9 minute read
The Interview
from Lead Summer 2020
Robin greets students one by one each morning
Steering a new course
Leaders are having to find their own way through the Covid-19 crisis, with help from the union, the incoming NEU president tells Sarah Thompson.
“HEADSHIP is like being the captain of a cloud,” head teacher Robin Bevan says. “The role will move and shape whether you like it or not.”
The impact of Covid-19 on the role of leaders illustrates his point perfectly. Since the outbreak of the virus in March, head teachers have been forced to adapt to the most challenging of circumstances. Starting with the week before lockdown, which Robin describes as “something of a battering,” adding: “I never want to go through a week like that again.”
Looking back, Robin says it’s clear the Government “hadn’t got the faintest idea how schools were run” as, with just 48 hours’ notice, head teachers found
themselves with the insurmountable task of organising everything from online learning provision, care of vulnerable and key worker children, and staff rotas to onsite maintenance and insurance claims for cancelled school trips. At Southend High School for Boys, where Robin has been the head teacher for 13 years, celebration assemblies were also rapidly organised to mark the end of school for year 11 and 13 students.
“It is a rite of passage for those pupils,” Robin insists. “It’s part of the way they end their time in school.”
For ten weeks, he had on average ten students coming in each day. Then, faced with the Government’s announcement
that schools should open more widely, Robin began tentatively planning for a phased return, but wrestled with the practicalities, made more difficult by the “utterly inconsistent” guidance from the Department for Education (DfE).
Finding a way forward It is impossible to keep up with the Government guidance, Robin says. “The Prime Minister behaves like a jack-in-a-box. He pops up, makes declarations, then disappears.”
“We are told we must wear face masks on public transport, but in schools they aren’t deemed necessary,” he says. And the advice around social distancing measures raises problems in a 1920s building that has narrow corridors and in which the standard classroom area is 50 square metres.
“These spaces simply won’t work in the way that’s been envisaged in the guidance,” Robin explains, so instead he based decisions on his pupils, staff, classrooms and building. The risk assessment template he used came from a head teacher colleague – the DfE failed to provide one – and the NEU checklist, and regular contact with the school’s NEU rep has been invaluable. Asked by a colleague whether he has found it a help or a hindrance making decisions as
a head while being so publicly involved in the NEU, Robin told him: “It’s an absolute pleasure to be able to draw so freely on good quality advice from the NEU, when the DfE guidance is so poor. It’s been impressive. It’s protecting members.”
On 15 June, he had 60 pupils – most from years 10 and 12 – on site, 15 fewer than planned for. Most who stayed away would have had a two-leg public transport journey.
The staggered start and finish times meant Robin was out on the gate welcoming pupils one by one. “That was very different compared with the normal experience of 1,000 people rushing through the gates ten minutes before school opens,” he says.
“The pupils were really pleased to be back. You want it to be a bit of a celebration, but it isn’t really because a lot of things they would normally do they can’t. They want to go outside and play football and we’ve said, you can kick a ball around, but you can’t handle it. We’ve just got to have a few careful refinements to make that reasonably safe. But it went well.”
Keeping a sense of normality The day starts with a general catch-up for all of them. Then pupils do online work and, while they’re doing that, the teachers talk with each of them individually. There are two teachers in each room, so they can have that conversation – a private conversation, about 15 minutes long – away from the group.
Among other things, Robin has introduced lunch boxes that are delivered to classrooms, and each room has a sanitation station at the entrance.
But he also wanted to ensure the environment, while safe, remained as normal as possible. “We’ve got a little bit of signage around hand sanitising, but we’ve avoided the yellow distance tape. Instead, we’ve simply spread chairs out to show where we want pupils to sit.”
As students began returning to school, Robin was conscious that there would be a range of emotions. “For those craving the return to normality, there is delight and relief. For others there is a huge amount of anxiety and grief.”
There are students who have experienced bereavement, and, at a neighbouring school, a student died after contracting the virus. “There is no doubt that Covid-19 has touched the fringes of the school community with an element of tragedy,” he reflects.
