“I never meant to be a headteacher or a principal.”

The words of Jennie Devine, who has held leadership positions for the past 16 years in Colombia, Ecuador, Italy and now Spain, as head of primary at the Montessori School Almeria, may sound surprising.

After all, how do you reach the top if you never really wanted to get there? Surely it takes drive, zeal, dedication and a never-give-up attitude to make it? Devine says, though, the key for her was simply to pursue what interested her.

“My career has not been driven by ambition, but rather by a desire to challenge myself as a professional. I applied to positions or took on roles that were offered to me, with the guiding question, ‘Does the work interest me?’”

For others, though, leading an international school was very much the career plan: “It has been an aspiration of mine throughout my career to lead others [and] to teach and lead internationally,” says Matt Topliss, who fulfilled that aim by becoming the British School principal at El Alsson British and American International School in New Giza, Egypt.

Becoming an international school leader

These different perspectives on what it took to reach the top of the international school ladder underline something that becomes clear the more you talk to international heads: there is no set path to the top.

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This is maybe a blessing and a curse: no fixed route means there is more opportunity - in theory at least - for anyone to become a headteacher.

But without a clear structure on how to get there, aspiring headteachers could feel like they lack an understanding of what those appointing heads really want.

What’s more, it’s a competitive market out there for leaders, as Natasha Hilton, head of Primary at Park House English School in Doha, Qatar, makes clear.

“Leadership is exceptionally competitive as you are competing with not only people from the UK but the small network of the best leaders internationally, too - everyone knows everyone,” she says.

“To get selected even internally or through other international schools means you really have to be at the top of your game.”

However, while it’s a competitive market, it’s also true that international schools are always on the lookout for leaders. As such, if the right fit can be found there are plenty of opportunities to make the leap up - or across - to international leadership.

Perhaps, then, the first thing to understand is how those leaders are identified and chosen.

Nord Anglia is one of the largest school groups with over 50 schools in operation. It has a raft of ways to spot and nurture leaders - both externally and internally - as Jerry Singer, its group head of leadership, talent and inclusion, explains.

“Annual talent reviews are conducted regionally to identify where our talent lies and what we can do to develop it [and] we offer a number of professional development opportunities through our middle, senior, aspiring principal and principal leadership development programmes,” he says.

“We also advertise externally when a leadership position requires a different set of skills and expertise.”

Underpinning this is what it calls its “Core 7 leadership behaviours” that it uses to assess the calibre of those looking at leadership positions: “All our school leaders are accountable, strategic, collaborative, entrepreneurial, enabling, agile and resilient,” explains Singer.

Proving your worth 

This chimes with a recent article, published by Tes, by Professor Geraint Jones, who has appointed leaders to over 50 posts both in the UK and internationally and who cites traits such as being principled and having courage, self-belief and nous as things he looks for when appointing a leader.

Hopefully, anyone aspiring to leadership, or who finds themself in an interview for a top job more by chance than design, will have some of all of these skills - or the aptitude to develop them in post.

But how are these traits actually uncovered by those hiring? It can’t all be down to who can boast about their skills the loudest, aking to something from the final episodes of The Apprentice.

Thankfully not. At Nord Anglia, Singer says a raft of tasks are used to assess candidates - not just CVs and covering letters.

“Candidates are invited to take part in a comprehensive recruitment process, which includes psychometric assessments, visits to the school (virtually or in person) to meet with key stakeholders, and a panel interview with senior leadership colleagues,” he says.

Furthermore, any decision made on a candidate requires a final meeting with the company’s CEO as part of the final outcome.

Another tactic commonly used for those in the running for leadership positions is to get them to meet staff, pupils and governors, and use this to gauge their suitability for that setting, as Gwen Byrom, director of education strategy for NLCS International, explains.

“If we’ve got potential candidates for principal, we will ask them to do some public-facing things such as an assembly to a group of students and see just see how they present and whether they can be a credible public face for the school,” she says.

“We’ll ask them to meet groups of staff and see how they interact with groups of staff, too, and ideally you pick [staff] that have strong opinions and will give them a run for their money and see how they handle that.”

What would you do if...?

Another key tactic Byrom says they use is to set scenario tasks and see how a candidate outlines how they would respond.

“We will give them some written scenarios and tasks to get a sense of how they might respond to a certain situation,” she says.

“That can depend, too, upon the stage that school is at - so if it’s a start-up school the sorts of questions we might ask will be very different from the ones for a well-established school because a start-up is an entirely different beast from a school that is ticking along quite happily. So we will base tasks on that.”

For an established school, this might be something such as an incident involving a group of students, one of whom happens to be the child of a member of staff.

The candidate may need to draft an email (and a set of actions) in response to a parent’s letter of complaint, she says.

For more start-up roles, though, she says the questions are more aligned to the “sorts of curveballs you can encounter during this process”, such as areas of the school site not being ready to science equipment not turning up and what you’d ask the science department to do as a result.

She says this is not done to catch people out but to get a sense of how they operate and may respond in such a situation if offered the role.

“With all of these things, the aim isn’t to see a right answer but rather whether the candidate considers several points of view and is able to develop a response which shows sensitivity but also gives a sense of the fundamental principles they hold to be important.” 

The money problem 

And this point about having principles - a trait Professor Jones listed in his candidate checklist, too - is something that is also important for potential leaders when it comes to another key aspect of leadership: money. After all, most international schools are for-profit enterprises set up by partners who expect a return. 

Given this, Singer, at Nord Anglia, says spotting the “commercial leadership” capabilities of future leaders is something that the organisation focuses on when assessing potential future candidates, while Devine says anyone thinking about international leadership has to be ready for this aspect of the role.

“The reality of international teaching is that you will likely not just be leading a school, but a business,” she says.

“International schools have become the focus of venture capitalists and investors, and often will be looking to increase admissions.”

Bryom says this can be a real sticking point for some potential heads - even those entering from the independent sector.

“In the independent sector, you’ve got more of an awareness of schools as businesses but it’s still not the same as moving into international schools, where the vast majority of them are for-profit organisations or [have] an international partner.

“I think that can be a challenge for people to get their head around, particularly given that we come from very much the standpoint of, you know, teaching is a vocation, it’s not a for-profit thing.”

She notes, too, that this is not some abstract aspect of the job - it is often critical to a school’s overall success.  

“As a principal, you’re balancing the needs of the partner with the educational needs of the school. And you have to tread that line of what’s most important: is it the finances or is it the education?

“Because you’re not going to be successful on a financial perspective unless you’re getting the education right, because you won’t attract and retain students. But you’ve got partners that are working very hard to balance the books, so you have to think about that, too - particularly in a start-up situation.

“Until a school reaches break-even that can be a challenge.”

Topliss agrees that international leaders have to accept this reality and work closely with their partners to ensure there is a clear understanding of the vision for the school and where responsibilities lie - something that can be very different to how things work in the UK.  

“There may be a slightly different working relationship with the school owners than heads may see in the UK with governors,” he explains.

“In some cases, local ministry concerns, licensing, facilities may be handled by the local owners whilst the education side of things is led by the head. This is not always the case but is more likely internationally.”

Conversely, though, he notes that partners can be more remote and “pay little attention to the school” for long periods before suddenly intervening in a way that makes governance feel “remote and reactionary”.

Local culture and customs

How this plays out can be driven, in part, by where you are in the world and how business is done there. This is something that Hilton at Park House English School in Qatar says is vital that potential leaders understand, as it can be just as much a part of the job as any of the day-to-day requirements.

“Research the country. Being frustrated by a slow pace or people pushing in front as though you are invisible can be commonplace in some parts of the world. Can you handle this? Schools recruiting need to know that you know what you are heading into.”

Byrom agrees that assessing whether a potential leader will suit a specific country and its culture and customs is often just as important a part of the selection process as assessing their skills and qualifications.

“All countries have their challenges and the principal has to be comfortable with that, and supporting their staff in upholding the rule of law in any particular country and working within the regulation system there. And sometimes that’s very different from how it is in the UK,” she says.

“So if you’re in a country, for example, where LGBT cannot be discussed and is a completely off-limits topic, you have to find somebody who is comfortable working in that environment and will work within the rule of law in the country. That’s not a comfortable fit for everybody.”

Indeed, as a recent Tes article examined, the art of “playing politics” in international leadership is a whole issue in itself and one that can take years to master - and then it has to be learned all over again if you move to a different part of the world.

A global career path

Of course, though, the global aspect of international teaching and the chance to engage in new cultures and countries is a huge part of the allure of the job.

Furthermore, the fact you essentially have almost the entire world in which to seek out opportunities means that if you’re willing to travel then leadership opportunities can quickly present  themselves - something that Devine’s career has thrived from.   

“Taking on roles farther afield can open up even more opportunities. My initial SMT experience was done in South America [where] I became PYP curriculum coordinator and deputy head in Colombia, and headteacher in Ecuador,” she says.

She notes, too, that doing this can then make it more plausible to apply for roles in perhaps more competitive locations.

“Because of my willingness to travel, I was able to go where the roles were and pursue them in a less competitive field. This meant that by the time I came back to Italy, I had the experience to walk into a head of primary role in Milan.” 

Topliss, too, says he “didn’t consider the location really before moving abroad” and instead was keen to make sure the roles on offer “allowed me to continue to develop myself professionally and personally and find more of a balance between work and life that was disappearing in the UK”.

This meant he ended up finding the leadership position he always wanted for his career, “even though it was in country that I hadn’t considered previously”.

And this underlines a key point that comes up, whoever you talk to - while there may be no set route to leadership, the opportunities are out there. It’s a tough market and it may take a few attempts at being the one chosen for a leadership role, but there is no shortage of schools looking for talented teachers to step up and run the show.

Sometimes it’s just about being in the right place at the right time: “Ultimately, it only takes one opportunity to enable any teacher moving internationally to find their role and school,” says Topliss.