NEVER FELT SO PHYSICALLY SICK IN MY LIFE.”

Even though Richard Challoner School, a Catholic comprehensive secondary school and sixth form in New Malden, maintained its ‘outstanding’ during its most recent Ofsted inspection in November 2022, head teacher Sean Maher still believes the inspectorate has so totally lost the trust and respect of the profession that it needs root-and-branch change.

“We talk about Richard Challoner School as our ‘Challoner family’; it is very much that type of school. It is heavily over-subscribed; we could easily fill it five times over. It is a lovely school and a very happy one.

to explain ourselves and to provide evidence. As an inspection team, I don’t think they could have done a better job, albeit within a system that I think is fundamentally flawed.

it took me at least half a term to recover emotionally. I think it took the school time to recover, too. What I mean by that is because the inspection is so intense, you have it, and then everyone gives a deep sigh and takes their feet off the pedal. So, not only is it not helping you drive things forward, but everyone is so exhausted and relieved after this period of tension and waiting that it can actually send you backwards. It is not a process that is in any way helpful to the school or the education of young people.

on NAHT’s website (www.naht.org.uk/ RD/Ofsted-advice).

This outlines changes such as relaxing the stipulations around confidentiality, how staff can be accompanied on inspection, and how head teachers and senior leaders can become more confident about challenging the behaviour of inspectors. “We have got to get this punitive notion of Ofsted off the books,” he adds.

For James Bowen, it is important that members respond to Ofsted’s Big Listen, although at the time of writing, NAHT has already raised concerns about the nature of the consultation and what it does and does not contain. “Despite our concerns about some aspects of the consultation, the chief inspector has said he wants to listen and go out and speak with as many people involved in the sector as possible, whom inspection touches upon,” says James.

“So, we’d recommend that members get involved if they possibly can and use the free text boxes to address any issues not covered in the multiple-choice sections of the survey. We need the inspectorate to hear individual members’ views, even though we will obviously be feeding in as a union as well. Also, read the Rethinking School Inspection report, reflect on it, and use that listening exercise with Ofsted to reinforce the points we’re making,” James adds.

“We had not had an inspection since 2007, which was when we were graded ‘outstanding’. But when Ofsted started inspecting ‘outstanding’ schools again, we knew we would get hit. When approaching Ofsted, our mantra has always been that we will be ‘Ofsted aware’ but not Ofsted driven. We will always only do what is in the best interests of our children. If Ofsted doesn’t like it, that’s just tough luck.

“At least that’s what we tell the staff. What I feel myself is completely different. The reality is, I know, if we lose that ‘outstanding’, then – in parents’ eyes – the school will be going backwards. As much as it is a lovely school, it would only take a few things to ‘slip’, and suddenly, you can find yourself in a bit of bother.

“So, for me, there was a massive amount of pressure – the waiting found excruciating. Every Wednesday afternoon, you’d get to about 2pm, think, ‘Well, they’re not coming this week,’ and breathe a sigh of relief.

“But that’s only for two days, and then you go back to it the next week. It’s this constant pressure, and as time goes on, it just builds and builds. It creates tension in the staff team, too. When we finally got the call, I’d never felt so physically sick in my life.

“I want to say from the outset that the inspection team we had and the lead inspector were exemplary. They were good people; they wanted to do a fair and honest inspection. They gave us every opportunity at every turn

“It is fundamentally flawed because of the pressure it puts on many people. I went home that evening feeling like the weight of the world was on my shoulders. Because of that pressure of ‘We cannot fail at this’. You don’t sleep that night; there’s no chance. Then you’re in school the next morning by 6.30am because what’s the point of lying in bed worrying about things?

“With this particular framework, the pressure is also really hard on middle leaders. They know what they say in those meetings will be triangulated against conversations with other staff and pupils and by what Ofsted sees in the classrooms. The whole school is let down if they don’t get it right for that half hour or 20 minutes. For me and other senior leaders, the whole day is checking on things and worrying.

“Then you get to your meeting at the end of the first day. I went in with one of my deputies, and you’re not allowed to say anything, which is such a bizarre process.

“You’re sitting in a room, and they’re talking about your school. There could could be a misunderstanding, or they have fundamentally got the wrong impression about something. You don’t get an opportunity to comment on that. That doesn’t seem like a process that is working with you but rather being done to you.

“At the end of the whole process, we did retain our ‘outstanding’, and that’s, of course, a lovely feeling. But I still felt absolutely emotionally drained. I think

“I’d like to see safeguarding being taken out of the hands of an Ofsted inspection. I think every school should be audited on safeguarding every year, as a simple pass or fail. I don’t think it should be part of a school improvement framework.

