Leader stories Transcript Interviewer: After turning around a school in Wigan as a headteacher between 2000 2004, became Principal of David Young Community Academy in Leeds and spent 5 terms preparing for the opening in September 2006. The Academy has been highly successful, adding significant value to the achievement of its students. David Young Community Academy replaced 2 of the lowest performing schools in Leeds and has the highest deprivation indices in the city: in 2009 its OFSTED Report judged leadership and management to be Outstanding. Ros says her motivation is simple: to make a difference and to bring that added value herself however there is more I am genuinely angry by the deal that a lot of young people get, and by the idea that there is a ceiling on achievement and that people s intelligence and potential is defined by a postcode It isn t, and I think that it s really important that the cycle of deprivation is broken actually, rather than us just allowing people from the underclass to continue underachieving. So it s an aspiration. It s something that perhaps you saw yourself doing when you got to the age you are now, as it were? Well, I don t know really, because I didn t I mean, when I started teaching, I didn t set out to be a head teacher. I didn t set out to be an academy principal. We d never heard of academies then, had we? So I wouldn t say I would say that the experiences that I ve had leading at the different levels have led me to this, rather than there was any sort of, you know, strategic game plan of how to get here. So what aspects then of your family life of your upbringing have helped shape the person you are and the position and the role that you now do? That s a very interesting question. Well, of course, your core values come essentially, don t they, from your family and from the experiences that you have? And I guess I was the first person in my family to go to university. It wasn t a working class family. My father was actually a primary head teacher, but he left school at 14. My I m the eldest of five children, so I d kind of had a lot of responsibility for looking after little ones. Were you naturally you were naturally the leader, were you, as it were? I think so. I was always called bossy when I was little, which used to annoy me, because you can t put, you know, somebody in charge of looking after the little brothers and sisters and then complaining if they grow up bossy, can you? It s not fair. So that sort of senior leadership role that you re now in, was that inspired by from when you were five, six, seven, as it were? Yes, I think that s probably true. I think to some extent, that s true. I wanted to make things better. I wanted to make things more organised. I Page 1 of 5
was aware of I think very aware, actually, of the importance of education, and always quite fascinated, I think, in my dad s job. If I m honest, I think that s true. Yes. So now in a role where you have a lot of responsibilities in the senior leadership role, how do you balance that with your life outside work? Right. Well, if you ask my husband that question, he d say badly. I think I m able to compartmentalise pretty effectively, actually. I mean, obviously I do work hard and, you know, it s nonsense to say that, you know, this job can be done easily in not many hours. I mean, you know, if somebody could show me a way to turn around failing schools, you know, by working, I don t know, a 40 or 50 hour week, I d be really happy, because I d love to do that. I don t know any other way than putting the hours in. So yes, I work hard and it is difficult getting a balance, but I think what you have to do is the time I m home, I m home. Very rarely work at home, and if I do, it tends to be on my private studies unfortunately. I m doing an MBA at the moment, which is kind of encroaching on a on family time. But generally speaking, when I m home, I m home. Weekends are pretty sacrosanct. So it s clear what your motivation is then professionally, when you re doing the role that you do. Can you pinpoint your proudest achievement at all? Is that something that s easy to do or are there a lot of them? No, there s too many of them. I couldn t pinpoint one. I mean, I can give you flavours of things. It was the end of the second year that we d opened and it was our first six formers who d been with us for two years who went to university. They all went to university. They were all the first people in their family to ever go to university. That made me exceptionally proud, but I m proud, you know, when I ve got when I see the children wanting to do well, wanting to go to university. When I see staff wanting to be heads, you know? When I started teaching, it wasn t the done thing to be ambitious at all, and if people had ambition, they would feel they had to disguise it in order to, you know, be popular with their peers. Nowadays well, I don t know what it s like in other schools, but here, my staff are ambitious not just for the children, but for themselves, and I have a lot of staff who want to lead, and it s watching those young staff come on that gives me a huge amount of pleasure and I m very proud of that as well. So that sort of characteristic of being ambitious is part and parcel of being an effective leader then? Someone who wants to kind of get to the top of their tree. Yes, but I think that it s the reasons why you want to get to the top, isn t it? It s because you want to make a difference, because you re ambitious for the people that you re serving. I mean, I see leadership as about service really, if I m honest, and so, I regard myself as being in service to this community and to these children and to these staff, and I do see it in that way, and I want to lead because I want to be of service. Do the parents and the students see it in that way? Well, I think they think I m hugely approachable. No, I don t think they I don t think the concept of servant leadership has probably hit my community, but I think what they would say is you can always get to see Page 2 of 5
