Who wants to be ahead in education?

Nobody wants to be left behind. Most may be content to keep up and meet expectations by being a dedicated professional, a few may desire to go beyond, seek promotion into leadership and pun intended, to be ahead . . . or a Head of a School.

Writing in the context of state-funded schools in England, known as public schools globally (although only in England, does ‘public’ actually mean a few select private schools!) and also writing in the context of the English-curriculum international private schools, rebranded as ‘British’ or ‘UK’ schools (despite delivering an adapted form of the National Curriculum for England), I want to share some thoughts about the challenges we face in the school leadership deficit over the past decade.

My first book, back in 2021, A-Z of School Leadership, was drafted to offer advice to a younger me, but as I wrote more chapters, it allowed me to reflect on what is happening on the school leadership landscape, in the profession I am passionately an advocate for. It was during this time, I realised that the professionalism which helped shape my journey to headship was at best inconsistent and in worse cases, missing the moral purpose.

Furthermore, the quality of experienced mentorship that I was fortunate to have experienced, resulting in many cases of less qualified and less experienced individuals becoming headteachers. This is a concern for sustainability and to stop staff from leaving the profession but also for the sector itself bringing it into disrepute. You wouldn’t want a medical profession or airline pilot to have been put in charge with less qualifications or experience, so why does it occur in education?

How to become a ‘qualified’ Headteacher

For fifteen years, from 1997 to 2012, it used to be that in order to become a Headteacher, it was a combination of having the National Professional Qualification for Headship (NPQH) and the experience of a strong track record in successful roles with positive impact in working in schools.

Before you could obtain NPQH, other thresholds of qualifications at the National College for School Leadership (NCSL), were either ‘desirable’ or in many cases ‘essential’:

• for Middle Leaders (MLT): Leading from the Middle, NPQML, i.e. track record as an effective teacher about to commence an MLT role or as a newly appointed MLT (Head of  Subject or Head of Year).
• for Senior Leaders (SLT): Leadership Pathways, NPQSL with a track record as an effective MLT about to commence an SLT role or someone new to SLT.
• and then for Headship NPQH, a serving Deputy Head Teacher (DHT), with 18 months from applying for Headship to allow leadership learning whilst undetaking the NPQH and not to commence a Headship without NPQH.

Over the last ten years, for many reasons, including the political landscape in England, the pathway to headship has changed such that NPQs were no longer mandatory and resulted in some instances of individuals who have never taught in the classroom becoming Principals, CEOs of a group of schools or even the chief regulator of schools!

With the disbanding of the National College, NPQs are now brokered through a few ‘approved’ providers, most are private entities. Thus, the need to have participants to ‘ensure financial viability of the business of the private qualification provider’ has resulted in many staff essentially being able to apply online, pay a provider and commence the NPQ regardless of the suitability in terms of the stage in the career – especially internationally.

I can compare this to medicine where a junior doctor would never be able to ‘pay’ and obtain the surgeon consultant (FRCS) or physician consultant (FRCP) status and say they are qualified as consultants! Or in aviation, consider someone who has been flying for a few years and ‘buying a qualification’ to confirm they are now a ‘Captain’. It would not meet the threshold of experience and expertise in either of these sectors. Yet why is this allowed in education?

Younger Headteachers

The leadership deficit in schools in England, has become further exasperated with the ‘Baby Boomer’ generation retiring – some with the luxury (or relief!) or early retirement, which has caused a crisis in the sector. Looking at officially published England’s Department for Education (DfE) Workforce census data from 2010 to present, the average age of a Headteacher in England’s state-funded schools has fallen from aged in the 50s in 2010 to in the 40s by 2020:

• In 2010-11, 50% of all Headteachers were in their 50s and 34% were in their 40s.
• In 2022-23, Headteachers in their 50s fell to 40%, but Heads in their 40s increased to 44% of all Headteachers.

Deputy Headship also shows a similar trend:

• In 2010-11, 32% of all DHTs were in their 50s and 33% were in their 40s.
• In 2022-23, DHTs in their 50s fell to 25%, but DHTs in their 40s increased to 45%.

This is compounded with the age of the teachers being older, with less than 30% in their 20s, the lowest on record.

In short, there are fewer younger teachers entering the profession and who remain in the sector or ‘pipeline’ by the time they reach 30 years of age. The ones that are available, are being appointed into Headship or Deputy Headship earlier than in the previous decade.

Professional development deficit

Age should not be an issue, if the appointments are made on merit. Nor should it be an issue if upon assuming the role, the new Headteacher had sufficient training in role if prior professional development is lacking and continue to have leadership learning during their incumbency to ensure the moral purpose to create a safe positive environment, where the needs of the students are catered for, where the staff are supported and developed and where the parents/guardians are made to feel welcome as part of the community.

Whilst one cannot ‘gain’ years on the clock, there is no excuse for a lack of training, certified and qualified, to lead leadership learning, rather than rely solely on learning on the job in the image of a CEO/predecessor and a promotion to Headship drowning in nepotism.

This is something I have come across in some Multi-Academy Trusts (MATs) in England, but also in some British international schools, whose funding source is private tuition fees. This creates a different dynamic. School leaders from England, who arrived to work overseas with noble intent, are soon drawn to the ‘false profit’ of salary-based bonuses, and schools run for investors rather than for the wider need to develop the society.