“What do we want Ofsted to achieve? That’s where think Ofsted has been lost. What is the purpose of Ofsted? Is it to let our leaders know where they think schools are? Is it to inform parents whether a school is good or bad? If it is the latter, this framework does not do that; it prioritises the wrong things. In my view, there could be a really outstanding school, serving a really deprived community and doing fantastic work, but it will never get ‘outstanding’ because of how this framework is written.

“Is the purpose of Ofsted to improve education for the young people in this country? If that is its purpose, it is definitely, definitely not doing that. If anything, I think it is harming the outcomes for young people. Because it is driving talented leaders away from the profession, and it is driving teachers away because they don’t want all that stress. And then, as I say, it results in schools actually taking their feet off the pedal, which is not good for education.

“Ofsted was started at a time when education was in a really different place than it is now. So, we need to accept that and ask, ‘What is appropriate for 2024/25?’ We need a system focused on improvement, that is about children, and is not stressful for head teachers because it is doing what we all want when going into a school – providing the best possible education we can for young people.”

SEAN MAHER, HEAD TEACHER, RICHARD CHALLONER SCHOOL

CASE STUDY

“SHE PUT TWO STOOLS IN THE FAR CORNER, SAID, ‘DON’T SAY ANYTHING UNLESS YOU’RE SPOKEN TO’ AND THEN THEY HAD THE MEETING WITH THEIR BACKS TO US.”

For Mark Wildman, head teacher at Wicor Primary School in Portchester, Hampshire, an “incompetent” inspection escalated into a formal complaint that, in turn, highlighted, for him, the lack of teeth –and accountability – in the current Ofsted complaints process.

“I’ve been a head teacher since 1991, and in that time, been through around eight or nine inspections; none has been a pleasant experience. The worst one was in 2017, and it was a shocking experience.

“It was a complete car crash of an inspection; it was completely incompetent from start to finish. It was a Section 8 one-day that turned into a Section 5 two-day inspection, where the school went from ‘good’ to ‘requires improvement’, which ended up with me making a formal complaint.

“I remember the more the process went on, the worse it got, and there was so little you could do about it. The lead inspector was, I think on reflection, poorly trained and had a dearth of interpersonal skills.

Apart from a series of rookie errors on the part of the lead inspector involving – you guessed it – safeguarding (which took up the entire morning), it transpired that the key problem was she didn’t read our documentation. We set her up in a room and gave her our school improvement plan and self-evaluation documents. But she didn’t read them.

“By 3.30/4pm on that first day, she turned to me and said she thought we’d have to carry on for another day. That was quite a surprise to me because there had been no sniff of this thinking at any time in the day, and I asked why. She said, ‘Well, I’m not convinced you’re a ‘good’ school’.

This was a surprise to the local authority, too, because she hadn’t mentioned this in their phone call, mid-afternoon.

“I again asked why she felt that, and she just kept replying that she was not convinced, without any information whatsoever. I then asked her if she had read the school improvement plan. And she said, ‘Where was that?’ I said, ‘Well, it was the document we left in your room on your table to look at’.

MARK WILDMAN, HEAD TEACHER, WICOR PRIMARY SCHOOL

“She admitted she hadn’t read it. She said, ‘I’ll have to take it to my hotel tonight’. I said that was fine, but could she please bring it back in the morning?

Then she changed her mind because she didn’t want to risk losing it.

“Day two was even worse. It was an utter fiasco in every conceivable way, sheer incompetence on an epic scale. When I complained, Ofsted came back and said we had refused to allow her to see the improvement plan, which was an outand-out lie. The lead inspector agreed to change some factual errors we highlighted in the draft report, yet when the final report came out, those hadn’t been done. It was either sheer incompetence or duplicitous. These traits characterised this inspection.

“Not one of the points in my complaint was then upheld, so I escalated it as per the complaints procedure to step two. But from that point on, all Ofsted does is review its complaints handling process, not the substance of the complaint. Which it then concluded had been fine.

“I then went to the Independent Complaints Adjudications Service for Ofsted at step three. But its role, again, is to look at the process of the complaint, not the complaint itself. Its white-washing response came through on Ofsted-headed paper, which I thought was strange for a so-called ‘independent’ body.

“As per the published Ofsted complaints process, then sent my complaint to the parliamentary ombudsman, which according to said process, was the ‘last chance saloon’. I spent an entire Easter

THE RETHINKING SCHOOL

For the Rethinking School Inspection report, NAHT surveyed 1,890 leaders in England on their views about inspection between 21 September and 12 October 2023 before the new chief inspector, Sir Martyn Oliver, took up his post.

INSPECTION REPORT

holiday on it, which was accepted in May 2018. In August 2018, I got a phone call saying they couldn’t look at it. Ofsted had apparently found an Act from 1967 that, it said, prevents state schools from complaining against a state inspectorate.