Ros. I mean, we don t have any nonsense here about, you know, not being able to see the principal. Now, I mean, it might be that I m in London for a couple of days in a week and my diary is logjam when I get back and it may be that you re told, well, we can t fit you in til next Thursday, but if you want to see me, you get to see me, and I think people know I m approachable. People often stop me and talk to me, and the staff do; the parents do. So perhaps that s one aspect where people realise that I regard myself as being in service, but whether they d see it that way or express it that way, I don t think so. Well, let s talk about then what makes a good leader into an outstanding leader. How would you sum that up, do you think? I think it s about empowering other people. It s about releasing in everybody around you, their potential to shine and to lead, and to be successful and to be aspirational and to be proud, and I think that, you know, it s in some senses, it s quite easy to have your own vision and to know what are the right things to be done. The real challenge is to actually enable other people to know what needs to be done and to believe that they have the capacity to deliver that in all of them. So are you always on the lookout then to spot that potential in your staff? Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And it s something that I didn t realise that I used to do. I didn t realise I was doing it. Now, because obviously you have to become much more reflective on your own practice, it s another example of what good leaders do, is they become more reflective on their own practice. And as I ve had to do that, I ve realised that, yes, it s a characteristic that I have that I m always on the lookout. I mean, I m like a ferret down a rabbit hole, actually, to be honest with you. And are you on the lookout for staff who will move on, move away from this school? Does that worry you? Well, my motivation isn t to get people to leave, but my motivation is to prepare the next generation of leaders for the education system. It s to improve the quality of leadership throughout the system. There s no doubt about that. And I m always spotting what it is in people that can be developed in order to make them truly great. And what about yourself? How do you continue to maintain your effective leadership and to improve on that? Well, I think it s really I think really it starts with teachers all teachers are leaders, aren t they, really? Because you re leading in the classroom. And I think for me, it comes back to being a teacher. All the excitement and energy that I probably got from teaching children when I first started teaching 25 years ago, I think I probably get now from teaching adults. So I absolutely love working with aspirant principals of academies, because I can motivate myself by bringing on that next generation at every stage, and also, of course, there s that whole thing about modelling leadership as well, and how and a lot of the work that I do that is very hands on and very operational still, such as mentoring senior students what you re actually doing when you involve yourself in that is you re actually modelling behaviours that you wish to see in other senior leaders, and I think that Page 3 of 5
keeps you very fresh and keeps you very motivated when you re looking for behaviours you want in others, and so you are modelling them in yourself, and also when you re involving yourself in actually training people at the highest of levels to take over when we retire. And are there particular people that you admire as leaders yourself, from which you ve drawn your inspiration? Over the course of the over the course of years, yes. I mean, I ve worked for well, I worked for one head who was outstanding a guy called David Swallow, who I think is now head at Barry Boys Comprehensive in Wales. But he was head teacher at Wellik High School in Trafford and he appointed me as deputy. He was an outstanding head. Very different in style to me, and it s wouldn t be fair to say that I have modelled myself on him, but I have modelled some of his behaviours, because they were so good. I mean, more recently, watching Barack Obama has been an inspiration, I would say to all leaders, and actually, inspirational in two ways, because there are some behaviours that you think, God, I do that, and then there are other behaviours where you think, that s amazing; I m going to do that. But yes, I mean, I m always on the lookout for yes. I get inspired by all kinds of things. What about the National College? Why it is important for leaders to have a National College, do you think? Well, what I find useful about the National College is the formal and informal networking opportunities it provides. I mean, yes, it s a focus for a lot of the leadership programmes and development programmes, and they re important and it s great there s a central focus and a central coordination for them. That s fabulous. But actually, what that does is it formally networks and also informally networks a whole range of people. I don t think I ve ever been to the National College and not bumped into somebody who was doing something else, but it s a really important contact, you know, that you have a beer with in the evening. But is everyone a natural networker? Does that come is it part and parcel of the job? Well, I think that successful leaders are natural networkers, but I actually think that that s a skill that can be taught. There are some leadership skills that are very difficult to teach. Networking is one that can be taught, and that s one of the things the National College does and does effectively. And finally, the focus obviously needs to be, at the end of the day, on children and young people s lives and on improving them. This networking that you do, the inspiration that you get, the achievements that you ve obviously demonstrated today, does that improve what you re doing, do you think? Yes. I think it does. I think the National College has a big role in disseminating and sharing good practice and giving confidence to people to be able to get on with it, but you know, it you re right. It is actually all about the students achievement and the transformation of the education we re giving them, because it doesn t matter how inspirational we look to each other. We re not worth a can of beans if the kids aren t passing exams Page 4 of 5
and going to university, because that really is what it s about. It s about the fact that in communities like the community I serve, it was absolutely normal not to bother attending school very much, with your attendance dropping off by 5% for every year you were older; to really not bother about getting your GCSEs, because you d always go to college at 16 to do level two. It was accepted really that most people weren t going to work, and that s what this community had been like. Now, to transform that and get to a situation of over 90% attendance, you know, of 85% five A to Cs, of over 30% including English and Maths, of everybody in the sixth form going to university that s what it s about, and that s why the quality of leadership needs to be good, and it s not just leading in the building. It s leading in the community, it s leading on regeneration, it s leading on community cohesion, it s leading on all those aspects. It s actually working with all the services to actually coordinate an approach which makes life better. Page 5 of 5