You start in a new school. What do you most need to know? 

Schools are fiercely complex: a hundred staff and a thousand students have millions of interactions every day. 

Some schools feel friendly: there are smiles, chats, jokes, fun, upbeat energy. I’ve worked in and visited lots of schools like this for years. Staff and kids feel rushes of warmth, awe, hope, pride and joy – happy to be a part of something amazing – nowhere else they’d rather be – a shared adventure of hearts and minds. Magic!

For 14 years as a kid I went to such schools. I loved every moment. My heart ever since has felt a ferocious passion for learning, education and the liberating power of schools. So passionate that I’ve devoted the last 20 years of my life to them! 

Some schools feel hostile. Most schools do, in their darkest pockets. I’ve worked in and visited lots of schools like this for years too. Teachers are the enemy. Kids rule the corridors. Adults are ignored, disrespected, mistreated, abused on a daily basis. Staff and kids feel worried, scared, unsafe, intimidated – drenched in fear, shame, dread – they lose sleep over it – they don’t want to be there for long. Teachers I know who’ve worked in these places, even years later after leaving, still have nightmares about the dread. 

For years as a kid, my sister was in such a dark pocket at school, and she hated it. She was badly bullied for years by her former best friends who turned on her. Years on, she now has learned how to channel her childhood pain, fear, hurt, shame and trauma into an awe-inspiring, burning passion for helping bereft children: she fundraises for War Child. I’m hugely proud of her. Her school is a great place for many; for her, and for many others, it was dark. 

All schools are more than one school. The same school experienced by a headteacher is very different to that exact same school experienced by a new staff member, a teacher new to the school (especially one being humiliated in lessons), a caterer or cleaner, a vulnerable or bullied child. 

As school leaders, we can’t be everywhere, or even in more than one place at a time! 

Let alone having the time to be the social media caretaker, battling phyrrically to protect children from all the hydras of cyberbullying. 

All leaders have blind spots. No one person, or even team, can see every lesson, every interaction, every assembly, or even how any plan is playing out fully in reality. It’s all too easy to assume changes are going well, when actually they’re superficial. Or that people are doing fine, until someone suddenly leaves! I’ve made these mistakes time and time again over the years in school leadership. 

We need to know what’s going on. What’s happening as a result of the actions of teachers, staff and kids. 

Context is vital. As school leadership researcher Vivían Robinson says, ‘Don’t design the future until you deeply understand the present.’ Otherwise, we build not on sound foundations but on foundations of sand. We misunderstand our staff, students, community and are in for preventable conflict, divergence and spinning round rather than going forward together. 

Headteacher Katherine Brown has emblazoned in her SLT meeting room: see everything through the eyes of the most vulnerable. Otherwise, we turn a blind eye to the regenerating hydra-heads of peer cruelties. Or simply to everyday confusion. 

How can we as school leaders understand the challenges our school faces, in all their dizzying and ferocious complexity? How can we work out what’s actually going on, and how things are playing out, without overstretching ourselves? What feedback loops can we create to help us see our blind spots, to see our schools from the vantage point of our most vulnerable, and to get to know our ever-changing contexts? 

Walk and talk, ask and see

To get to know our school well as it evolves, we can ask about our students, staff, teaching, systems and strategy over time – and work out where to walk and look, what to talk about, ask and read into. 

Crucial questions: who we choose to talk to and what we choose to ask about. 

Here are 33 things to ask that I find useful to keep returning to, to understand how students, staff, teaching, strategy and systems are interacting. 

Students

1. Interactions: how do students interact with each other and adults (including visitors) around school?
2. Attendance: how often do students show up for their learning and lessons at school?
3. Character: how are students’ character traits developed, such as responsibility and kindness?
4. Wellbeing: how are students taught about their wellbeing? 
5. Student feelings: what do students feel about their learning?
6. Student beliefs: what do students believe about school, education, themselves and their futures?
7. Vulnerable students: how are students with learning difficulties, impairments or disabilities treated?
8. Destinations: what do students do when they leave – how many are not in education or employment?

Staff

9. Staff expertise: how expert are the headteacher, senior and middle leaders, teachers and staff?
10. Staff commitment: how committed do senior and middle leaders, teachers and wider staff feel? 
11. Wellbeing: how is the wellbeing of staff supported? 
12. Staff feelings: what do staff feel about their work and the school? 
13. Staff beliefs: what do staff believe about education, teaching and their students?
14. Vulnerable staff: how do cover, supply, physically vulnerable staff feel about the school?
15. Staff absence: how often do staff show up or not show up for their colleagues and children?
16. Staff turnover: how many staff leave each year?

Teaching

17. Attainment: what do students achieve in their subjects at the end of their time at the school?
18. Teaching: what is teaching like in lessons – how do teachers give subject guidance and practice? How do teachers get feedback on their teaching and a chance to improve?
19. Attention: how do students listen and focus in lessons?
20. Student knowledge: how is students’ knowledge, reading, writing, numbers and vocabulary?
21. Curriculum: how is subject knowledge organised – how is what to teach, when and why decided? 
22. Assessment: how do teachers know what their students know?

Systems & strategy 

23. Safety: how safe are students at school? How are they taught to keep themselves safe?
24. Learning time: how is time valued and used by students (how many are late or truanting lessons?)
25. Clarity: what are the headteacher’s priorities, and how clear are all staff on these?
26. CPD: how is staff development organised – how does it build staff knowledge and habits, not just for teachers, but for support staff, too?
27. Staff performance: How is staff performance supported through line management? how is staff underperformance managed? 
28. Regulator: what were the school’s last inspection judgments (and when was it)?
29. Facilities: how are technology and facilities managed?
30. Finance: what is the school’s financial situation?
31. Parent support: how supportive are parents, carers and families?
32. Student recruitment: how full and oversubscribed is the school?
33. Community: how does the school help other schools and its community?

