Moving on – why leaving a school is a so hard

This week is my last at my current school and as I’m getting ready to move on I thought it might be apt to share some reflections on what it is to leave a school. Having done several other jobs in the past, I’m pretty convinced that leaving a school is unlike leaving other workplaces and as all of us, will at some stage leave a school at which we have worked, I think there’s value in reflecting on just why there are often such a wide range of emotions that accompany moving on in education. This isn’t intended to be a reflection on my time at my current school but rather a reflection on what it is to leave a school where you have invested time, energy and relationships.

Firstly, leaving a school is hard. Even if you have had a negative experience, it’s usually a wrench to leave. Of course, there are situations in which this isn’t the case and I think that in these situations, leaders really need to look at why that’s the case for those staff members. In my own experience though, I’ve never left a school because I felt deeply unhappy, only because I knew it was the right time to move on. Leaving, in these circumstances is hard for many reasons.

One reason it’s hard is because of the nature of change – we get deeply invested in it throughout the change process. When I joined my current school, our curriculum was an off-the-shelf package that staff could select lessons from according to their or their classes interests. Over the first two years, together we built a new curriculum from scratch, writing, testing and iterating together until we had something of which we were truly proud. All of that thinking and many of the resources are available [publicly on the school’s website here which is something we are truly proud of as we believe in the power of schools sharing their thinking. Being part of such a big change creates a sense of investment and walking away from that is harder in education than in other industries. I think that’s because change in education is very rarely a neat start to finish process. Curriculum is a great example. Once you get it to a point you are happy with, you don’t wrap it up and roll it out, you continually iterate it, challenge yourselves and engage in the process of constant review. It’s never done and the process of continually doing deepens your sense of investment. When you leave, you don’t reflect on a job done (as in finished) you pass the baton on to the next person to carry on the process, knowing what you would have done next had you stayed. There’s an emotional pull on that which makes it hard.

You do it together…

Another reason it’s hard is because you don’t do these things alone, especially as a leader. My mind goes back to the February half term after I had been made interim Head. The school needed an absolute gutting and over the course of the week, we filled 6 skips. On the Monday morning, it was only me in school, moving furniture around and filling the skip. By the afternoon, word had got round from the few staff who were also in school doing their planning. By 2 o’clock, a few more people had joined the effort. By Tuesday, there were 8 of us and by the end of the week, 40 people were together, creating the physical environment we wanted to work in. That week set the tone for the ethos we went on to create, where nothing was done without it being the product of a collective effort. Leaving a team who create things, impactful things, together is incredibly hard. You have a role in a team effort and you get to see others, close up, playing their roles too. It’s incredibly rewarding and the stories you end up writing together only strengthen that bond.

It’s a unique type of hard work…

Working in schools is hard and moving them forward is even harder. In the last three years, my school has been in the top 4% of schools nationally for pupil outcomes at the end of Key stage 2 every year. It’s the only ever-present school in the borough’s top 4 each year as well. That kind of consistency is hard won and while I maintain that the driving force behind that kind of achievement are the class teachers, there is undoubtedly a role played by leaders and I’m proud of the part I played in that. It’s hard work to constantly expose your ideas to critique by colleagues and students and parents but it’s essential if you are going to move things forward. I have been lucky in my current school that the teachers and TAs are among the best I have ever worked with. I had every tool at my disposal that we could have ever asked for in that respect but the hours you put in, with no prospect of financial bonuses or other incentives mean that you end up being uniquely invested in that ‘over and above’ type of effort you put in because of a moral commitment to doing the best by the school community. It’s that hard work that’s difficult to walk away from. You weren’t doing it to make your bonus, you were doing it because you believe in it and there is something meaningful about seeing the ongoing fruits of your labour each day. Walking away from that and into something new, something that you haven’t contributed to the growth of (yet!) is daunting. It’s hard.

It’s all about people…

I think leaders need to love people. Or at least, I could not be an effective leader without my love of people. As I get ready for my final five days at my school, I’m counting the eight teachers who joined the school as ECTs over the last 5 years. Two are now year group leaders and they are all superb teachers and secure some of the best outcomes in the borough. Watching their professional and personal growth is special. Seeing them come into work smiling and hearing them talk about the problems they’re having in class so openly and with absolute professional curiosity and determination to solve them creates a bond between whoever is involved in that conversation. In four years, we’ve lost only four teachers. I’m proud of that, especially as we’ve lost 5 headteachers in that time! We’ve kept the quality of teaching in classrooms front and centre at all times and that’s what’s kept the people together – a collective commitment to this deep moral purpose we all have. Leaving that bond is so so hard. At times it feels like you’re the only people who truly understand what your school needs and that some on the outside have less than desirable intentions. I’ll never forget being in a feedback meeting with the local authority following an audit two weeks after a Headteacher had gone off long-term sick. What that audit was really for became pretty clear in that feedback meeting and my decision to leave the room has never been one I’ve regretted. I think you need to choose your people in this job.

So, why leave?

When it’s so hard to leave, the natural question is why do it? Aside from the obvious, ‘new challenge’ and ‘opportunity I couldn’t turn down’ (both of which are true in my case), I think it’s important to recognise that there is more than one way to make a school successful. The way I’d choose to do it might not be the same as the way others would and sometimes the right thing to do is to be honest with yourself and ask if the organisation is still trying to achieve the same thing that you’re trying to achieve. When this isn’t the case, I think you need to move. You need to find an organisation that you align with in purpose and meaning. That needn’t be a slight to anyone in your current organisation, it’s an honest and open acknowledgement that things change.

So, as I get ready for a week of ‘lasts’ I’m feeling reflective and of course, an element of sadness. I’ll miss the students, I’ll miss the families. Most of all though, I’ll miss the staff. We’ve built something together and I’ve also had the privileged position of seeing them grow and change and they mean an awful lot to me as professionals and as people. That’s the thing that sets school leadership apart from anything else, in my opinion. You see good people driven by the desire to do good things for good reasons and when you see them struggle, get to help them overcome and then succeed, it creates a bond that’s hard to imagine any other job creating.

I know I’ll see many of them again. I frequently say to people, when you’re on my bus, you’re there for as long as you want to be and I know I have made friendships for life driven by a shared mission to do right by students. I’m leaving great people behind but at least I know they’ll carry on doing the great work they always do and that we started together.