I checked the copy of the complaints process (I had to check my sanity); the ombudsman was clearly shown as the last option, and there was no mention of state schools being barred. I then checked the Ofsted complaints process online, and sure enough, it had been changed in the time I lodged my complaint. You can draw your own conclusion.

“When our ‘requires improvement’ report came out, the reaction from the parents was incredible; they were so supportive – letters, cards, emails and social media posts. Knowing our school well, the local authority was equally appalled. But we just had to get on with it.

“I think we need a completely new inspection body. Head teachers talk to each other, and you hear so many bad stories. I’ve heard of deputy head teachers being told to shut up by Ofsted inspectors. My deputy and I were invited to the team feedback for our second-day meeting, but the lead inspector said, ‘This is our meeting’. She put two stools in the far corner and said, ‘Sit on those stools, and don’t say anything unless you’re spoken to; if you do say something, then you may well be sent out of the meeting’. They then had the meeting with their backs to us.

That’s how I was treated in my school.

“I’d like to see safeguarding being removed from Ofsted, absolutely. It has wrecked its processes. It’s become obsessed with it; it loses perspective.

I think Ofsted should be more like an MOT. You come in, inspect certain criteria, and if there’s something wrong, you go off, change it, and sort it out, and then they give you a certificate.

“Inspection is meant to be objective, but I have yet to go through an Ofsted process that is anything other than subjective. It is either about the dynamics of the person themselves, if it is one inspector, or the team.”

The report found that school leaders almost unanimously want grades removed in favour of short written reports summarising strengths and weaknesses. When asked how Ofsted should report its inspection findings, just 3% of school leaders supported Ofsted’s continued use of single-word, or phrase, overarching judgements.

By around a two-thirds majority, most leaders said that Ofsted inspectors should report their findings in a short, written summary of strengths and weaknesses.

School leaders do not agree that Ofsted’s current approach to reporting provides useful information for the general public, pupils, parents or schools.

They do not support Ofsted’s generic inspection framework: almost all school leaders (92%) disagreed that Ofsted’s use of a single framework and methodology to inspect all schools (regardless of age range, type, specialist provision or size) is appropriate.

They believe inspectors have too much to do in the time available: only around one in 10 (12%) of school leaders felt inspectors were able to understand fully and accurately evaluate a school in the time they spent on-site. Inspection judgements are regarded as unreliable: overall, two-thirds of leaders mistrust the conclusion of Ofsted’s judgements.

The current half-day notification period for inspection is felt to be too short; a large majority (85%) support a longer notification period. Almost all leaders also believe schools should know the window for their next inspection within a school year.

COULD LESSONS BE LEARNED

While Ofsted and Estyn are not a like-for-like comparison, there are potentially useful lessons that NAHT members in England could learn from the experiences of their counterparts in Wales, argues Laura Doel, NAHT national secretary (Wales).

“Things are far from perfect in Wales, but we’re in a better place with Estyn than England is with Ofsted in many ways. We’re two years into a new chief inspector, Owen Evans, who has a very different take on inspection than previous inspectors. We’ve been working closely with Estyn over the last couple of months, particularly in light of the

FROM ESTYN?

Ruth Perry tragedy in England, to make sure that members have the support and understanding from Estyn and that Estyn really recognises the impact of inspection,” she tells Leadership Focus

“We’ve negotiated a well-being protocol with Estyn so that when inspectors go into schools, there is a mechanism in place if leaders or teachers need additional support. We welcome that approach. There is still work to be done around how some inspectors conduct themselves, and our ongoing concern continues to be that there is no independent complaints process for Estyn.

Almost two-thirds (61%) of leaders said removing the evaluation of safeguarding arrangements from routine inspection and replacing it with an annual assessment or audit would deliver improvements.

Almost two-thirds (64%) also thought that inspections being led and staffed by phase and type-specific experts would be likely to deliver improvements.

School leaders have no confidence in the way in which Ofsted handles complaints about the accuracy of its inspection judgements or the conduct of its inspectors. Of those who expressed an opinion, almost all (95%) disagreed that Ofsted deals with complaints about the accuracy of inspection judgements effectively, and almost all (92%) also disagreed that Ofsted deals with complaints about inspectors’ conduct effectively.

“If we are to have a truly transparent inspection service, we believe there should be a mechanism by which schools can challenge if they disagree with the outcomes of an inspection.

“Another step forward is that Estyn has just launched an ‘already ready’ campaign. That basically argues that inspectors want to see schools as they are rather than jumping through hoops. Estyn still has some way to go – and there is still a legacy of people feeling burnt –but things are now, we feel, going in the right direction. People are now feeling more supported, rather than judged, by the inspection process,” Laura adds.

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Colour and flavour

School leader SARAH WORDLAW shares her experience and tips for applying for head teacher positions in our member blog series, #ImASchoolLeader, which celebrates the diversity of school leadership.

