Mouhssin Ismail is chief standards officer at City of London Academies Trust (COLA), a role he has held since November 2023.

He started his career as a banking and finance lawyer before making the move to education, where he taught economics and business in Ilford, East London.

In 2014, he founded the Newham Collegiate Sixth Form Centre, where he was headteacher until 2022. Then he lent his skills to Star Academies, where he worked as regional director and executive headteacher in the North West.

He returned to London in 2023 to take up his current role, where he works across COLA’s three primaries, six secondaries and one sixth form (Newham, the school he founded).

He told Tes about a typical week in the role.

School visits

I look after the key performance indicators of our secondary schools. Attendance, safeguarding and special educational needs and disabilities also fall under my remit. We have individuals who take responsibility for each of those areas and I line manage those people.

As a team, we spend most of our time visiting schools.

Last week, one school started its behaviour reset. So, on the first day, the standards team supported them at the gate - at the coalface, so to speak.

I often do ‘learning walks’ with a school’s headteacher. We go into lessons and we observe line-ups - students entering and exiting the schools - and family dining. I speak to students, too.

Then the headteacher and I have a conversation about what we saw and agree key actions that we want to see improved next time.

Sometimes I do these as unarranged pop-ins, where I spend just 45 minutes in a school.

Then, once every half term I do an ‘impact’ visit - a deep dive. This is a more rigorous process where my team meets with the head in the morning, observes the school and then provides robust feedback at the end of the day. We might return within the half term if we’re worried about progress.

We also do ‘impact-plus’ visits, which are more of an Ofsted-style review, and include scrutiny and standards meetings where we have conversations around finance, recruitment and anything else the school is concerned about.

We find that this helps schools better prepare for external scrutiny, for example from Ofsted.

Central trust meetings

There’s a rhythm to my week, and Monday is predominantly spent meeting with the trust team at our office in the Guildhall.

Every two weeks, we have an executive team meeting. And every fortnight, we have a standards meeting, where the directors of standards at each school will feed back about how they’re doing.

Then every two weeks on a Thursday, we have a trust heads meeting. Each time there will be a set agenda, always linked to our key initiatives. For example, I recently presented the headlines about our academic outcomes.

Preparing for meetings, doing paperwork, writing reports

The CEO sends an agenda for our executive meeting on a Friday evening, so I might spend some time preparing my points over the weekend.

For the standards meeting, I also tend to draft an agenda on a Friday.

But our meetings always follow a familiar procedure: I’m not trying to catch anyone out. It’s about finding out where the schools are, and what more we need to do.

The standards team is all about gathering intelligence and sharing information so we get a true picture of where the schools are.

Line managing my team

When you’re managing eight people, it’s important to be organised, so I often keep a list to remember to check in with my team.

There’s the hard line of it - the accountability part. But it’s also important to me that my team feels supported, so I make sure to do positive check-ins with them too, a regular call or text alongside our formal meetings.

Travelling

I use the tube to travel between schools, as well as walking. It’s an okay way to keep fit, although not as good as cycling between schools, which our CEO does.

If the signal on the tube allows, I check emails. Otherwise, I work on my to-do list on my phone.
 

What would I like to do more or less of?

Ideally, I’d do less paperwork, and devote that time to doing more in schools. The paperwork feels low-level in terms of outcome because it doesn’t have a direct impact on changing the culture within schools. But, of course, it is necessary for accountability within our trust structure.

It means I have to manage my time carefully, to be most effective. Sometimes I choose to work on a report on a Saturday, for example, so that I’m not giving up time in the week when I could be out on a visit.

I don’t work every weekend, but given my background as a city lawyer, I feel able to work very hard during term time, knowing that I’m well compensated when the holidays come.

This isn’t an expectation that comes from the trust - and I realise not everyone feels the same - but it works for me.

Mouhssin Ismail was talking to Ellen Peirson-Hagger

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