To help students and staff adjust to the return, every teacher was provided with a photo sheet of the students in their group
so that they would know their names before they got into school. “That’s a small thing,” says Robin, “but it’s hugely important. If it’s your first day back, you want somebody to know who you are.”
Robin says he thinks the return to school has been welcome for most students: “The fact they are in school, that school is still here and still normal, albeit a little empty, is reassuring.”
Speaking out The pandemic arrived on the back of a really exhausting period for head teachers, says Robin. Hit by a 20 per cent reduction in school funding over the last eight years, Robin was forced to increase pupil numbers, while keeping staffing levels the same. At one point he was teaching maths classes of 60 students.
He has, like many leaders, been increasingly alarmed by the dwindling budget he has to run his school, and has been prepared to speak publicly about the devastating impact of cuts. He has spoken out in the media and he marched with thousands of other head teachers in 2018 on Downing Street to drive home the message, then along with a handful of other heads he delivered a letter to the Chancellor ahead of the budget in 2019. His actions have come at a price.
He shrugs off the criticism he faced from his local MP for talking honestly in the local media about the school funding crisis. But the demand from the DfE just before Christmas for details of those on his school’s governing body – after Robin had submitted a deficit budget – felt quite different. Concerned that an interim executive board would be sent in and he would be removed from his post, Robin tells me: “I thought that was the worst it was ever going to get.”
A new role He remains, despite this unwelcome level of scrutiny, committed to speaking out about the issues threatening education. That is why is he is looking forward to succeeding Amanda Martin as NEU president in September.
He joined ATL as a trainee teacher in 1989, quickly becoming an active member. Trade unionism is in the blood. Robin’s father was president of the Association of Teachers in Technical Institutions (ATTI) and his grandfather was chairman of the National Association of Approved Schools Staff (NAASS). He grew up in a household where, he says, it was assumed you would do things in a compassionate and caring way, being mindful of those who were at a disadvantage or who needed a voice.
Injustice is something to tackle, rather than to complain about, he argues. In order to effect change you need to have a positive vision of how things could be different. “That is what needs to drive the trade union movement,” he says, citing the Health and Safety at Work Act, which was borne out of trade union pressure, as a perfect example.
“Union membership gives people confidence that they will be able to stand together with others in the same position,” says Robin. “People want that sense of solidarity.”
With a lack of clear leadership from the Government, Robin argues that the union has become the first port of call for advice for many members. “We have to treasure that and make sure we use it well as trade unionists. It’s clear that a lot of leadership members have felt isolated and under pressure. We’re dealing with a situation where we don’t know what the answer is.”
One effect of the pandemic has been to put a pause on some of what Robin calls the “industrial processes” that surround teaching.
“One thing that has become obvious is that you don’t need Ofsted to bully you into doing the right thing for your pupils,” he says. “It has backed off and schools have carried on doing fantastic things.
“You can remove league tables, exams, Ofsted, performance management and you still have a vibrant and successful system.”
He is anxious about the Government introducing more austerity measures to offset the huge amount of borrowing it has done, however. “If we enter another round of austerity, then the capacity for schools and colleges to deliver normal service will be up the spout,” Robin says. “It’s profoundly challenging already.”
Despite those challenges, he loves his school and the local community.
“I never had a career plan,” he says. “I’ve just accumulated experience and knowledge and then realised that I would be ready to go one step further.”
Some head teachers can feel a pressure to become an executive head or a multi-academy CEO, but that doesn’t appeal to Robin. “Large chains of schools are a really distorted notion of what education provision should be like – that idea of disconnecting yourself from the intimacy of your school community. We’ve lost our way there.”
It’s the strong relationships with staff and students that motivate him. Robin wants to support others to succeed, whether they be the students in his class or his staff. “The day I decide to close the office door, go down to the pub and not return I will leave behind a group of education professionals who will be better than I’ve ever been and that’s motivating,” he says.
On the days when life aboard the cloud is just too much, Robin’s solution is a simple one: “I go out at break time and join a football game with the year 11s or I see what the lads in the computer rooms are doing. Those interactions, they’re simple, but that’s what matters to me.”
