Steve Rollett did not plan to go into education but has now worked across the sector as classroom teacher, assistant head and now deputy chief executive of the Confederation of School Trusts (CST).

He tells Tes how he believes academy trusts - and the expertise being developed within them - are the biggest strengths of the school system and why helping to turn a school around is about more than Ofsted reports or GCSE results. He also calls for greater diversity in school leadership and more Covid catch-up funding.

1. Who was your most memorable teacher and why?

I had some really good teachers so it is difficult to pick one. A teacher who sticks in my mind was Alan Herridge. I grew up in a small village in Dorset and he was a third of the teacher workforce as well as the headteacher, and he was just brilliant. I can remember us sending these blazing mini hot-air balloons across the skies - which, probably, we shouldn’t have done in 1980s Dorset and definitely couldn’t get away with now - but he really lit a fire in us as well as in the hot-air balloons.

Moving up to secondary school, I remember Geraint Hughes. He’s a PE teacher and an incredible rugby player in his own right. He showed huge trust in me and huge kindness. He was one of these inspirational people. He made you feel like you could sprint through brick walls, and we would have run through walls for Hughesy. He was fantastic.

The other two I’d mention would be two of my history teachers, Alastair Anderson and Paul Reddick. I went into education as a history teacher, and they are probably the reason I did that. They were really, really different but both had an absolute passion and zeal for history, which I like to think they passed on to me.

2. What were the best and worst things about your time at school?

This might sound really clichéd and perhaps a little bit cheesy but I genuinely mean this: the best thing was just the learning. I say this to my own kids all the time, to the point where they’re probably quite bored of it, but there is everyday powerful magic when you learn something that you didn’t know before.

As for the worst thing, I was very fortunate - I had a really good experience of school - but, like lots of children, I think back on those occasional instances of unkindness that can exist sometimes between pupils. That’s perhaps a difficult thing to say but it’s really important that we acknowledge that stuff because, coming from a teacher and leaders’ perspective, if we don’t acknowledge that this stuff happens, then we can’t address it.

3. Why do you work in education?

I’d really love to say it was part of a grand plan. As a young boy growing up, I wanted to be He-Man. And, after that, maybe one of the Thundercats, so it wasn’t something that I remember thinking about from an early age, although I always loved learning, so there was an obvious fit.

What happened to me was actually a tale of love. The girlfriend I was seeing at the end of university went on to become a teacher and I was doing a degree in archaeology. I was faced with either a career in archaeology where, truth be told, the streets are not always paved with gold, or doing something else. And I thought: “Well, she’s going to be a teacher; maybe that would be something I could do as well.”

So I looked into it and it really did just seep into my bones. It’s just become a part of me.

I worked my way up as head of history, head of humanities, to being an assistant principal of what was a challenging secondary school. And then vice-principal as well. And then an opportunity came along for me to work in education policy. I feel I have just been really lucky to do what I do.

4. What are you proudest of in your career and what do you regret?

I am obviously incredibly proud to be doing what I’m doing now, working for CST, representing and advocating for all those school trusts out there. I think they’re doing a fantastic job, particularly in making a difference in disadvantaged communities.

I would probably point, as well, to my experience going into a school that had never been “good” before, and working through a period of transformation, helping it to get a “good” judgement and helping to improve outcomes so they were the best the school had ever seen.

But what really sticks with me is not the wonderful day when we were told it was “good”, it’s not the results day - it was that feeling when you’re speaking to people in the community and they’re saying that the school really matters to them, and they recognise the difference the improvements have made for them and their children. That will probably stay with me for ever.

Fortunately, I don’t feel like I’ve got huge regrets in my career. When I look back and, even though I’ve made mistakes or I might do things differently now, I’m pretty clear on the reasons why I made these decisions, so I can live with that.

5. Who would be your colleagues in your perfect school staffroom?

This is a difficult question, especially when you work for a representative organisation, and there are quite literally thousands of people I’d like to name.

I am a big fan of Funmilola Stewart and Jenny Thompson at Dixons Trinity Academy in Bradford, because the work that they’re doing on school culture - the deep expertise that’s being developed in that trust - is something that I would absolutely want happening in my staffroom. They are very knowledgeable and also just excellent people, so I’d love to have them in my staffroom.

I probably ought to say my wife. She is a brilliant teacher, truly fantastic, although I’m not sure she’d want to work in my school.

I have to pick my boss [Leora Cruddas], and not just because she’s the boss. This is going to sound slightly sycophantic, but I do mean this - I have never met anyone who has got such clarity of understanding about the school system as Leora does.

6. What do you think are the best and worst aspects of our schools system?

The school trusts that we have are absolute beacons of excellence and beacons of hope for the education system - and not really for the reasons that people have tended to talk about.

Historically, we have a narrative around trusts that is about back-office efficiencies. This can be key but what I think is especially important about school trusts is them being knowledge-building structures.

What trusts do is they bring people together into really dynamic communities of professional practice. These are professional learning communities at their heart.

If we look at what’s happened during the pandemic, we’ve seen school trusts be really robust structures that helped individual people, and schools, deal with what’s been, undoubtedly, the biggest educational challenge of our time.

In terms of worst aspects, I have a bit of a thing about the dichotomies that are often set up in the way that we tend to think and talk about education. You know, classics like “knowledge versus skills” or “traditional versus progressive”.

There’s a theory called legitimation code theory (LCT), which I’m always boring people about, which describes how we often find that knowledge clusters into binary oppositional stances, and it can take a real effort to resolve that and to reject some of those dichotomies because sometimes they can be really unhelpful.

7. Your own teachers aside, who in education has influenced you the most?

We’ve just talked about legitimation code theory, so: Professor Karl Maton, who developed it. There’s a whole community of LCT thinkers out there. They’ve really changed the way I think about not just classroom practice and curriculum practice but [about everything] all the way up to national policymaking.

8. If you became education secretary tomorrow, what would be the first thing you’d do?

Fund education recovery. I would do whatever it takes to put in place the funding that children need to recover from the impact of Covid-19, and that’s the educational impact but it’s the other impacts as well. Mental health impact, for example, particularly for those communities that are persistently disadvantaged - we know that they’ve been hardest hit by this pandemic.

9. What will our schools be like in 30 years?

I think we will see technology play a greater role in the classroom and it may impact more on things like assessment.

One thing I would say absolutely does need to be different in 30 years’ time is diversity and representation in education. We know - particularly when looking at workforce and governance, and we look at how people progress through their career - that we don’t, as yet, have a robust enough pipeline of diverse teachers and trustees getting through into leadership roles.

Frankly, I don’t want to wait 30 years for that - we already see trusts that are grappling with it but, to answer your question, I would hope that, 30 years from now, this does look very different.

10. Who has had the most influence on education in the past 12 months?

It’s all those people on the ground who have been doing the hard work. I am absolutely full of admiration and respect for all teachers and leaders and support staff, who have worked so hard throughout this pandemic.

It’s been an incredible effort and I think the important point to note here is, of course, that it’s not over yet. There’s a lot of talk about [what will happen] post Covid but we are still in it.

I respect them and what they’re doing. You know, they’re not just educating children - that’s a big enough mission on its own - but what they’re doing is leading their communities through this thing.

Steve Rollett was talking to John Roberts, senior reporter at Tes

This article originally appeared in the 22 October 2021 issue