What is it you do for a living?

When I was a headteacher, this was a relatively straightforward question to answer in a social situation:

“What do you do for a living?”

“I’m a Headteacher.”

“Oh – wow. Poor you. Rather you than me!”

This was often how the conversation went.

As an Executive Headteacher, it took slightly longer to explain my job to someone new, but nevertheless the ‘Headteacher’ hook was still there for people to hang their understanding of my job onto. As a CEO, this is now invariably a much longer conversation. As a society, people tend to equate the word CEO with a ‘fat cat’ style boss of some massive, faceless mega conglomerate (see the Boss Baby cartoons), so when one tries to explain this in the terms of the education sector, it is no wonder that even now, 18 years after the introduction of Trusts, that there is not a great understanding, in the general population, of the role of the CEO within the Academy Trust Model.

Quite often the conversation now goes:

“What do you do for a living?”

“I am the CEO of a Multi Academy Trust of schools.”

“Oh wow – how many schools is that?”

“We’re nine schools and will be 11 schools by the end of this year”

“You’re the headteacher of 11 schools? I don’t know how you do it!”

Indeed I have a number of friends with whom I seem to have this very same conversation on an annual basis!

As a society we seem to be institutionally wedded to the notion that the buck can only stop with the headteacher! Of course, even in a non-academy school, this is only partly true with leadership teams, governing bodies and local authorities all having a shared responsibility, through the conduit of the headteacher, for the school. Now I am not at all devaluing the role of the headteacher here, far from it. I am blessed to work with four headteachers and two executive headteachers within my own Trust and a further four whose schools are in the process of joining our family, all of whom are incredibly skilled, talented, passionate and successful school leaders and whose contributions are absolutely critical to the work of our Trust. My point rather is that these very able school leaders do not need their own headteacher (a headteacher of the headteachers if you will). This however seems to be the general societal understanding of the CEO role in education. I dare say that there are one or two Trusts that may operate in this manner, but my experience is far and away that the overwhelming majority of CEOs do not see themselves in this way. So if our schools all have their own fabulous, talented headteachers why do we need a CEO? I know that there are many who would posit this exact question in arguments against the Multi Academy Trust model.

Another common thing that people do when talking to me about my role is talk to me about ‘your schools’ as though I have personally been awarded some sort of ownership over the schools in the Trust. I am always very careful to use the language of ‘our schools’, ‘our students’, ‘our Trust’. This is not only true but also ensures helpful and healthy conversations about not only ‘our mission’ and ‘our goals’ but also ‘our problems’ and ‘our solutions’. The job of being a headteacher has never been an easy one, and in recent years it has arguably become more challenging than at any point in recent history. The role of the CEO is not that of a headteacher, but rather, done well, the role of the CEO should make the role of the headteacher that bit more manageable and reasonable at a time at which a certain degree of unreasonableness seems to have crept into the headship role (and indeed all roles in Education). The CEO is someone who has the privileged position of being able to ‘share the burden’ of headship. As much as it is a privilege to celebrate with our schools their many successes and achievements, it is equally a privilege to pick up a call from one our headteachers with a puzzle, query or conundrum for us to work on together. Sometimes these are quick queries but equally there are times these are the big ‘keep you awake at night’ problems that I remember as a younger headteacher being faced with alone. How to respond to a particularly difficult complaint? How to communicate difficult or upsetting news to a community? In one case it has even been how to respond to a catastrophic building failure that risked leaving a school ‘homeless’ overnight. With our team of experts in Teaching and Learning, HR, Recruitment, Finance, Resourcing, etc. our heads are well supported by experts in their field, which helps to alleviate some of the pressures of modern headship. In addition to this, overseeing such a large organisation, I have the privilege of sometimes (often) being able to give the answer of – ‘I don’t know the answer to that myself, but I can direct to you to a colleague from within our Trust that does’.

The role of CEO to me is also to be the champion, the cheerleader for each of our individual schools. Working with the local governors, headteachers, leadership teams and staff, to get to the know them as living, evolving organisations and to learn to love them, in the way that the students, parents and staff of the schools do – warts and all! Just as a parent has no favourites, so too it is with the CEO. Like a parent too, the responsibilities of the CEO can be overwhelming at times, with personal responsibility to the DfE for the successful education of the thousands of pupils in the care of the Trust’s schools as well as the proper and responsible discharging of state funding across the Trust. There is also the significant emphasis for the Trust leader on the flourishing of education within the family of schools for generations to come. So please don’t be too surprised that we may have particular views of policy and practice that we wish to implement across all schools with whom we work! Almost certainly, in the overwhelming majority of Trusts this is done with the best long term interests of the schools, and the communities they serve, at heart.

So - headteacher, companion, problem solver, proud parent how do we best explain our role to those that don’t understand it. I must admit that my mind changes on the best analogy for this from time to time. As a spare-time (when I get some!) musician there are two that come most quickly to mind. The first would be that of a conductor who, following the score, facilitates the blending of a range of different talents, skills and disciplines into a harmonious whole. This is a common analogy given of the CEO role, however I believe there is a better musical analogy for the Trust of the schools and its CEO. You see, the Conductor follows a set plan – a predetermined score that sets a clear plan for where a performance will go. Almost always this is the plan of another and one that has been repeated many times before. This is not what the world of education is like, so for me, I prefer to think of the role of the CEO and their relationship to the Trust more like the rhythm section of a great band, where the CEO is the drummer – laying down the beat (in the time signature given by Trustees, if we extend the metaphor further), helping all to stay in time and keep pace, allowing our headteachers therefore a bit more freedom and agency to be the bass guitarists - feeling their own particular ‘groove’ within this beat, so that all other members of our school communities: staff, students, parents and carers can enjoy jamming along.

Stephen Wheatley, CEO

February 2024