Being a Headteacher was what I wanted to do since I first stepped into the classroom in 1996.

I turned 50 last week.

Properly old!

I’ve also been asked by the lovely people at Bloomsbury to write a book about what it is to be a Headteacher, including all the stories and scars which come with nearly 18 years in the Headteachers’ chair. It has been a ‘period of reflection’.

My overwhelming feeling is one of gratitude. Gratitude that I found a career which I loved from the first day in the classroom (now 28 years ago). Gratitude that I was allowed to make mistakes as a leader and was still allowed to become a Headteacher, first of a small Church school, then at my beloved Blackhorse, and then of both my beloved Blackhorse and my new love, Emersons Green.

To me, Headship was (is) the pinnacle of my profession.

It was (is), for me, the ultimate professional accolade – being entrusted to lead a whole school and shape the lives of not just the children within a class, but a whole community.

The chance to be a person in a child’s life who made a difference to their school and, hopefully, their life chances. Indeed, nothing gives me greater pleasure than the emails I receive from former pupils and their parents telling me what they are now doing as adults. It is humbling and affirming.

After nearly 18 years, I’m nowhere near done with the job that I love.

But it appears that I’m a dying breed.

I always promised myself that if I ever stopped loving my job then I’d leave. Or, if I stopped being good at my job, I wouldn’t become that gradual irrelevence – and I’d leave.

I ‘grew up in headship’ seeing other senior heads build great, long-standing institutions. I also saw longstanding heads ‘go to seed’ and stay longer than was good for them or their schools. But these long-standing Heads were everywhere. Pillars of their communities. Etched in granite. Utterly unflappable.

Yet in my Trust and my county I am now one of the longest standing Headteachers. What’s more, many of school leaders have come and gone in increasingly short order. The tenure of a Headteacher is now not marked in decades, but in a handful of years.

So, where have all the headteachers gone?

When I read Twitter bios these days, being a Headteacher is not always top of the list of achievements.

Nor even top of the list of ambitions.

Often a ‘Director of this or that’ is where the action is.

Again, I have no problem with this. I am part of a fabulous new MAT and enjoy my (one day a week) MAT role hugely.

But if this diverts all the talent within the system away from leading actual schools directly, then we have a problem.

If Heads are checking out to take up MAT roles within 3-4 years of the job, we have a problem.

Or, worse still, if middle and senior leaders see a brighter future as MAT consultants than as school leaders, then we have a very big problem.

Headteachering takes a bit of time.

I reckon it takes about 3-4 years as a Head to really get a handle on the job. This is to take nothing away from the sparky young leaders who come in and shake things up – God knows we need them as much as old farts like me! But to truly unlock the potential of a great Headteacher, some time in the saddle is needed. What’s more, we know that an excellent school leader can transform outcomes for literally hundreds of pupils. If we choke off this talent pipeline, then no matter how many MAT consultants there are, we won’t be able to recover the loss to the system.

Headteachers need Trust or LA leaders with experience

I am fortunate enough to be one of the founding members of the fabulous Leaf Trust. Building something from scratch, and then opening with twelve schools on day one, was a mammoth task. However, it did allow us to make deliberate decisions about how we operate. And at our Trust, the only people who can be ‘Heads of…’ or ‘Directors of…’ must have first have been successful Headteachers with a proven track record of school improvement.

This is because, if we are to look school leaders in the eye and offer advice, we need them to know that we have sat in their chair; that we have faced the (sometimes impossible) choices; that we knew how to improve our schools – before telling others how we should do it.

But there is an evolving eco-system which suggests that system leaders can avoid the Headteacher’s chair altogether. That talented Deputies or Assistant Heads can move straight into advisory roles above that of a school leader. I have little doubt that there are some frighteningly clever and sharp middle leaders who have a huge amount to offer to the wider system – it was always thus. When the LA ruled supreme in the noughties such leaders would often move up to LA consultancy positions. This makes complete sense in terms of Teaching and learning as T&L consultants are focused on improving classroom teaching and subject leadership – but not on whole-school leadership. And yet, I have met an increasing number of Trust (and occasionally LA) leadership consultants placed in positions which involve them giving advice to Headteachers on a job that they themselves have never had to do.

Headteachering can’t be a brief lay-over on the way to something more grand.

I fear that, with professional kudos and rewards increasingly attached to a ‘Director of…’ title, we risk ambitious and talented young leaders seeing Headship as something they must ‘get through quickly’ on the way to a more exciting role.

This risks these exciting new Heads never having a sustained impact on their communities. It risks short-term solutions which shine brightly, but only for a moment, only to fade the moment the Headteacher moves onward and upward.

So we have a problem.

Please don’t get me wrong – I don’t resent for one minute any middle leader who has ascended into a great role in a MAT; nor a Head who has moved quickly into a Trust role.

The problem is the system which we have accidentally created. A system which puts huge accountability on the Headteacher and, simultaneously, created other (better paid and less risky) roles within the system. The result was always going to be what we are now getting: a generation of future leaders who do not see their leadership potential manifesting itself in the Headteachers’ chair.

If we do nothing, then in a few years’ time there will be no Headteachers left. And this is a problem.

It is a problem because numerous research papers have pointed, for many years, to strong school leadership being one of, if not the most, crucial elements in a school’s success. And whilst it’s technically possible to lead a school at arm’s length – via Trust directive to ‘Heads-lite’ – this approach is short-sighted and fails to understand that great school leaders embed themselves within their communities and become more than just a conduit of centrally prescribed school improvement policies.

Make Headteachering Great Again!

And so we as a system – as Heads, as Trust or LA leaders, as politicians, as councils, as commentators –need to make Headteachering great again.

We need to sell the benefits and joys which come with the role. The feeling of pure joy when a four-year-old bursts into a terribly important meeting with a finance officer and proudly pushes their ability to write for the first time under your nose. The families who gradually learn to trust you because you have said and done all the things you said you would. The staff team who will follow an ambitious vision, and articulate leader, and make it a reality.

We must tell these positive stories more loudly. We must tell them with greater passion to every new teacher who walks into our schools or Trusts. We must constantly tell the press and politicians until they too know what Winston Churchill knew 70 years ago, that ‘[Headteachers] have the powers which Prime Ministers have yet to be bistowed’.

We must make Headteachering the job that every young teacher (who wants a leadership role) dreams of doing.

And we must do this now.

Before it’s too late.