Gary Toward - The Art of Being a Brilliant Middle Leader: (The Art of Being Brilliant series)

Unsurprisingly, there is agreement among most educational researchers that the most powerful influence on pupil performance is the teacher. Of course school improvement helps, but the school effect is much less than the teacher effect.

In our focus on both of these, we tend to overlook the impact of the department or the house/college on pupil outcomes. This book repairs that gap by helping those in what might be called the engine rooms of schools as leaders of departments, faculties, phases or houses to be reminded of simple things that can and will make a difference, and in the process make schools better places to learn and live together.

Most teachers will be familiar with this quotation by Haim Ginott:

Ive come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element in the classroom. Its my personal approach that creates the climate. Its my daily mood that makes the weather. As a teacher, I possess a tremendous power to make a childs life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or

Indeed, I have seen it on many a staffroom noticeboard.

But the next most important influencer of the weather is the middle leader. This was brought home to me in my first months visiting London secondary schools as part of the London Challenge. I had called on 150 in the first nine months and was asked by the schools minister how many I would send my own child to. I thought for a while and, much to the ministers surprise, replied honestly that I would cheerfully have any child of mine in at least 135 and probably, after a little thought, in a further dozen, leaving just three which were so broken that we needed urgent action to help mend them.

I vividly remember visiting one of those three schools and being sat down to talk with the school council students. As an opener to discussions, I explained that I came from Birmingham and knew urban schools quite well. Thinking of the street gangs in Birmingham at that time (such as the Burger Bar and Johnson Crew gangs, about which we were really worried), I enquired of the north London schools student council members whether they had trouble with gangs. Not in the maths corridor, came the unexpected reply!

Now, I tell this anecdote not because it convinced me that the school was broken, but because it made me think that there was something to work with. After all, in an otherwise hopeless climate, the maths department was making it possible for the teachers and the students to learn and enjoy learning. As an aside, it eventually turned out that the school soon improved as a focus on middle leadership paid dividends right across the school admittedly with new school leadership. For leaders of schools, as we know, affect the weather too.

So heres a book which can make an enormous difference from three people who have years of experience, boundless optimism, considerable energy, unquenchable intellectual curiosity and a good sense of humour. All of these and more are needed by successful middle leaders, but I am sure you will be more likely to have them as a result of having this book at your elbow.

Sir Tim Brighouse

(Sir Tim has been professor of education at Keele University as well as chief education officer in both Oxfordshire and Birmingham local authorities. He spent some time as London schools tsar and has, according to the Guardian, made a career out of enchanting teachers and bamboozling critics.)

Haim Ginott, Teacher and Child: A Book for Parents and Teachers (New York: Macmillan, 1971).

It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.

Elinor Smith

Before we begin in earnest, we would like to doff our metaphorical hats to you. In fact, consider this a tug of the forelock: you are amazing. Holding down a school leadership position, at whatever level, means you inhabit that dichotomous position of having the most important and the most difficult of all jobs. You are truly all things to all people, as well as a master juggler, keeping several balls in the air while spinning plates with your feet. Its not surprising that youre exhausted!

Throughout history humans have been living with scarcity. But now the only scarce thing in our lives is time. The chances are that your lifespan of 4,000 weeks is zipping by in a blur. All this fast stuff means that were living life beyond the legal busyness speed limit. If there was a busyness traffic cop, hed be clocking you and doing a double take at his speed-gun. Youd be pulled over for the offence of living life way too fast to the point of being a danger to yourself and other people.

If you follow the busyness police analogy through, youd have to go on a speed awareness course and learn to live your life safely. And then, just like a real speed awareness course, youd sit there grumbling that it was unfair that youd been pulled up for racing through life. And then some smart alec trainer would come in and show you some gruesome PowerPoints about folk whove lived their lives too fast burned out wreckages who have coronaries and several failed marriages behind them. And youd all look at your shoes and think, Hes got a good point but it wont happen to me. Perhaps, for a few weeks after your life speed awareness course, youd actually slow down and be more mindful. You might even savour a sunrise and your marriage, but gradually youd get caught up again and, before long, youd be clocked above the limit once more.

The opposite of busyness isnt slowness. As well see later, its pure unadulterated attention to the moment. Its pondering, thinking, musing and wondering. These are all the things that are absent when youre speeding through life.

We meet a lot of school staff who are close to exhaustion, crawling towards the next half-term that will provide an all too brief pit stop before they re-enter the race. The relentless pace is particularly full-on for department heads, middle leaders and head teachers. But in true trooper style, you soldier on as before, victims of what science calls learned helplessness. There are several horrible examples of animals being subjected to electric shocks to see how they respond to stress. (Before we go any further, were absolutely with you on this: were all for reversing the procedure and subjecting these scientists to electric shocks. If we wired up our lab-coated friends to some electrodes and sent some voltage through them, we think theyd learn something very valuable: it hurts, its cruel and they need to stop doing it.) That aside, guess what? If you subject dogs to electric shocks they will try to avoid them, but after a while they will give up and accept their role as victim.

I think we can all learn to be helpless. We can all become victims of busyness. Were exhausted but we look around and see that everyone is suffering in the same way, so what can we do other than go along with the scam?