Women into headship According to recent research by NCSL, women headteachers have never had it so good. The number of women headteachers serving in England and Wales is now at an all-time high up 7 per cent in the past five years. It seems more women are making the step up to school leadership than ever before, thanks in part to an increase in flexible working practices and a greater acceptance of childcare responsibilities. Women leaders are also reporting a decrease in sexism and discrimination in their daily work compared, say, to the experience of their predecessors ten years ago. And yet there remains a discrepancy between the number of women teaching and the number of women leading. In this edition of Talking Points, we re going to look in more detail at the different experiences of aspiring and current leaders in schools, and explore ways in which women in education can progress their leadership ambitions. I m joined by three women who each have a special stake in the wider discussion: Hazel Pulley is Headteacher of Caldecote Community Primary School in Leicester and she s a National Leader of Education; Eve Warren is a life-work coach and trainer, and Tesca Bennett who you may have seen or heard already on this portal is Head of Science at Bishop Thomas Grant School in south London. Welcome to all of you and let me start with you Hazel, I said at the beginning and some people may have had a little intake of breath there, women headteachers have never had it so good. Would you agree with that statement? Well, I think it s improving. For staff in my school as they go to appointments, there s always still the comment well, what will I do if there s a male there on the application panel as well? Really, I think it s mindset on the side of the employers and the employees. I think we re moving it now with the employers think of the questions they can t ask so that s really holding up a flag for equal opportunities, specifically for women. But we ourselves as we go to those appointments have really got to have our minds set that we can do this, we should do this and there should be no barriers that stop us. So I think add that to the fact that yes, we are seeing more women in employment, I think it s getting better. You re obviously in the primary sector. The proportion of teachers to headteachers who are women in the secondary sector is rather different. It is, and that does worry me to a point. Is there still the feeling that well, female younger children, there s the care and protection, there s the soft side that we need. Maybe as we get to secondary, it s a bit more of a serious issue, that s what we ve really got to tackle. What, that women aren t tough enough? Possibly, that s what it s saying. Or is it saying that we have the sensitivity that s necessary for the younger child? And I feel that s again, going back to the mindset, we really have to portray that that isn t the situation at all. Page 1 of 11
What was your own path into headship in the primary sector? Luckily, I became a head very early and I think that has helped me. My first two children were very young at that time. So I was a head at 35 and the employers had really got a great vision, they were quite liberated and they wanted the right person for the job, and they got the right person for the job the sex didn t matter. 35 is pretty young. Were there moments you didn t tell your employers this presumably when you thought, am I ready for it? No, I really felt ready for this, but I did meet some issues and some problems the age and the fact that I was a woman in my first headship and it made me stronger. What were the problems? Well, they re interesting. It was a school in Yorkshire and we had a coal boiler and it was the role of the male deputy to go and stoke the boiler when problems occurred and the premises officer was off site. So really, that s where we have to sort of think, how are we going to cope with this? Well, I got a boiler outfit, which everyone thought was hilarious, and now I am a dab hand at changing a split pin when the screw feeding the coal was damaged. So you thought it was important to show you could do the sort of things that were traditionally the roles of men? I think it s to say that I can do this as well and I will get help to ensure that I do ; it s not saying that I know, more I can go and find out. Let me put to you the research you will know about, Hazel, which is the one bit of research conducted by Dr Marianne Coleman from the Institute of Education for NCSL in 2004. It showed clearly that women are under-represented in senior roles in general education, particularly in the secondary sector, where only well the figures are 32 per cent of headteachers are women, compared to 55 per cent of teachers being women. What s your take on this disproportion, I mean, you know, you said in the primary sector it wasn t all that easy, why do you think it s much more difficult in the secondary sector? Page 2 of 11
Well, presently I m working with some male secondary headteachers and it s been illuminating. Sometimes I feel that they portray the role as heavy, unmanageable, and it s tough, it s got long hours. And I quite challenge them, I say it s down to organisation, it is manageable and now hours are adaptable. I think it s for us as women and employers again to pick up that these are changes that need to happen. Let s not accept this male dominance and the way that they view the role as a barrier to this situation. We re going to talk about the certainly still-existent problems of childcare maybe in a moment, but let me turn to Tesca now. You re Head of Science at a secondary school in London. Can you relate at all to the experiences that we ve heard Hazel describe? Possibly not, because you re a Fast Track teacher and perhaps you can explain that, how you came into the sector? Well, the programme is really to pick up recruitment of people who ve had experience of leadership in other job sectors in other professions such as myself, where I ran my own recruitment company beforehand, I worked in research and development and have a PhD in a science background. So your education experience was your own education experience, and not that as a teacher? Well it was my own education experience but