Even when your role begins to change, like when you move into leadership or move industries, I don't think you ever really leave the classroom behind.
Looking back across my own career, one of the things I’ve come to realise is that leadership is leadership. The room changes, the people around the table change, and the type of challenge changes... but the skills I've relied on have remained remarkably consistent.
As a teacher, you’re constantly making judgements and responding to changing circumstances - it’s one of the main things that teachers are really good at. School leaders are always bringing people along on a journey of continuous improvement while also dealing with the 'day-to-day'.
I remember times when something happening with one pupil would completely change the course of my day. What’s more, something happening that initially looked like something in particular could quickly be connected to something much bigger when you looked at the bigger contextual picture.
As I moved through school and trust leadership, and more recently into leadership roles at Juniper Education, those fundamental leadership skills were consistently important: you still need to listen to people, understand complex problems, and make sense of incomplete information. You need to weigh competing priorities and make decisions with a clear sense of what you are ultimately trying to achieve, whether you're leading a school, a trust, or an organisation that works alongside both.
The types of decisions you’re making look slightly different in the differing contexts, but my point is that the foundations of good leadership remain the same.
One of the most important things teachers carry into leadership is a practical understanding of how school life actually works.
Anyone who has worked in a school knows just how unpredictable it can be:
You can arrive at school in the morning with a clear idea of what your day looks like and what you need to achieve.
Something happens that can't wait, and completely changes your plans.
This happens repeatedly, and you learn to respond, make the best decisions you can, and adapt.
And often without having all the information you would ideally like.
That experience is so valuable to anyone working alongside schools and trusts because you deeply understand the pressures teachers and school staff are working under... because you've lived them yourself. You know how many competing priorities there are, and how even something introduced with the best of intentions can sometimes make everyone's working lives more complicated.
Schools have seen plenty of 'additive' reforms, systems and initiatives that promise to make things better, but don't always take account of what implementation actually looks like in a busy school.
I discussed this very point with the CEO and CFO of Broad Horizons Education Trust.
There's also something about teaching that teaches you how to lead people.
You learn very quickly that what works for one pupil won't necessarily work for another. You have to listen, understand what makes people tick and find different ways of helping them move forward. That doesn't change when you're leading adults, although the conversations and challenges might look a little different!
Leadership is leadership.
One thing that does change as you move into leadership is how much of the bigger picture you get to see.
I remember first having access to information that I simply wouldn't have seen as a classroom teacher. Suddenly, you're able to recognise patterns across a school, the same pupils appearing in different conversations, or the ways that attendance, attainment and wellbeing might be connected.
Something that initially looks like an isolated issue can turn out to be part of a much bigger picture, and having that wider perspective can completely change how you approach it. As a school leader, you're also thinking about staffing, budgets and resources, and the impact those decisions have on what happens in classrooms. Moving into trust leadership, there are even more things to consider, often across schools with very different needs and circumstances.
I've found that as your responsibilities grow, the importance of asking the right questions grows with them. What's really happening here? What information are we missing? Who else needs to be involved? And what will the decisions we make mean for the people affected by them?
Those are questions I was asking in the classroom long before I was sitting around a boardroom table.
In my September blog, I wrote about how the start of the school year is a real moment of opportunity, when reflection gives way to action and the decisions we make begin to shape what happens next.
A month on, as you can probably see by now, I've been thinking a lot about what goes into making those decisions, particularly when there's so much change happening across education.
When I recently spoke with the CEO of Inspires Multi-Academy Trust, we talked about the changing education landscape and what it means for school and trust leaders who are trying to plan ahead while dealing with everything that's happening around them. And I think that's a challenge anyone who has worked in school leadership will recognise.
There's always something that needs your immediate attention, whether that's a concern involving a pupil, a staffing issue or something unexpected that's happened during the school day. At the same time, you're trying to think about where your school or trust needs to be in six months, a year or even further ahead.
Finding the time to do both well can be incredibly difficult, particularly when you're dealing with circumstances that are constantly evolving.
I've experienced that balancing act in different roles throughout my career, and it's one of the reasons I think having good people around you, who can offer different experiences and perspectives, is so important.