Interviews #2 and #3:

I n my last year of deputy headship, facing falling rolls, the gentrification of the local area and dwindling budgets, I felt incredibly helpless. I knew it was time to start thinking about headship because I wanted to make a difference.

I have worked in primary and secondary schools in various roles over the past 18 years, from teaching assistant to deputy head teacher. I have led all subjects, behaviour and assessment and worked in one-form, two-form and three-form size schools. I have been through many Ofsted inspections. I have taught the most challenging classes across the key stages – and loved it, from classes of 36 pupils to classes with more special educational needs and disabilities pupils than not. I have rewritten a whole school curriculum from scratch to disrupt white and euro-centric heteronormative educational narratives and then went on to write a book published by Bloomsbury entitled Time to Shake Up the Curriculum.

I am a born and bred south Londoner, a mixed-race queer woman. I represent a number of intersectional identities, all of which are marginalised voices.

Given my experience, I honestly didn’t think finding a head teacher role would be as hard as it was. Now, this may be due to a number of reasons: maybe I don’t interview well enough, maybe don’t ‘look’ like a head teacher or maybe against my white peers, I am seen as a ‘risk’ –maybe all three reasons. Maybe none. In total, did five interviews. For every job I applied for, I got an interview. Hurray! had a range of different interview experiences – some great, and some not. Before my interviews, I did my homework. I trawled through The Key and printed out the sample head teacher questions. memorised the school’s values and vision. I reflected on my National Professional Qualification for Headship training, thought about how my values aligned with the school’s values and practised talking about it in a way that didn’t seem as rehearsed as it was.

X Factor

It started with six of us, and candidates were ‘voted off’ throughout the day. We started with a teaching task – great, I knew I would smash this one! Then, data – my favourite –was followed by an in-tray task (I love a good letter of complaint!). After lunch, there were just two of us left. I got to the end of the day and left the school feeling proud. My phone rang – I didn’t get it.

FEEDBACK:

“You just didn’t seem headteacherly enough.”

Quality of feedback: 0/5

The sinking ship

I call these interviews the sinking ship because I knew shortly after arriving that was not experienced enough to take on either of these schools, but I took the interview for what it was: good practice. Both schools were enormous, both schools were financially unstable, and both schools were solidly in the Ofsted window. I was asked questions I honestly didn’t know how to answer –mainly about budget. At one point, had to say after a number of prompts from the interviewer (which was kind of them), “I’m sorry; I don’t know how to answer that.” Obviously, I didn’t get offered these jobs, and rightly so.

FEEDBACK:

“You need more experience with managing a budget.” knew this, but how can I get more experience if I am currently in a deputy role?

Quality of feedback: 1/5

Interview #4:

Colour and flavour

A wonderful school in east London was looking for someone to champion racial literacy training and diversify their curriculum – great, that’s me! There were four other candidates: all deputy heads and white. If they were looking for someone to champion racial literacy, surely that would be someone from the global majority, right? The interview was tough; I was asked questions about budget, but I felt I answered them better than in interviews #2 and #3 – progress. I left with a good feeling. Then my phone rang. I didn’t get it.

FEEDBACK:

“While we thought you brought colour and flavour to the day, we felt you were not experienced enough.” At best, an extremely clumsy choice of words or, at worst, a racially inappropriate comment. didn’t need feedback on my personality, thanks; I needed feedback on how to answer specific questions/tasks better.

Quality of feedback: 0/5

While we thought you brought colour and flavour to the day, we felt you were not experienced enough.

What I learned:

I had just about given up hope when I did my final interview. This was a beautiful one-form school in south London, and I knew from the first visit that it was the school for me. The interview was tough, and I was unsure when I left. When I received the offer phone call, I broke down into tears of happiness (Lord knows what the person on the other end of the phone was thinking!).

• In the case of interviews, practice does make perfect. I learned a lot about myself through failure

• Some people may judge you because of how you look. You cannot change those people, but you can remind yourself that in a leadership position, you can change the hearts and minds of an upcoming generation, and that is powerful

• Do not apologise for yourself in voice, dress or how you hold yourself. You matter; you can do it. If you don’t feel it, act as if you do

• Seek coaching and support from your peers; don’t be afraid to ask for help and feedback – hopefully, yours will be better than mine!

Explore more inspiring stories in the series at www.naht.org.uk/ImASchoolLeader

Join the conversation on social media using #ImASchoolLeader

Ready to share your own experiences? Reach out to us at policy@naht.org.uk and be part of the series.

Interview #1:

The one

Interview #5:

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Northern Ireland

GRAHAM GAULT, NAHT national secretary (Northern Ireland), looks at the review of workload impact and a new approach to inspection.

Workload

Members in Northern Ireland are very aware that the Teachers’ Negotiating Committee’s Review of Workload Impact on School Leaders has been delivered for well over a year. The review contains 29 recommendations that were agreed on by representatives from the teaching unions, the Department of Education and employing authorities to bring about changes required to deliver relief for school leaders from the burdens of unnecessary workload.

