There is no doubt that teacher interviews will never be the same again, post-Covid-19. Once schools in the UK have been forced to adopt the practice - well established in international schools - of identifying candidates by video conference, there will be no turning back.

So, while we’re reviewing how we’re going to conduct interviews, perhaps it’s also a good time to reflect on the sort of questions that we ask and what we are trying to achieve with them.

I secured my first full-time teaching post in one of the country’s leading all-boys’ boarding schools. It was 1987, but it might as well have been a century earlier. The teachers’ common room was a gentlemen’s club. Brief absences to attend Oxford and to fight in the Second World War aside, there were people who had spent their whole lives there. At that time, schemes of work, learning walks, league tables, inspection regimes and safeguarding were all things of the future.

“The warden is not expecting you.”

I’d had the PGCE student’s nightmare and turned up for interview on the wrong day, but they eventually managed to track him down. I was bright, shiny and new: wearing a Cambridge sports-club tie and my Blues scarf, in the hope that I might belong. To my relief, the warden was wearing the same tie. He grabbed his Blues scarf and we chatted vaguely about the state of our alma mater while walking to lunch. I was offered the job over dessert, without ever teaching a lesson or being asked a question about pedagogy.

From the warden’s perspective, I was clearly qualified for the post: I had a relevant degree from a reputable institution, I’d even stayed on to do teacher training, and I was going to be able to contribute to the games programme - what more was there to know?

Fast-forward 30-plus years, and the teacher job interview has changed beyond recognition. Today’s interview best practice has not been shaped by educationalists but defined by HR professionals and employment lawyers. Increasingly, it is more important that job interviews follow the right protocols than get to the heart of educational issues and find the right teacher for the school.

Where interviews have gone wrong

The advent of school HR departments has been a double-edged sword: they have brought much-needed rigour and professionalism where previously there was none. But, with that, they have put barriers in the way of getting to the essence of what it takes to be a good teacher who can join the team.

“I’ll ask questions 1 and 3; and you ask 2, 5 and the safeguarding question, 4.”

We have reached the point at which we are taking the concept that interviews must be a level playing field to extremes. Even though candidates come with different qualifications and professional journeys, we are tied by the creeping convention that interviewees must all be asked exactly the same questions.

Once in the interview, no one dares to depart from the script, lest it open the door to a legal challenge, a discrimination claim or an unconsciously biased judgement.

Supplementary questions, in the rare cases that they are permitted, are only to clarify meaning, not to delve deeper. Given that some schools now even give candidates a list of the questions an hour before they face the panel, the questions might as well be asked by an automaton and the answers recorded, transcribed and anonymised to avoid any possibility of bias.

Take safeguarding questions, for example: “What policies are important to create a safe environment for children and young people?”; “Give an example of how you set out clear boundaries and expectations in your relationship with children.”

Of course, we need effective safeguarding, but we are kidding ourselves if we think that we have ticked the safeguarding box by asking a couple of questions at interview. No prescribed question will ever distinguish between those teachers who see building a genuine rapport with children as part of the learning process and those who have darker motives. Only the most naïve paedophile is likely to fall at this hurdle. Safeguarding must be in the culture of the school, and that is only picked up once someone is in post.

We have wrapped our interviews in so many layers of political correctness that we have forgotten that schools are fundamentally about people and relationships. Interviews should get under the skin: standard scripted questions don’t give scope for inspirational teachers to show their true colours. This is sucking the life out of the interview process, and is dispiriting for all concerned.

I have long realised that I have been swimming against the tide when it comes to teacher interviews. My solution has been to absent myself from the panel interview, instead preferring to invite candidates for “an informal chat with the principal”. My particular favourite question is designed to offer the candidates total free rein to show off: “Pick a topic, any topic with which you are confident - your party piece if you like - and teach it to me in a couple of minutes.”

Usually, it’s not what they say - there are times when the finer points of A2 molecular chemistry have left me for dead - but how they say it. You can see the passion in their eyes. They have something that makes you want to know more.

“I just love the Crusades - have done since I was a child,” he said, and he was off. And I was with him all the way. He’d just completed his master’s degree in medieval history. He lived the Middle Ages. He was and remains inspirational teacher. I would love to have been taught by him.

“Well, I could talk about Wittgenstein’s Language Games, on which I wrote my master’s dissertation, but I’m going to pick the theology of Harry Potter, because it’s much more fun.” He was right - what an interesting discussion we had. He had the ability to discuss advanced concepts, using language that Year 9 would understand. What a communicator! A definite yes.

Not all rise to the challenge: “I’m sorry, I didn’t expect to have to answer questions about my academic subject at the interview,” a poor PGCE student confessed, as the tears welled. I felt guilty for expecting a modicum of subject knowledge in a secondary teacher.

It’s spur-of-the-moment questions that often illicit the best answers.

“What’s your favourite novel?”

“Jane Austen’s Emma,” she replied.

I allowed myself a maverick supplementary question, venturing: “You can’t teach Austen to boys.”

Her response was spirited, passionate. She put me back in my place in no uncertain terms - it was quintessential Elizabeth Bennet. She clearly could teach Austen to boys, and I knew instantly that I wanted her in front of Year 10.

The next candidate answered, “I’m a great fan of Terry Pratchett.” Really? I’ve got nothing against the man or his work, but it’s simply the wrong answer at interview for an English post. It was no contest - Lizzy Bennet subsequently proved to be a roaring success.

It’s far too easy to look back in judgement at the outdated recruitment practices of the late 1980s. On the one hand, the warden’s interview technique failed by modern standards on almost every level. This was the polar opposite of unconscious bias: there was a hardwired preference for shades of Blue, and diversity was understood in terms of which sports you played.

Yet, on the other hand, his approach bore much fruit: the school he shaped thrived in so many ways. It became one of the most prolific seedbeds for school leaders of the independent sector for more than 20 years.

In the staff photograph, taken before his retirement in 1991, the warden is flanked by the staff he’d recruited, more than dozen of whom subsequently went on to run some of the most prestigious schools in the country, including Westminster, Harrow, Repton, Cranleigh, Fettes, Haberdashers’ Aske’s Boys’ and Millfield. Undoubtedly, there was method in his madness.

This is not an argument that the need for transparency, the provision of a level playing field, unconscious-bias training and safeguarding are unimportant. They are indeed important. Rather, it is to highlight that the way in which most schools have gone about incorporating these aspects into the interview process has inadvertently created a straitjacket. Interviewers find themselves constrained and ask stock questions; interviewees respond by giving stock answers. It is a soulless dance.

Instead, we need an interview process that identifies teachers who not only have the relevant knowledge, skills and experience to do the job, but also who have the drive and enthusiasm to inspire and challenge our students. Those teachers, in turn, need to be inspired and challenged - and this should start at interview.

In short, there needs to be more freedom for interviewers to deviate from the script and to explore questions, concerns and interests more deeply. The time has come to resuscitate the maverick interview.

Mark Steed is the principal and CEO of Kellett School, the British School in Hong Kong. He previously ran schools in Devon, Hertfordshire and Dubai. He tweets @independenthead

This article originally appeared in the 27 March 2020 issue under the headline “We’re sucking the life out of teacher interviews”