Quite overwhelming! 

Where to start? 

Let’s relook at these 33 questions through four lenses: facts, reads, walks and chats. 

Some of these questions can be answered by finding out the facts. Students’ attendance, qualifications and destinations, staff attendance and retention, for instance, tend to be fairly measurable: people are either in school or not each day; qualifications are either passed or not each year; leavers go on to be NEET or not a year after leaving. You can get a swift, albeit shallow sense of the school from these, and the school’s evolution over time.

Know the facts

1. Attendance
2. Achievement
3. Staff attendance
4. Staff retention
5. Destinations
6. Regulator 
7. Finance
8. Pupil numbers
9. Deprivation
10. Difficulties 

Read and think

Some of these questions are upstream of others, and can be asked by reading and deeply thinking about the planning in place. 

Strategy is upstream of capacity.

Clarity from leaders is upstream of consistency from staff.

CPD is upstream of all-staff knowledge.

Curriculum is upstream of assessment data. 

Line-Management is upstream of performance. 

So for these, it’s worth taking some deep thinking time to review the school improvement planning, CPD planning, curriculum allocation and subject selection and sequences. 

1. Clarity: what are the headteacher’s priorities?
2. CPD: how is staff development organised – how does it build staff knowledge and habits?
3. Curriculum: how is subject knowledge organised – how is what to teach, when and why decided? 
4. Staff performance: how is staff performance supported through line management? how is staff underperformance managed? 
5. Character: how are students’ character traits developed, such as responsibility and kindness?
6. Staff absence: how often do staff show up or not show up for their colleagues and children?
7. Staff turnover: how many staff leave each year?
8. Regulator: what were the school’s last inspection judgments (and when was it)?

Walk and see

Some areas can’t be understood well as measures or read about as (planning) documents. They may best be observed by getting out and about round school and having a good look. 

The best teams of school leaders then take the time to discuss what they noticed and work out how best to support. 

1. Attention: how do students listen and focus in lessons?
2. Interactions: how do students interact with each other and adults (including visitors) around school?
3. Learning time: how is time valued and used by students (how many are late or truanting lessons?)
4. Teaching: what is teaching like in lessons – how do teachers give subject guidance and practice? what’s it like for a kid who can’t read? who can’t add up? who can’t speak English? with autism?

Talk and ask!

Most of the most important areas of schools can’t be read about, measured or visibly observed: there is way too much fiendish complexity and invisibility for school leaders to understand ever-evolving student and staff knowledge, feelings, beliefs, perceptions, mindsets and outlooks. 

Instead, we can talk to staff and students, listen deeply and keep asking good questions. 

1. Staff clarity: how clear are staff on the school’s, and their own, top priorities? where do they feel most uncertain and unclear?
2. Safety: how safe do students feel at school? Where do they feel unsafe? 
3. Staff expertise: how expert are the headteacher, senior and middle leaders? Where are the areas where we have least expertise?
4. Student knowledge: how is students’ reading? how many can’t read well? how is students’ numeracy? how many can’t multiply well? how is students’ knowledge? how do they talk about what they know, and what do they think about it? 
5. Staff feedback: how do staff get feedback on their work and dialogue about developing? How useful do staff find this feedback?
6. Staff commitment: how committed do senior and middle leaders, teachers and wider staff feel?
7. Staff beliefs: what do staff believe about the school? teaching? their students?
8. Wellbeing: how is the wellbeing of staff and students supported? 
9. Staff feelings: what do staff feel about their work and the school? The routines? systems?
10. Student feelings: what do students feel about their learning?
11. Student beliefs: what do students believe about school? education? themselves? and their futures?
12. Vulnerable staff: what’s it like for cover staff? supply teachers? pregnant staff? physically vulnerable staff?
13. Vulnerable students: what’s it like for students with learning difficulties, impairments or disabilities?
14. Assessment: how do teachers try and work out what their students know as it evolves? 
15. Facilities: how are technology and facilities managed?
16. Parent support: how supportive are parents, carers and families?
17. Community: how does the school help other schools and its community?

Broaden your view: reading, walking, talking, asking, hearing, listening and evolving your understanding. 

Write and share

Distill your view. Bring it together. Write your thoughts. 

Share your insights. Get others’ viewpoints. Test your thinking. Seek people’s input. Invite their challenge. from other headteachers. from subject leaders. from teachers. from pastoral leaders. from student leaders. from kids with disabilities. from trusted – and untrusting – parents and carers. Their pasts, values and beliefs may diverge from yours. See your blind spots.

Sharing brings feedback that helps us see what we’re not yet seeing.

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There’s lots else school leaders can ask about. Creativity. Problem-solving. Decision-making. Catering/Dining! Communications. Clubs. Trips. Visits. Charity. Citizenship. Volunteering. Homework. Independence. Assemblies. Celebrations. Governors. Reception. Office. Timetabling. Careers. Work Experience. Options. Schools are complex places! 

But school leaders have limited time, resources, energy, attention, headspace and bandwidth. 

To begin with, know the school. The many schools in one.

How are students?

How are staff?

Walk and talk.

Ask and see.

To begin with. 

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