Having been a headteacher for nine years in challenging schools that required improvement, it is instructive - and eye-opening - to look back and consider what I did, what I think worked and what I admit I would not do again.

When I took over at my most recent school it had just gone into a “requires improvement” category and there was clearly a mandate for change with an Ofsted report and input from governors identifying clear areas that needed to change.

The value of a vision

To start this work I wanted to ensure there were much more clearly defined visions and values in the school.

This was vital as I needed staff and student buy-in on who we wanted to be as a school.

This meant spending our first Inset day and follow-up meetings agreeing on what these should be and then making sure they were ribboned through everything we did, from signs on every classroom door to how we engaged in conversations.

Would I change this approach? Absolutely not!

Seven years later there wasn’t a student or staff member who didn’t know what our values were and what we expected from them.

Staff felt empowered to have necessary conversations using our values as an anchor with both students and families and it ensured everyone was moving in the same direction.

Observations and coaching

Once we had the values agreed, we set about reviewing what and how teachers were teaching and how students were learning.

Observations were necessary to do this at the start as one of the findings from Ofsted was that some staff had low expectations of students so it was important to understand what was happening in the classrooms.

With these insights, we could move to a coaching model of feedback that was supportive rather than threatening and gave staff small things they could work on to improve before their coach dropped in for a 15-minute observation.

This is something I would still recommend as it helped us get to know the strengths of our staff and the areas that needed improvement, but also helped us move away from a sense of being “monitored” to being supportive of teachers to help them grow.

Systems and structures

Another big piece of work we undertook was to review policies to ensure they were still fit for purpose - duties, on-call rotas, pastoral systems and much more were reviewed and many changes were made.

At the time it felt like a lot - to me and probably to the staff, too - but they were the right call at the time and helped us become a more efficient school and one where staff had a clearer understanding of what was expected of them in all areas of their duties.

Also, doing this work upfront, hard as it was, meant that as the school evolved, policies just needed tweaking rather than another wholesale overhaul.

Management meetings and workload

One area where my own personal leadership approach changed was holding structured meetings and taking detailed meeting notes.

This was important at the start to set standards and ensure staff knew things discussed would become actioned items, but over time, as trust grew between myself and my team, this requirement stopped - and removed the need for reams of meeting notes.

As for line management meetings, while I did, and still do, believe they are an entitlement for staff to gain helpful feedback on their job and progress on any development goals, I learned that having an open door policy and walking the school with team members often had the same outcome.

My view on workload and expectations changed, too. While at the start, perhaps understandably as a new leader, I felt everything was immediately important, I learned to reframe my thinking and recognise how to prioritise.

For instance, I started to ask if something was truly “mission critical”. If it was then I made it clear it needed to be done and that I or other relevant staff members would help to ensure it got done.

If it was not, though, I would tell my team not to stress, the school would still be standing when we returned in the morning, not to worry overly and we could fix it tomorrow.

The joy of experience

If I had heard myself say that seven years earlier I would have been shocked - but experience is a wonderful thing, and I have learned that. While as educators we want the best for our young people, there is a finite limit to what you can squeeze into a day.

As such, it really is sometimes OK just to be the best that you can be, every single day, no more, no less.

Evelyn Forde is a former headteacher, winner of Tes Headteacher of the Year in 2020 and former president of the Association of School and College Leaders