Where schools or groups of schools do it better, is evidenced by lower staff turnover, stable student bodies (who leave the school if the household is leaving the locality, rather than to ‘find a better school’ in the locality as parents concerns are not alleviated) and a wider ‘known reputation’ as being a great school to work in asides from external validation accolades such as inspections and kitemarks.

Investment in research and development

In schools in England, the sector needs both investment and reform to make a profession worth considering to the external stakeholders i.e. graduates but also to ensure retention is high for internal stakeholders i.e. existing teachers by having significant investment.

At recent PhD research conference that I attended, some startling data was presented: only 0.05% of the public education budget in England is spent on research, whereas compared to other public sectors such as healthcare albeit a larger budget, but 1% of it is dedicated to research.

In the UK, a young person is defined up to the age of 25 years of age (Children and Families Act 2014). At present, a newly qualified teacher could be no more than 3 or 4 years older than the oldest students in the secondary school having had a year’s training to then embark on a very demanding, but rewarding career.

I do wonder, with significant more investment, whether we ought to expand teacher training to 4 years upon graduation, so there are longer placements opportunities and a need for an integrated Master’s degree to enable an action-research approach towards becoming an educator. In doing so, teachers enter the profession, ‘better qualified and life experienced’ at the age of 25, no longer a young person, but able to facilitate the learning of young persons. Sources of investment can be from the domestic state treasury or controversially from the international private sector as I will outline below.

Another challenge is that many qualified teachers from England and elsewhere in the world, have left their country of training to seek better work conditions or experience a new context overseas. It could be argued that the investment in the training was lost as international schools gained ‘qualified teachers’ and expertise in the home country is being ‘drained’.

International schools CPD levy

Two proposals could be considered: Teachers to commit to working in schools in England for 5 years before relocating and have a golden handcuff approach to enable this or controversially, a penalty for early breaking of the contract (often seen in the international schools sector) to ensure the ‘return of investment’ by the state is realised.

A second suggestion which is even more radical, is that schools, especially those who are accredited with the Department for Education URN (Unique Reference Number), pay for the cost of the training or a ‘relocation fee’ which goes to back to the DfE ‘ringfenced’ for future initial teacher training to compensate for the loss of skilled labour from one location to another jurisdiction, if they recruit staff in their first 5 years of teaching.

Coupled with this, in the international sector, staff turnover can have a significant destabilising effect. However, the whims of some disgraceful School Principals to hire, fire, threaten and intimidate staff knowing they can ‘get away with it’ due to different labour law and employee rights in that jurisdiction can be valid reasons for staff wanting to have (in-year) departures to another school, but whether in year, end of year, the attrition rate can be very high.

In order to ensure some sense of ‘moral purpose’ and commitment to ensuring the sector is safeguarded, schools that are first to promote accolades of having achieved a ‘British’ validation, should pay a ‘CPD levy’ per teacher to a central fund for CPD for each teacher that they have regardless of where they have qualified from. With the caveat, that if they fail to contribute to the fund, they lose that ‘badge’ of association in that organisation.

If a teacher moves to another school in year/in contract (also accredited in the same membership) then the new school compensates the old school pro-rata of the annual CPD levy that had been paid.

This sounds very radical, fanciful or naïve in the cut-throat world of profiteering schools, but it ensures that schools who are first to use such accreditation as a means to attract both staff and parents (who enrol their children) need to uphold the intent to invest in staff with quality CPD. It also allows more collaboration with ‘competitors’. Therefore, practitioners in the same curriculum can share good practice and learn from updates which if linked to a University, can also contribute to further (doctoral) studies also. At present, CPD is often derived by flying someone in (from England usually) for conferences and for in-term CPD events, whose participation from schools vary from affordability to availability of staff.

Schools will often say ‘in house CPD is better’ (or actually cheaper); but this island mentality, often leads to certain initiatives being lost, as the person(s) leading a particular programme left and they were the only ones who had the drive to implement it. Having sector-wide standards of quality CPD raises the bar for all schools through shared responsibility for quality ongoing CPD for all teachers in the sector in that jurisdiction. Schools with insecure leaders will ‘magpie’ and take and not give, but they can be found out with this increased collaboration and transparency, a sense of collective accountability I would hope.

What is encouraging is many of these ‘British’ and ‘International’ schools’ bodies are making an active effort to collaborate and cooperate on matters on safeguarding, so it stands to reason to have a sense of similar moral purpose to ensure quality up to date practice is shared across schools throughout the landscape as opposed to bring a practice from England, from three years ago to merely change the logo and declare it as a new initiative!

International schools staff workforce census

Understandably salaries are guarded for commercial reasons, and pay scales are non-existent or inconsistently applied, one staff with the same experience is paid more than another in the same school!  

However, to have an annual International schools workforce census by the relevant membership body, much like England’s DfE School Workforce census every November, looking at Grade (HT/DHT/AHT/Teacher/Non-Teacher), Age, Ethnicity, Gender would provide a new data dimension for sector analysis. Also, to include an additional criterion: Nationality, due to its relevance overseas as more pertinent. This also allows a sense of further interrogation by these member bodies to promote the international values of diversity to consider representation at all levels in schools and scope for a lot of research. It provides scope for partnerships with universities in enabling research, dialogue and data analysis which itself provides an opportunity for reinvigoration in the teaching profession.

Many of these ideas may indeed remain as ideas, especially as corporate competition increases globally and collaboration across the sector is actually sectarian collaboration (within the school group) but I conclude with an extract from Robert Kennedy’s Day of Affirmation Speech, University of Cape Town, June 1966:

Few are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change the world which yields most painfully to change.