also I had some experience of teaching in higher education. But what it really does is identify those leadership skills and takes those on board, meaning that you don t enter the teaching profession at the bottom rung so to speak. It respects what you ve done before and has taken that on board, those skills that you can use in leadership. But if I could pick up on something that Hazel said, Hazel said that when you had your first headship, you had visionary employers and I think really, that is the crux of it. Sometimes with Fast Track, an experience I ve had is that you have to serve the time, before you can take on that role and that s something that Fast Track has valued. But often in the wider sector, people do think, well, you ve only been a couple of years in that position, you have to serve that tenure before you can step up. You ve been a head of department for four years? No I ve been a head of department for 18 months. I took on a leadership role very early on, I took on a KS4 co-ordinator role in a very large comprehensive in London in fact it s the largest comprehensive in London within a term of starting teaching. So I took on that responsibility very early. And it wasn t daunting, because as I said, I ran my own business before I d been in higher education it was just a different sector and I applied those skills. Being a head doesn t faze me. I do find it a bit discouraging that there aren t as many female headteachers in the secondary sector and there is that discrepancy, I don t know if primary lends itself more. Page 3 of 11
Well it could do and that s something we can touch later but is it your ambition to be a headteacher, as opposed to head of department? It is my ambition to be a headteacher, for me being head of department is only a stop-gap, my employers are clear about that. I have to balance my own family because I have two young children with my own career needs. Something that Dr Marianne Coleman s research showed that only 60 per cent of female headteachers have children, compared to 90 per cent of males and I think that s a huge discrepancy. Do you think that one of the reasons that there are more female headteachers in the primary sector is that it is an overwhelmingly female atmosphere there there are not many headteachers that are male. The position s reversed in the secondary sector and that women feel that they are going to be discriminated against in people s heads if you like, even if not in the workplace, because you re not allowed to discriminate against women very obviously? I do think it has that perception, but bearing in mind in the secondary sector just generally, there are more male teachers anyway because it is subject-dominated. Whereas in the primary sector, you do have the one teacher for that class for the whole year and it s very different. Whether or not that contributes to females not rising to be headteachers, I don t know. I think it can be discouraging if you see the SMT s all male yet many of the teachers are female, it doesn t really give you a model to aspire to. I get the picture from what you ve been saying that so far, you haven t found too many barriers to being the head of a department, but that looking ahead to what you would like to be one day; a headteacher, you suspect that childcare even if it s teenagers by the time you get there may be a problem? I think it s more than childcare because I think that any woman, whatever your profession, any mother, I should say, you make your childcare arrangements because you have to if you have to work. It s not an addition, a bolt-on, it s just something you do, it s just one of the many balls that you juggle. I wouldn t say that I haven t had any barriers to becoming head of science, but what I feel as I aspire to headship, as time goes on, I think it s more that serving the time and the openings to do that, I ve got to that. I have had some good support, I ve had some fantastic mentors one of whom is a headteacher of a secondary school, female headteacher. And that has helped and I think that coaching, that mentoring does help, but how open senior leaders are to that for younger staff, I don t know. Eve Warren, let me bring you in now, if I may, you ve been listening to this with interest. You ve been coaching people over a number of years, maybe since there was much more obvious discrimination against women as headteachers in the secondary sector certainly. What s your take on what you ve been listening to so far? Page 4 of 11
I think it s very interesting that some of the barriers are external perceptions of the role, attitudes of recruiting panels but a lot of the barriers are internal, and research indicates that large numbers of deputy heads have no plans to go for headship which seems extraordinarily worrying. Deputy heads who happen to be female? Yes exactly. One of the things that often women deputies don t appreciate is as the head, you have more flexibility and as the head, you can make further choices about how to structure and organise your school and your life. You really have more flexibility? Absolutely, and certainly with the support of your governing body. And I think we re seeing increasingly now, greater acceptance that we have to, as Hazel said, get the right person with the right skills for the job. And that person might not have followed a traditional career path, might have had fewer choices because of her family life to move around schools. So, she might well have stayed longer in one school than perhaps a male colleague may have done, but she can still demonstrate that she s got the skills and experience and expertise to do the job, which is what the important thing is. You talked about external and internal barriers. Would one of the internal barriers be a lack of confidence? Absolutely, and this comes up again and again and again. In all the programmes that I m involved with in working with women, confidence and self-doubt is at the top of the list of barriers. There was an interesting piece of research that Dr Coleman reported in her latest book, where it was identified that if a man thought he could do three out of the ten duties required for a job, he would apply for it, but a woman would not apply if she could do seven out of the ten. Women tend to focus on what they can t do and men tend to and I m generalising here and I know there are always exceptions but men tend to focus on what they can do. There s a bit of bluff going on sometimes. Page 5 of 11