That brings me to something else I've been reflecting on, which is the growing emphasis on collaboration across education.
The Schools White Paper, Every Child Achieving and Thriving, places collaboration between schools, trusts, local authorities and wider services at the centre of its ambitions for improving outcomes for children. Having worked in schools and trusts myself, I welcome that emphasis. Some of the challenges facing children and young people are incredibly complex, and addressing them often depends on people and organisations being able to work together effectively.
I remember how valuable it could be when colleagues from different teams came together to share what they knew about a particular situation. Sometimes somebody would have a piece of information or a different perspective that completely changed our understanding of what was happening.
And when you think about the expertise that exists across schools, trusts and the wider education system, there's so much we can learn from one another.
Of course, collaboration has to work in practice too. Schools are already managing significant pressures on time, funding and capacity, and asking people to work together more closely shouldn't simply mean adding more meetings or another layer of process.
I think there's a real opportunity here to make better use of the knowledge, experience and resources we already have, particularly if we can make it easier for people to work towards the same goals.
My experience in schools has had a huge influence on how I think about what we're building at Juniper Education. I've been in those situations where everyone is incredibly busy, there are competing demands on your time and introducing another system or process, however well-intentioned, can feel like one more thing to manage.
That's something I think about a lot in my role today. If we're developing products and services for schools, we need to understand what using them will actually feel like for the people working in those environments.
It's one of the reasons why JoinUp matters so much to me.
Our ambition to get the right information, to the right person, at the right time comes from understanding how difficult it can be to make decisions when the information you need is scattered across different systems and places.
I've seen how much time can be spent trying to bring information together and make sense of it, often when there's something that needs your attention straight away. I want us to help make that easier, so that teachers and leaders can spend more of their time acting on what they know.
But I also think there's something really important about recognising that my own experience is only one perspective...
Schools have changed since I was teaching, and they'll continue to change. The challenges facing one school or trust can be very different from those facing another, so we have to keep listening and learning from the people doing those jobs today.
For me, that's what building with schools and trusts really means. It's about understanding what works, what doesn't and what would genuinely make people's working lives easier, rather than assuming we already know the answers.
And if we can get that right, I think we have a real opportunity to help schools create more time and capacity for the things that matter most.
Something I think you become increasingly conscious of as you move further away from the classroom is the importance of staying connected to what happens within it.
When you're making decisions about things like finance, staffing, technology or organisational strategy, it's easy to become caught up in the immediate challenges and priorities of running an organisation. But those decisions can have a very real impact on the experiences of pupils and the people teaching and supporting them.
I've always felt that having worked in schools gives you an important perspective on that. You know what those decisions can mean in practice, whether it's the resources a teacher has available, the support a school can offer or the amount of time staff have to spend with the children who need them.
It's something I think about in my role at Juniper too. We make commercial, operational and strategic decisions every day, and I want us to keep considering what those decisions mean for the schools and trusts we work alongside, and ultimately for the children they serve.
Looking back at my own career, I've worked with different people, in different roles and faced challenges that I probably couldn't have imagined when I first became a teacher.
And yet, so much of what I've relied on throughout that time began in the classroom:
Listening and understanding people, recognising that everyone has different needs, experiences and perspectives.
Making judgements with incomplete information, and being prepared to adapt as circumstances change.
Bringing people along with you, helping them understand what you're trying to achieve and why it matters.
Keeping sight of the bigger picture, even when you're dealing with the immediate pressures of the day.
Remembering who you're doing it for, and making sure the decisions you take genuinely make a difference.
Those are lessons I've continued to draw on through school leadership, trust leadership and now at Juniper Education.
I suppose that's what I mean when I say you never really leave the classroom behind...
Of course, you continue learning and developing as your responsibilities grow, and the challenges you face can look very different over time. But I think there's something incredibly valuable about remembering where your understanding of leadership began, and allowing those experiences to continue inform the decisions you make.
Because whatever role you're in, and however far removed from the classroom your working day might sometimes feel, the responsibility to make a positive difference to children's lives remains just as important.