Delivery of the recommendations has not been forthcoming, however, despite sustained engagement from NAHT and sister trade unions. The unacceptable reluctance to deliver workload improvements has been central to NAHT’s campaigning in Northern Ireland over the last two years, resulting in an agreement to develop a framework by 31 May 2024 to see immediate delivery of those recommendations that can be progressed and an implementation timetable for further medium and longer-term delivery of further recommendations. Indeed, this has been built into the agreement to end

the wider pay dispute, which has seen 20 months of action short of a strike and three days of strike action from school leaders in Northern Ireland.

NAHT chaired the development of the review itself, has tirelessly campaigned for its delivery and will continue to play a central role in developing the framework and implementation timetable in the coming months. We will monitor the progress of delivery very carefully.

Inspection

Following some internal development within the Education and Training Inspectorate (ETI), Northern Ireland’s inspection service, and a sustained period of formal and informal engagement with trade unions, members in Northern Ireland now have the encouraging prospect of looking forward to a new approach to school inspections.

ETI is now running pilot inspections to support the development of a new inspection process, including a new understanding of the function and purpose of inspection. The pilots will continue for the remainder of this

academic year (even following the close of the industrial dispute) across the early years, work-based learning and youth phases, with a view to a new, agreed model being rolled out in September.

The Northern Ireland NAHT executive is very encouraged by the discussions with ETI, which have included focused consideration of key inspection-related issues, such as reporting arrangements, wording and phrasing within reports, identification of individuals within reports, overall school gradings, inspection ethos and role of district inspectors in the inspection process. The executive hopes that the highstakes nature of school inspection in Northern Ireland will become a thing of the past and that inspections will truly become a part of the fabric of school improvement by being a supportive mechanism to help schools develop their practice, by celebrating what is working well and identifying areas that need further engagement. NAHT will continue to engage fully with the ETI as we work together on what has, so far, been a positive journey.

Wales

POLICY UPDATE

Post-industrial action

After eight months of industrial action, the spring term has been dominated by delivering for members. Through widespread participation in action short of strike across Wales, NAHT Cymru leveraged a workload agreement to enhance working conditions for its members. Discussions started in January, focusing on reducing the workload associated with finance, reporting requirements and policy implementation and development. We have already seen a significant reduction in the number of reporting requirements related to grants and the number of grants allocated to schools to bring uniformity to the system. The middle tier review, lobbied for as part of our industrial action activity, has now been published, with the Welsh Government committed to moving away from the existing consortia/partnership model of school improvement in favour of more school/local authority (LA) collaboration and investing money into frontline delivery. NAHT’s stance remains the same: ensuring education spending provides optimal value for learners. The review concludes that there may be a better way of supporting schools to improve that could free up more money for schools. NAHT is currently working with members who work for the consortia on a proposal for the future of school improvement, capitalising on their skills and expertise to shape plans to suit schools.

Return of NAHT Cymru conference

For the first time since the covid-19 pandemic, the NAHT Cymru conference made its comeback in Llandudno and Cardiff. Delegates heard from NAHT general secretary Paul Whiteman on building on industrial action success and NAHT Cymru president Chris Parry on the power of the collective endeavour. HMI Owen Evans of Estyn engaged in conversation with NAHT national secretary (Wales) Laura Doel on all things inspection, affirming the positive and open relationship developed between the inspectorate and union. Welsh Government director of education Owain Lloyd (pictured) looked ahead to education’s challenges and answered questions on funding, school year reform and school improvement. Lively debating sessions on motions to the national conference, led by Dafydd Jones and Dean Taylor, rounded off two hugely successful days.

Grassroots campaigning success

Through our strong activist base in Wales and the collective strength of our members, we can harness change on a local and national level. In recent months, mounting financial strains on LAs have spurred various proposals affecting our members’ working conditions. Rhondda Cynon Taff Council proposed that all primary schools run a 30-minute paid-for childcare offer to raise £500,000 to support school budgets. There was no consultation with the unions, discussion with schools or thought into the implications. School leaders shouldn’t be bullied into running childcare provisions to prop up school finances. Schools

already put considerable effort during and outside working hours to bring money into schools, for example, by becoming school improvement partners. Emergency branch meetings, support from governing bodies and legal advice commissioned by NAHT halted this proposal at the 11th hour. NAHT is now entering discussions over the viability of such a provision and ensuring LAs, not members, run these facilities. In Cardiff, a school federation plan that would see schools ‘triggered’ for federation every time a head teacher left, retired or if the LA deemed it suitable again led to a fierce and successful local campaign, which saw many members engaging with our branches.

