How does it feel to lead a school during the pandemic?

The research we conducted towards the end of the last school year showed that school leaders were exhausted. While some wanted to leave, others were hopeful that this current school year would be better. Leaders we interviewed hoped that they would be able devote less time to dealing with crises, and spend more time on thinking strategically about dealing with students’ disrupted learning. Sadly, this is not yet the case.

Last week the Times Educational Supplement reported that “nearly three out of four headteachers have seen a colleague cry”. NAHT President Tim Bowen commented that people had been brought to their lowest point by the pandemic. Wales online had a similar report – “We are on our knees” say headteachers as they struggle with Covid chaos”. This story was echoed on social media. Vic Goddard, the head made famous by the Educating Essex television series, tweeted “I am on the ropes. Guard up. Just taking a beating with nothing to throw back, We have staff very seriously ill in hospital and have lost others to Covid and still we get tone deaf responses from our political leaders”.

As researchers, we want to try represent the intensity of feelings that were conveyed during our interviews with school leaders. We have therefore been doing some creative work with transcripts. In addition to the more usual coding and thematising, we have used an approach similar to that used to develop verbatim theatre. We have been making narrative prose poems that we hope capture not only what individual heads told us, but also how.

Here is a section of one prose poem in advance of publication.

You tend to forget how terrifying it was. 

When it was starting to rip through the population and 

you literally didn’t know whether or not 

you were going to survive the experience.

But you had to convey a sense of competence and confidence. 

The “Don’t worry I’ve got this you can do your job because I’ve got your back”.

The workload was just punishing. 

Absolutely punishing.

Learning a vast array of completely new skills 

in a frighteningly short period of time. 

Working beyond insane hours.

It’s hard to overstate how much harder the DfE made an incredibly challenging experience.

So over-directive and not trusting.

Having to go through colossal amounts of instructions. 

Bewildering stuff with precious little guidance other than 

You just do it. 

Here is a model we found somewhere. 

Just get it done.

It was an experience. A bruising experience.

We’re out of the choppiest waters, but 

I no longer have the reserves within me to be able to continue.

I know plenty of other school leaders who’ve fared differently, 

and I admire them. 

I don’t know how they did it.

The thought of having to go through another Ofsted inspection 

fills me with horror. 

I think I would struggle 

to get out of bed 

and come into school 

and not be sick. 

I started saying to colleagues, 

“I prefer to leave school vertically rather than horizontally”.

It’s pretty black humour.

I’ve got no reserves left in me at this point. 

There will be several prose poems in our final report, due in November.

Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash