“Do not lose sight of yourselves as human beings.”
That was the message from Bernadette Casey, the outgoing president of Scotland’s primary school leaders’ association, AHDS, which began its two-day annual conference in Glasgow today.
Leave work at the door sometimes, Dr Casey advised - telling delegates about her own double life as a headteacher and stand-up comedian. “Focus on events that are really important in your personal life,” she said.
‘Increasing demands’ on primary headteachers
Jonathan Cunningham, the incoming ADHS president, had a similar message.
“As leaders we are often so focused on taking care of everybody else that we overlook our own needs,” he said. “But, as they say, you can’t pour from an empty cup - to be effective we have to prioritise self-care and model it for our teams.”
He was also clear, however, that this had never been more difficult.
Heads were grappling with “increasing demands” and “limited resources”, with the complexity of the role at times feeling “overwhelming”, said Mr Cunningham, who is headteacher at Knightswood Primary School in Glasgow.
“Many of us are juggling what feels like an impossible workload at the moment, stretched between administrative demands and the real heart of what we go to school for: our schools, our children and our community,” he said.
It was for these communities that school leaders “kept showing up”, he said, but “burnout is absolutely real and it is hitting us all harder”.
“Our latest AHDS [workload] survey shows that members are struggling to maintain both workloads and their wellbeing, and that’s not just unsustainable, that’s unfair,” Mr Cunningham said.
At the conference, headteacher-turned-school leadership coach Nadia Hewstone attempted to show the AHDS delegates a way through.
Ms Hewstone, author of The Unhappy Headteacher, explained that she was parachuted in to lead a struggling school in England, which took a huge toll on her health. She suffered a slipped disc, had psoriasis over most of her body and developed an alcohol dependency.
‘Cultivating joy’ in school leadership
She turned her situation around, she said, by focusing on the things that she could influence and by “cultivating joy” - something she now encourages other school leaders to do through her coaching.
One headteacher had found joy by returning to running as a hobby and building up from a Parkrun once a month to a running habit she now “can’t be without”.
Ms Hewstone cautioned against living on biscuits and coffee and then going home and drinking wine. This was what she used to do, she said, but school leaders need to ensure that they sleep well, eat a balanced diet and take physical exercise.
This does not have to be about getting up at 5am to go for a run, she said - going for a walk is enough.
“You are the most important resource in your school - I wholeheartedly believe that,” Ms Hewstone told delegates.
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