Sometimes there is! And sometimes I think women will allow their self-doubt or that one thing that they can t do to stop them going for it, or they might actually apply and have a setback, a knockback, and so think, ok well, that s it, I won t go for it. Has that changed at all, the sort of self-doubt that you re so familiar with over the years, has the situation improved? I think it has improved and I think what s interesting is that there are more opportunities to talk about it, and by talking about it, identifying that obstacle, then they can take action to overcome it. And certainly, as Tesca said, having a mentor who believes in you and encourages you is one of the most important things. I m glad you mentioned mentoring because it is obviously very important. I d like to go back to Hazel, perhaps you didn t need a mentor, Hazel, because you sounded pretty confident from the word go? First of all, just before we talk about mentors, do you recognise this syndrome of women focusing on what they can t do, rather than what they can do, unlike men? I do. What we ve created in our school is a professional learning community that really is an enabling environment that allows anybody so I m not doing any positive discrimination here it s anybody, to come forward with views and ideas around moving the school forward and wanting to take on some leadership. It s a very exciting time and we paired people up to mentor or coach each other that is making a huge difference because what it s saying is leadership is here, you take those opportunities, just move forward. Tesca does this sound like something useful? You were talking about mentoring earlier, sort of oneto-one mentoring, encouraging women, is this something that you recognise that would be useful to you? Most definitely. I would say that it was actually my choice who I chose as a mentor and in my first placement it was actually a deputy headteacher who s now a headteacher and the skills that she had I shadowed her, went to SMT meetings, in terms of leading inset. My second mentor I actually chose somebody very different who I thought worked extremely differently to me, their whole leadership style was different and that s because I thought it was something that I needed to develop and that I wanted to see the way that she worked. So again, that showed me how I have to adapt, because if you re going to be a head, you re going to have to adapt to different leadership styles and you re going to have to use different leadership styles. I would recommend it. What sort of things about you that she said were good or not so good surprised you? Page 6 of 11
I ve always been very good at self-evaluating and self-assessing. I wouldn t say that I ve always had a definite career path, but I would say I ve had an idea of the direction that I wanted to go in. Some of the things they did point out were some of the less traditional sectors like curriculum and timetabling which are often seen as male-dominated roles. But being a scientist I ve got to say I quite enjoy things like that, so I was happy to get my teeth into things like that. For me, the challenge is the pastoral side I m very au fait with the curriculum so that was one of the areas that we ve identified that I need to develop slightly more. And yet Hazel was saying a lot of women are naturally good at that for obvious reasons, because a lot of them are mothers? Perhaps so! I don t know about that, again, it s my scientific background that lends me to the timetabling and the curriculum side of things. I don t know. Eve, does this ring a bell with you, what we ve just been hearing from Tesca? Yes, absolutely, and I think the finance side, I would just add, is something that women often say they are concerned about. You mean the school finances? The school finances. But usually they will have been managing home budgets, family budgets, departmental budgets, and as other headteachers have said, you can t be expert at everything, but you can learn how to tackle something and what expertise that you need to bring in. But I think Tesca s point about self-evaluation was really important. Many women because of their commitment to their work and their families focus exclusively on doing the current job so that they re not then thinking about progressing their careers, thinking about the activities that Tesca mentioned that were really important. Thinking, for instance, I ve got two or three young children, I haven t got time to plan my career? Exactly, but in fact we do need to be planning our careers and we do need to be identifying the areas where we don t have the skills and the knowledge. As Tesca was reporting, making sure that we get that skill, those areas of knowledge so that we can demonstrate our competence. Page 7 of 11
But you see the sixty thousand dollar question is still: Can I do this with a young family? That hasn t changed over the years. I can remember in the sixties and early seventies when gender equality was a really hot political issue, people thought that in 30 years time, it would all be completely different. I don t know, I think that would have involved men having babies or something! But things aren t going to change very rapidly for women unless they make things happen for themselves. Is that right? Absolutely, and clearly everyone does ask that question Can I do this with a young family? and yet it would seem really worrying if a requirement for the job is having someone at home to do all the household duties and responsibilities that many women do take on. The most useful thing is hearing from women who are actually doing it, women headteachers with young families and hearing how they manage it. Having role models? Absolutely, and seeing that it can be done. My colleagues here have said it s not necessarily easy, but that s the case for everybody working with children. I was very interested when you said it was possible for women headteachers to be more flexible and I maybe expressed some doubt about this, but you have found that it works for some people? Yes, absolutely, and some people do have slightly varied working hours, organise their childcare to fit in with their working life, some headteachers take a late start some mornings to compensate for their evening work. As the head, it s up to you to organise it. As a deputy, of course, you re far more involved in the day-to-day operational work and very few heads would say I d rather be a deputy. Hazel, do you recognise this business of being able to create flexibility around your own headship? I do, and I wish to give that right to all people throughout our school and it s really important that our deputy doesn t feel so locked in. Specifically in secondary. So, for example, I came this morning late, I took my children to school. It was a great delight To be with us in the studio? Page 8 of 11
