Elma Lawson is director of education at Anthem Schools Trust, a role she has held since March last year.

She started her career as a music teacher in Ireland before moving to teach in London, where she became an assistant head after applying to the Future Leaders scheme.

After several years in school leadership, including headship, she sought a new challenge - and became a regional education director for E-ACT. After the pandemic, she moved to Anthems School Trust, which has 16 academies, as an associate education director before moving up to her current role.

She spoke to Tes about a typical week in the role.

Strategic alignment

I have seven people in my team - three associate education directors; a trust executive headteacher; the curriculum, pedagogy and assessment leader; the inclusion and special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) leader; and the literacy leader.

We have clear trust goals in each of these areas, and the key part of my role is communicating those goals to my team and supporting their work in aligning and implementing our schools to those goals.

This requires a lot of discussion and hands-on support. I probably speak to the associate directors four or five times a day. They’re in the schools more often than me so I need to know what’s going on and how we can support each other with our priorities.

My one overall priority is ensuring everybody in the trust is focused on the children and their experiences in the classroom, and nothing distracts us from that. Every student matters, and we need to do the best for each and every one, with no excuses.

In meetings with the national team, from teaching staff to operations staff, I consistently stress the importance of improving the classroom experience for students, encouraging everyone to reflect on how they contribute to enhancing it on a daily basis.

Making and monitoring impact

I invested a lot of time laying the groundwork for this role during my first year in the post, implementing our codified principles for pedagogy and how we expect our teachers to deliver in the classrooms.

I tell my team to spend at least three hours a day in schools and classrooms talking to kids, checking the quality of education and looking at the impact of that on assessment and outcomes. There is no substitute for being present on the ground, engaging directly with students and teachers to grasp what’s happening first-hand.

Data is clearly a huge part of what I do, both gathering qualitative data like this but also quantitative data. It’s hard work, but it pays off: we had a 5 per cent increase in our outcomes last year and expect more this year.

Targeted improvement focus

I have six priority schools that need extra support.

I meet with the headteacher of those schools every Monday, alongside the relevant associate director, to talk about the children and outcomes, whether Ofsted is coming and how we’re preparing for that.

More broadly, I talk to every head about targets for the upcoming year, and what they will be doing differently to achieve those.

Managing relationships and wellbeing

An important part of my role is about managing relationships. I constantly try to keep things calm. It’s an amazing job that we do but it’s also high-intensity.

How do we get the best out of people without impacting their wellbeing? For me, that’s about ensuring that people enjoy and get fulfilment from their work. For our people to enjoy teaching, our schools’ behaviour policies must be excellent, we need excellent recruitment initiatives and we need creative timetabling to allow people flexibility. That’s all on me to deliver.

I book time with all heads, as well, to discuss any issues and problem-solve if needed.

School visits

I also visit our schools regularly. I have my meetings Mondays and Fridays and am in schools most weeks Tuesday Wednesday and Thursday. Whenever I visit a school, I prioritise speaking with the children, emphasising that their experience is paramount.

A good section of my day needs to be free so I can talk to people and understand the culture on the ground. I spend time with the head, middle leaders, teachers and kids.

These visits also allow me to ensure the quality of associate education directors’ work.

What would I like to change to do more or less of?

We’re very reflective in how we work, so if things aren’t working effectively we change it quickly. But in this job you can get distracted by lots of things. Dealing with parental complaints can be challenging as they have gone through the roof across the sector.

But over the summer I wrote a couple of pages for the impact and accountability framework and changed how we will work this year. I’m ensuring that our focus will be more on impact this year - spending more time meeting heads regularly and getting the right teachers in front of the kids.

Elma Lawson was speaking to Jasmine Norden

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