LAURA DOEL, NAHT national secretary (Wales), provides an update on the work being done in Wales to protect, support and empower NAHT members.

PAUL WHITEMAN: NAHT general secretary

What a difference a year makes

That’s how long it’s been since I was last asked to write something for the ‘conference edition’ of Leadership Focus, and haven’t we been busy since then? We’ve had a ballot on industrial action in every jurisdiction we operate in, changes to pay and funding, a new chief inspector at Ofsted, a concrete crisis, new pay deals in Northern Ireland and Wales, and now we’re heading ever closer to a general election.

Amazingly, through all of this, the same secretary of state for education in England has been in post; that’s quite an achievement in the context of recent times.

It’s no exaggeration to say that NAHT’s Annual Conference is the highlight of my year.

Of course, I’m looking forward to the motions we’ll be debating and the policy we will create, but for me, the real thrill comes from the energy and sense of renewal it creates among our members and activists.

Indeed, the dictionary defines a union as the ‘action of joining together, or the fact of being joined together, especially in a political context’, so it’s no wonder so many of us feel most at home when we congregate for the Annual Conference.

To those who have never attended, can I suggest you make a mental bookmark now to consider going next year? NAHT supports its members in lots of ways, but we need those same members to navigate us and drive us to ensure we remain the authentic voice of school leaders.

It’s self-evident that no member of NAHT is apathetic, given they’ve taken the time to join a union in the first place, so if you have ideas, you have a voice, and you think you can help further the debate on how we improve both education and the profession, then get in touch with your local branch and region and ask them how you can get involved.

I’ve never met an NAHT official or activist who’s regretted it. Even if you’ve not registered for this year, you can still follow the whole thing as it happens on our live stream (visit www. naht.org.uk/annualconference).

We’ll also email you a roundup at the end of each day, along with interviews, photos and commentary on what’s been discussed, so it’ll be the next best thing to being there in person.

As an aside, I’m especially pleased that this year’s conference is being held in Wales, where NAHT has long had an active and committed membership base.

Along with the government and almost all other campaigning organisations, we are now very much on an election footing and

have started to prepare for how we can cut through the noise and ensure that education is the number one issue for each and every parliamentary candidate. We know we have an opportunity here. We’re not advocating for a niche or arcane endeavour; we are speaking up on behalf of schools, children, teachers, parents and communities.

Society cares about the same things that we care about, but in order to be heard, we need to lead the charge.

I’ve no doubt this next election will be a watershed moment for education, but it’s a moment we can choose to be in control of.

NAHT supports its members in lots of ways, but we need those same members to navigate us and drive us to ensure we remain the authentic voice of school leaders.

Above: Paul Whiteman

Menopause and the workplace

NAHT national secretary (advice)

KATE ATKINSON looks at the common symptoms of menopause, workplace challenges and strategies for offering support.

he Trades Union Congress’s (TUC) foreword to its response to the Women and Equalities Select Committee’s inquiry into menopause and the workplace says: “Menopause is a key workplace issue.

It is an equality issue as well as a health and safety issue and will impact all women at some point in their lives.

This is why unions have led and continue to lead calls for workplace policies to support women going through menopause and raise awareness of menopause as a workplace issue.”

This article aims to raise awareness of menopause as a workplace issue. Members reading this with their management ‘hat’ on might want to reflect on what they can do in their setting to address this. For members facing difficulties, you could use this article as a starting point for discussions with your employer about implementing some of the suggested steps.

Menopause

and employment – what’s the link?

Employers should be aware of individuals who might go through menopause and understand how menopause symptoms might affect them, enabling them to offer appropriate support. Menopause usually happens between ages 45 and 55, but it can happen earlier or later, and (on average) symptoms last about four years. You can find out more about the medical side of menopause from the NHS: www.nhs.uk/ conditions/menopause/

The symptoms associated with menopause are wide-ranging and, in some cases, detrimental to someone’s ability to work. It’s also worth noting that some of the symptoms can be exacerbated by work. For example, if the temperature is too high, this may cause a hot flush, dizziness, discomfort, sweating

and heart palpitations – these are some of the most common symptoms of menopause. Sleep disorder symptoms can reduce the ability to concentrate and stay focused, low confidence may impact making important decisions, and low mood and anxiety may affect relationships with colleagues. We are aware of NAHT members who have felt unable to continue working because of the impact of menopause –these are highly successful individuals who have built a career of many years. Their early exit is a loss to the profession.

What should employers do?

