You know how people sit around in the pub, decrying the latest stupid decision made by the prime minister, or wondering exactly what this or that secretary of state has actually done since being appointed? That’s how a lot of school staff seem to feel about their senior leadership team (SLT).

Perhaps you’re considering making the move upwards and asking yourself similar questions - wondering if, actually, middle leaders do work harder. And what exactly it is that the SLT does all day.

The lack of understanding about what senior leadership entails is linked to the widespread lack of training and preparation for these roles. So, for those considering the move, here’s the behind-the-scenes story.

What do senior leaders do all day?

I am yet to meet an assistant headteacher outside London who teaches anything less than a 50 per cent timetable, and I know many who, at around 75 per cent, are in the classroom for almost as much time as a head of department.

It is not that unusual for assistant heads to have tutor groups (of the six in my team last year, four of us did). Once you add in regular line management meetings, being on call, supervising inclusion rooms, plus a few cover lessons, senior leaders have less time to hang out in their offices than you might think (and they are probably expected to be out and about at lunch and break times, too).

Will I work more hours?

Not necessarily. In fact, you may find you initially work fewer hours because people won’t immediately rely on you in the same way as your team did when you were a middle leader.

It will take time to establish yourself in your new role, and you won’t be anyone’s go-to person for a while, particularly if you have moved school to take up your first senior post. Your headteacher won’t necessarily depend on you to completely own things yet either.

However, don’t be fooled - the longer you do it, and the better you get, the more work will come your way and the more people will become reliant on you.

That doesn’t necessarily lead to an increase in hours, but it does mean having more and more decisions to make, and decision-making is different at senior level. As a middle leader, your decisions are usually signed off by someone above you and there is a certain expectation that you will make errors and learn from them. As a senior leader, you make those calls alone and do so in public, which means that if they are the wrong ones, questions will be asked.

But at least I won’t be held accountable for results

A friend who is a head of department said to me the other day: “I can’t wait to move to senior leadership because the maths results won’t be anything to do with me any more.”

I had to correct him. Of course the maths results are a senior leader’s problem. As are the English results. And the dance results. And the attendance figures. And the exclusion statistics.

No matter your area of responsibility as a senior leader, any decent headteacher will encourage and expect collective responsibility around the big indicators.

People having to do what you say must make it easier, though

Not really. If you think a senior leader’s job is about telling people what to do, checking whether they are doing it and then telling them off when they are not, you’re probably not ready to be a leader.

There is a place for being autocratic, but a senior leader’s most powerful tool is their ability to influence, cajole and prod people towards an end goal in such a way that, when they get there, they have forgotten it was your idea in the first place.

And this is also probably a good time to tell you that senior leaders don’t get credit. For anything. Ever. If you are the sort of person who needs your achievements to be recognised and to regularly be told how brilliant you are, then you will struggle. There is no room for ego on any decent senior leadership team.

There is more to it than I thought

And I haven’t even got to the hardest, most knackering and most important thing of all: the constant, morning-until-night role modelling in everything you do.

You have to be on your A-game for every lesson you teach, every duty you do, every corridor you walk down and every single interaction you have. You are the creator and upholder of standards, and your lead will be followed. So, whatever it is your headteacher wants your school and its staff to look like, you have to be the embodiment of that, every working second. I have found (and continue to find) this to be the toughest aspect of senior leadership. Looking right, sounding right, walking right, remembering everything, being on time for everything, responding to every email or phone call or corridor question in a thoughtful, timely and courteous fashion … it’s exhausting.

Maybe I’ll leave it after all ...

Don’t let me put you off! I love being a senior leader. I love how much I learn every day, how many tiny achievements I have in a week (even if most of them are visible only to me), how I have the opportunity to solve problems creatively and how I have a platform to make my ideas a reality.

But it is hard. Harder than it looks. And, at first, you probably won’t be any good at it - I certainly wasn’t.

If you are stepping up, listen, learn and don’t think you know everything. In the (sort of) words of one Game of Thrones character - however successful you have been in your current role, when you make that leap, you know nothing, middle leader.

Deborah Hawkins is vice-principal at Glenmoor and Winton Academies in Bournemouth

This article originally appeared in the 25 October 2019 issue under the headline “So, what’s it really like to be a senior leader?”