Kate Richardson is education director at Cabot Learning Federation (CLF).

Richardson began her career in education as a teaching assistant, and has since held roles such as Sendco and headteacher, including at multi-academy trust E-ACT.

She first joined CLF, which has 35 schools around Bristol and the South West, as executive principal five years ago. Now education director, she tells Tes about a typical week in the role.

Face-to-face work

I spend about a third of my week working face to face with headteachers and senior leadership teams in schools. That’s my bread and butter.

I directly line manage five primaries, and we have another education director and an executive principal who lead on our other primaries.

We work on a basis of risk, so I spend more time in schools that we designate higher risk, which might mean they have a brand new headteacher, or a lower than “good” Ofsted rating, or perhaps they’ve recently had a concerning set of results.

We use Microsoft Teams a lot, too, but as much as possible I try and work face to face. I think you really get to know a school by being in it.

All of our headteachers and principals come together once a fortnight for our Wednesday Leadership Forum. It starts at 8am but lots of people arrive at 7.30am, so I also use that time to have informal catch-ups.

We also have more formal academy review meetings and academy review visits, which happen once a term.

Facilitating collaboration

I also spend a lot of time facilitating networks and communities across our trust.

For example, every Monday between 4pm and 5.30pm we hold an online network about a specific issue - that might be about raising attainment, mental health and wellbeing, improving attendance, or a specific one for senior leaders.

I attend all the academy council meetings for the schools that I manage. We also support governance and scrutiny - our board scrutinises all of our schools. All of these are opportunities for our staff to connect with other staff members, and I facilitate a lot of that.

Emailing, admin and research

These background tasks underpin a lot of my other work. Part of this is preparation for the networks I just described - I take opportunities to speak to the trust seriously, so I always make sure I’m well prepared, and it takes time to do that.

I should probably be better at blocking out time in my calendar for this work, but I’m good at making lists. I have a working to-do list, and if I’ve got half an hour between calls, that’s often a good time to catch up.

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Work with the wider sector

One of the things that our CEO is particularly passionate about is supporting the wider sector and making sure that we are altruistic and in it for all children - those in our trust and outside of it.

So we do lots beyond the trust to support children’s improvement. For example, I lead a behaviour hub and an attendance hub. We do quite a bit of work with the Department for Education, and for the attendance work, we support 60 primary schools nationwide.

I’m a national leader for education, so the DfE sends me all kinds of work in that area. Sometimes that means facilitating an opportunity for someone else, because I’m not always the best person to help.

I also sit on a board of another local trust and on the Youth Sport Trust MAT advisory board.

Travelling

The amount of time I spend travelling has increased as the trust has grown more into Somerset. CLF, from top to bottom, is now exactly 100 miles, so we all spend a lot of time on the M5.

As I drive, I use the time to make phone calls. We have some schools that lowered their level of risk, so while I used to be there twice a week, now I see them just once a fortnight. That means that I like to do quick check-ins over the phone.

I also listen to podcasts as I drive. I like to keep up to date with what’s happening in education - what people are reading, what people are thinking. And while I don’t always have the time to sit down and read everything, I find listening to podcasts a really easy way of digesting information.

What would I like to do more or less of?

When I first started in the role, I really missed being in one school, having strong relationships with the community and knowing the names of all the children. I still miss that in a way, but I now know the value I add in a different way: if I can be there to support and empower a leader to go and do their job really well, I take just as much satisfaction from that as from doing it myself.

I’ve not worked anywhere before where the values have been as strong as they are at CLF. I know that one day I would like to be a CEO, and I will take that values-led approach with me.

Earlier in my career, when I was thinking about being a headteacher and about being a mum, I struggled to see how those two things could work together. Now I’m passionate about showing people you can do both.

I’ve got twin boys, and while I’m not around for much during the school day - I can’t often do drop-off and pick-up - I do like to read their bedtime story. I make sure I’m home for that, then I might have dinner with my partner before looking through some more emails to make sure I’m set up well for the next day.

Kate Richardson was speaking to Ellen Peirson-Hagger

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