Employers should treat menopause like any other health issue; this breaks down any stigma surrounding menopause at work and creates an inclusive environment where staff and managers feel able to discuss any reasonable adjustments needed. NAHT strongly recommends that employers have a workplace menopause policy and has produced a model policy that members can adopt or request be adopted in their setting (available at www.naht.org.uk/RD/menopause-anda-model-menopause-policy). A good policy reminds employers about the steps they should be taking and allows staff to understand what they should expect. It also demonstrates that the employer takes the issue seriously. Support should be provided similarly to how it would be for someone with any long-term health condition. Information about menopause and available support should be woven through all health and sickness absencerelated policies and procedures. Although it’s not automatic for the symptoms associated with menopause to be regarded as a disability, they can be, and it is good practice to consider making adjustments for anyone experiencing difficulties at work because of a long-term health condition such as menopause. The occupational health service should be engaged to support this. Employers could go much further than the measures set out above, but these would be a great starting point and, perhaps as importantly, begin a conversation on a topic that impacts 50% of the population at some point in their lives.

NDEFENDING DEMOCRATIC RIGHTS

outlines how your union is standing firm for education and working to protect school leaders’ rights to strike.

AHT has been campaigning strongly in the wake of a series of anti-trade union initiatives by the current government, the most recent of which is the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act 2023 and the accompanying proposal for regulations in the education sector.

These measures would effectively remove the democratic right of school leaders to engage in strike action. Strike action is an absolute last resort for NAHT members; the government has been able to rely on the fact that school leaders are ‘relentlessly reasonable’, always trying to find the solution and will carry on no matter what. But increasingly, throughout all nations that NAHT represents, we have seen our members tested to breaking point. Excessive employer demands, an ever-increasing workload and a fall in pay are not doable. If union members cannot strike, they do not have an impactful means of bargaining for fair pay and conditions should negotiations fail. The inquest in late 2023 into the death of head teacher Ruth Perry publicly exposed the unsafe working conditions that many of our members

experience; undue stress and pressure are threatening the mental health of education professionals. As the coroner stated: “There is a risk of future death if only lip service is paid to learning from tragedies like these.” As a union, it is essential that we have the right to instruct our members to withdraw their labour if their workplace is unsafe; the Strikes Act removes this right by compelling school leaders to work under threat of dismissal on lawful strike days. The Strikes Act has been said to be the greatest threat to the UK trade union movement in a generation. This hasn’t gone unnoticed internationally; such increasingly authoritarian measures have led to the UK being downgraded in the International Trade Union Confederation’s Annual Global Rights Index. The index rated the UK, on a scale of one to five, as a four, meaning that the government has engaged in ‘systematic violation of rights’, which puts the UK on par with regimes such as Saudi Arabia and Tanzania.

NAHT is challenging this blatant affront to the human rights of school leaders. We have responded robustly to consultations on the legislation and its accompanying measures, most recently on the proposals for

the education sector. We have held information sessions for members in person and online and developed a guide for members to submit an effective response. We have engaged prominently in the wider Trades Union Congress’s (TUC) campaigning initiatives by having a strong vocal presence at its Special Congress on Minimum Service Levels and showing our strength at its march against the measures in Cheltenham. We have also met with parent organisations and local governments to discuss implications, and we have provided a submission to the United Nations Human Rights Committee to highlight how the measures directly violate prominent international human rights obligations. Once the details of the education regulations are known, we will continue our relentless opposition to these draconian measures, doing all in our power to challenge them.

FIND OUT MORE… If you want to learn more about our work in this area, visit: www.naht.org.uk

Protecting your compensation

FIONA BELGIAN from Thompsons Solicitors examines why your union’s legal services benefits matter.

Navigating the intricacies of compensation claims is only a priority once it becomes a personal necessity, driven by the unfortunate event of an injury to oneself or a loved one.

This widespread lack of engagement paved the way for one of the most impactful legislative reforms affecting injured people. These reforms fundamentally altered access to justice and a person’s ability to receive full compensation even in ‘no win – no fee’ cases.

The Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 (LASPO) dramatically shifted the responsibility for legal costs in personal injury cases.

Traditionally, the UK’s legal system permitted injured individuals successful in personal injury claims to reclaim their legal expenses from the losing party – an organisation, business, employer or individual responsible for the injury –typically through their insurance policies.

This structure guaranteed that claimants received 100% of the compensation awarded by the courts, without subtracting legal fees, ensuring a fair and

just outcome for those affected.

However, LASPO changed this dramatically. Since it came into force in 2013, claimants can no longer recover legal fees and after-the-event insurance premiums (taken out to cover the risk of losing and having to pay the other side’s costs) from the losing defendants.

The injured party must now bear these costs, usually deducted from the compensation awarded.

The legislation received substantial support from insurance companies who argued that the previous system encouraged claims, leading to claims of a ‘compensation culture’ despite statistics showing a decline in the number of claims made.

Insurers claimed that reforming the system would reduce frivolous claims and lead to savings, which would be passed on to consumers through lower insurance costs; this has yet to happen.

Since 2013, people injured through no fault of their own now face the unenviable choice of either not pursuing legitimate claims or seeing a significant portion of their compensation, typically 25% and sometimes more, being diverted to cover the costs of having legal representation.

