Leadership clearly someone used to protracted silence while he finished saying what he had to say – was pompous and platitudinous. Finally, after I had caught half a glance pass between the interviewers, after the p & p Head thought he had completed a discussion by saying, “What I always say is that (long pause) a comprehensive school is (long pause) nothing if it is not (long pause) a community”, I decided that, on the second day of the interviews – these conducted individually – I might try to make a sprint from the back of the field, which is clearly where I had positioned myself. I can’t remember much of the detail of the second interview, but I do remember being asked why I had said so little on the first day. Was I actually interested in the job? Yes, I was. I hadn’t however thought the discussion revealed much. The platitudes had rolled out, and weren’t really useful in thinking about what schools were for. The interviewers brightened, and the tone lightened. Quite soon I was asked what I thought of the other candidates – not a question one is usually asked in interview. I answered honestly: the man who was a deputy head already had done for himself by arriving late, and the other three seemed to me either hidebound by conventional attitudes or even platitudinous. The interviewers sat back in their chairs, and we began to talk about the kind of things we should have discussed the day before. At some stage, I remember being asked – by the clergyman – if I minded a question about my own religious views. I did not, and explained that, typically for the son and grandson – indeed, great grandson too – of clergymen, I veered wildly between desperate atheism and religious observance. He said he knew exactly what I meant, and shared – even as a clergyman – the complexity of my attitudes. We also managed to talk more about Island School and the population it served, what kind of staff it managed to attract, the major problems it faced, and plans for its future. The upshot of the second day was that, back in Cleethorpes, I had a telephone call saying I was going to be offered the
job from January 1978. I didn’t accept there and then, which would be my usual habit; could I please wait for the actual offer to arrive? I needed to talk to my wife and children. A complication was that, shortly before this, I had been called to London for an interview to be one of Her Majesty’s Inspectors of Schools. Friendly HMIs I had talked to told me that, once you had got as far as interview, you were seldom turned down; but I was by no means sure I wanted to be an HMI, attractive though the position seemed. Did I really want to be sent where I was required, rather than have the power to choose? While I admired the work HMI did, I didn’t think the anonymity required of the prose-style of their reports would suit me. Was I really by nature an ‘inspector’? Wasn’t I rather an ‘activist’, a doer? Shouldn’t I be better running an actual school, rather than inspecting lots of schools? In the event, I made such nonsense of the interview the decision was taken for me. Sheila Browne, formidable Chief Inspector, snapped at me, “What do you think about the education of women?” I knew the fact I had taught fewer girls than boys was a weakness in my CV but I knew, too, I thought the education of girls should be exactly the same as the education of boys. Unfortunately, what I said in flustered reply to what seemed essentially an adversarial question was, “I don’t think much of the education of women”. My interrogator closed down, and my attempts to explain what I meant sounded merely feeble. Still, I had said I would accept a post as an HMI if I were offered it. A telephone call to the HMI office elicited clear advice: if I had been offered a job elsewhere I should accept it. Although the failure rankled, I knew it was a good decision, for the Inspectorate and for me: I would have been a hopeless inspector. And so to Island School, Hong Kong. C J (Jonty) Driver retired as Master of Wellington College in 2000 and is a full-time writer who has published five novels and seven collections of poems.
Directing the undirectable? Graeme May describes the job of the director of studies Every school has a director of studies (DoS) by one name or another and very often they’ve risen from being a successful head of department (HoD) with a passionate enthusiasm for their particular subject. That energy is probably what won them the promotion, but how do they convert that into a much broader vision across all subjects and how do they convince their new team of spirited and feisty HoDs to take them seriously? I could never claim to have the complete answer to those questions, but nearly ten years in the job has shown me some of the things that have worked, as well as pathways that haven’t. Here are six of the best, as it were.
Humility and curiosity When you arrive in post, you need to recognise that there’s a huge amount you don’t know. For example, I’d barely set foot
in a science lab since I’d been at school myself, and had little sense of how a science lesson might work. So the first thing I did was to see every teacher in the school teach. I deliberately wasn’t conducting formal written observations, but I was showing a genuine interest in each area and, as I toured the school, I met with each HoD to hear them speak about their subjects, their resources and their teams. I have no doubt that this was crucial in that first year in establishing myself as someone willing to listen and learn, and who didn’t feel he knew all the answers already. I learnt a lot.
Team building Leadership isn’t about handing down ex-cathedra decisions and expecting people to endorse them, and certainly any proposal for change needs to have teamwork at its centre. That doesn’t mean not giving a lead, but it does mean consulting
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