Yes I came in late to be here, but also if there s a situation arises within our school, staff know I am totally approachable around the issue, and do you know, I think I get more back through that. I d like to explore a little further the issue of women bringing certain really positive qualities to headship that maybe men can t. Obviously interacting with children, I mean most men are very good at that, but women have a special bond. Are there other things that you can think of? Well yes, the organisation I think is, as we ve mentioned before, really key, but this emotional intelligence is where I feel a female leader can sometimes really score points, if we are looking at it like that, over a male leader. Not always, but more often so. I think that there is intuition around picking up concern or stress or negativity around an issue, and then if you really build that into and model it, as my style of leadership accommodates these feelings, these emotions, but they re dealt with in a structured way, in a sensible way, I really feel that you can build and lead your department or school effectively. Eve, a picture is coming across to me of a necessity to be collaborative with your colleagues, and for your colleagues to be collaborative with you. This has always been the case I take it? Absolutely, and many women prefer to work in that way. They like to take a collaborative approach to leadership with developing good teams, working effectively in teams, and that, of course, is wonderful in terms of achieving results in schools and raising standards. However, a focus on the team and collaboration can mean that women are less good at communicating what they can do. They are often very good at recognising and celebrating what other people can do, but less good at saying yes, I m good at this and, of course, we need to be able to do that to get the next job. And the system needs to spot the women who are the shrinking violets who might have potential for leadership. How can it do that? Well, currently, I would suggest we are not spotting everybody. Often the way that talent is spotted depends on people kind of playing the game, promoting themselves, doing all the career development activities that many women say they don t have the time to do. They ll often focus on doing a fantastic job, but will not then think that I ve got to also take career management steps, which will involve networking, will involve demonstrating your competence, will involve building influence with the people who may well be in a position to develop you in the future. What would your strongest piece of advice be, Eve, to somebody who is now interested in becoming a headteacher in the secondary sector? Page 9 of 11
I think the most important thing is to have a plan to address your confidence and your path to getting it, and that may well involve some training, some mentoring, some networking, some peer support. But fundamentally the most important thing is taking some time to think about it and plan time for yourself. Even if you ve got a busy family all around you? Absolutely. Because it won t happen otherwise. Hazel, what s your best bit of advice? That was lovely to hear Eve, and I think I d like to build on that. I have three wells: one is my home, one is my fitness and health, and the other one is my work, and they all feed each other. They all have to be filled up. So I think it s about saying keep those wells filled up, don t let one area dominate another and the balance will enable you to have that confidence to keep your mindset right. Tesca, are you still interested in becoming a headteacher? I am, I think it s a very exciting time with Building Schools for the Future, the Extended Schools curriculum, I think we have a real opportunity to make that difference and to create that vision. But I do think it also depends on us educating heads, educating staff and you know not just because this is the way we ve always done it, because this is the way we have to do it, there are other better ways. It s about working smart, which I think as mothers we all have to do, because we juggle so many balls. Indeed, and I think lots of women would recognise that. Well, the picture is certainly rosier, a bit rosier for women headteachers than it was a number of years ago, and there has been, I think people around the table would agree, a recognition of what modern women s lives are like, the responsibilities they might have at home, and an understanding that flexible working models like job-sharing, part-time working, co-headships perhaps we haven t had time to go into those in detail can all help to make sure that we recruit and retain the calibre of headteacher we need to lead our schools. But we can t ignore those gender imbalances that exist in the leadership of schools and I hope that you ll agree that the good work that s being done to help women progress their careers towards headship needs to be built on and taken further. Thank you to my three guests today very much indeed for joining us to talk: Eve Warren, Tesca Bennett, and Hazel Pulley. Tell us what you think about the issues we ve been discussing. If you ve been interested in what you ve heard, why not explore NCSL s Tomorrow s Leaders Today web portal and engage with some more Page 10 of 11
of the issues involved in the succession planning debate? Thanks for listening to Talking Points, thank you to all our guests once again, and from me Sue MacGregor, it s goodbye! Page 11 of 11