Considering these developments, NAHT and Thompsons Solicitors provide legal services to all members through the union, enabling school leaders and their families to receive full compensation in personal injury cases for injuries in the UK. NAHT members will get 100% compensation if injured in the UK and can bring a claim for injuries inside or outside of work, including injuries on the road or in any public place where a claim can be made and liability proved. In the same way, family members are also covered, but only for injuries that occur outside of their work.

The scheme also provides special rates for other legal claims for members and their families, including clinical negligence and injuries outside the UK. By utilising the legal services provided through the union for personal injury claims in the UK, you and your family members are guaranteed to receive 100% of the compensation awarded.

We aim to provide peace of mind and financial security to NAHT members, ensuring you are not left out of pocket for seeking justice. We stand by our commitment to support you and your family, safeguarding your rights to full compensation without fearing losing a significant portion of compensation to pay legal fees.

We hope you and your family never need us, but if you do, please remember your union’s legal services. You can find more information and how to access your legal services here: https://www.thompsonstradeunion.law/ trade-unions/naht

and delivered by renowned experts within the education field.

Summer CPD programme

Whether you have specific training requirements or need help planning your next INSET day, NAHT’s tailored training uses our event management and educational expertise to help you achieve your goals.

With access to multiple resources across the education sector, including specialist consultants, our experienced team will work closely with you to provide expert, results-focused training tailored to meet your requirements.

Bespoke to your requirements

Excellent value for money

Hand-picked, high-quality facilitators

In person at your choice of venue or online

Fully flexible timings, including twilight

“We received exemplary bespoke complaints training, which was clear and informative. We all appreciated the chance to ask questions and explore scenarios.”

Head teacher, 2024

Computer says not yet

Do you think artificial intelligence (AI) will rapidly transform your job and the everyday processes of school life? Or are you sceptical about how far and fast any revolution might go?

It’s genuinely fascinating to listen to Daisy Christodoulou discuss these issues because, as education director of No More Marking, it’s her job and passion to understand and shape how education can benefit from developing technologies. For non-experts, what she has to say can be surprising – if not shocking.

Originally, No More Marking was “excited” about the potential of large language models (LLM), a type of AI; after research and experimentation, they are “more sceptical”. Christodoulou’s “not exact” analogy is that an LLM (such as ChatGPT) is “like giant text predictors”. If you ask an LLM for the capital of France, it scans its language use database for that question for the most likely answer, and “70-80% it will come up with the correct next word”. Christodoulou explains how No More Marking integrated ChatGPT into its website for bulk uploading student essays “on the premise that if we could get this to work, it would be brilliant and timesaving for everybody”. They found erratic grading, many outliers and central clustering if a grade set was provided. “We felt, after running a number of studies and evaluating, that you couldn’t let it loose.”

Grading with a human model is more consistent, and there is a process to deal with those mistakes. Moreover, “If you ask it to grade an essay five times, it will often give it five different grades.”

That’s not even the biggest problem. To paraphrase Christodoulou, LLMs hallucinate.

“It’s a problem everyone using

AI has faced and is its biggest weakness. If you have a model literally making stuff up, how can you rely on it? People in the world of AI have understood this, but it’s striking when you talk to people in education and they are unaware it’s an issue. I talked to one group of teachers and showed them some maths mistakes it made, and they couldn’t believe it – they said a calculator could get that right.” It wasn’t even contested information that was wrong, but Christodoulou’s favourite example of 13 squared (answer 169), for which it gives 196, the answer for 14 squared.

“This problem of hallucinations is one think people in education need to be more aware of and is the biggest block to it being reliably consistently in large-scale use.”

Hallucinations mean output needs proper human review –for instance if used in lesson planning. “With an LLM, you don’t know where it’s getting the answer from, and it’s up to you to quality assure it. honestly couldn’t see what was added to speed, quality or authenticity over a Google search or Wikipedia.”

Also, students can use it to cheat, often in ways of which teachers are unaware (such as using Snapchat to complete French homework).

So, what are LLMs good for?

Head teacher newsletters? “The time it takes you to input what you want and unpick the output,

you may as well have done it yourself. You can potentially torch your reputation on this.”

She continues: “Schools know best, but I would want a little bit more evidence of it working before I started to plough resources into it. The priority for school leaders, if they want an AI strategy, is to think about how to stop it from torpedoing their current homework and assessment model. Not ‘how to use this to reduce workload’, where I think it’s so sketchy.”

But, the technology is constantly evolving. She advises: “We could be totally wrong. You try to base as much as you can on evidence and the research we’ve done. When the facts change, we’ll change our minds. And we’ll keep an eye on those facts.”

Listen to Daisy’s full interview on our School Leadership Podcast: www.naht.org.uk/podcasts

Above: Susan Young