From spinning plates to solving problems
By Beck Crowhurst
There is a widely quoted statistic that a teacher makes 1500 decisions a day, but no one appears to have done the research into the amount of problems a headteacher solves a day.
My experience of being a headteacher for the last seven years is that everyone looks to you: whether it is googling how to entice pigeons out of sports halls, analysing the data to increase the reading ages of year 8 boys, or doing all of it with less money, the problems are everywhere. It’s not spinning plates, it’s often spinning problems.
I knew that when I decided to move out of school leadership, I wanted to spend time thinking about the intractable problems - the ones that couldn’t be solved, at least not whilst in the system, not with those pesky pigeons always threatening to reappear.
There were two main problems that I contended with again and again.
The first was recruitment and retention. Even though I co-led a successful and innovative school, with a young and dynamic staff that could happily live in central London and commute to work, when we put out teaching roles we just couldn’t find the staff. We paid through the roof in agency fees, and had to make the excruciating decisions between not having a teacher, or not having the right teacher. We know that many schools around the country have worse problems - teacher vacancies have more than doubled since 2020.
The second problem hit harder - it was the child, known to many services, yet still slipping through the cracks. Everyone working in education will know a Bradley (name changed); it doesn’t start this way, but by the time he was in Year 9, he was working with seven different agencies - school, CAMHS, youth offending, educational welfare, social care, youth charities - the list was huge. Everyone wanted the best for Bradley, but the best for Bradley looks very different if you’re supporting his depression, or if you’re reducing his chance of reoffending, or if you’re improving his grades in his Geography GCSE.
As headteacher, I felt constantly frustrated that we couldn’t have the impact that we wanted for Bradley - you have to have an exceptional set of people, all working together coherently and expertly, and a lot of good luck to change the trajectory. And Bradley is one of many, both nationally, but on each of these people’s caseloads. Which brings me back to the first problem; considering the growing complexities, there aren’t enough people in this workforce to effectively serve children and young people, and the systems that exist do not enable them to work coherently.
My new role at the Centre for the Children’s Workforce is providing the space to think about ways to move beyond these problems. Speaking with people across sectors, I am seeing the same narrative - people want to bring sectors and disciplines together, build shared knowledge, and place the child at the centre. It’s an ambitious aim, but surely we need to be ambitious for our staff and children.
Our initial approach is to design a Foundation Degree targeted at professionals already in the system. We know that there are people working in Barnsley, Bristol and Birmingham right now who are exceptional - but don’t have a degree. I know I worked with them in Feltham. People who know and understand their communities, who are committed to working within them, but are not in positions of power and influence. These people deserve proper professional training, and proper recognition for their expertise.
And if a degree can unlock career development and deepen their impact, then let’s make it accessible and useful for all. Let’s start from the idea that the children’s workforce should have the same goals for our children, the same way of working together, and the same language to discuss problems, and design a course that increases expertise across the system, and builds in role empathy. When our participants complete a degree and begin a new role, we want them to understand the system that they are working within, and have a network of like-minded professionals to call upon and collaborate with.
We are making the case for a new way of working. Is this Foundation Degree the answer to these two problems? No - they are complex and there is no silver bullet. But it is a practical first step towards enacting a new way of thinking about the children’s workforce - of reimagining how all those who support young people work together.
If you think that you are working with these people and want to discuss how they could benefit, or you are working with children and are interested in finding ways of providing answers to these problems, get in touch at beck@childrensworkforce.org.uk
