I am quite a determined person. When staring down the barrel of a recruitment and retention crisis, I am bloody determined to find ways of keeping people afloat, including myself. But this can’t be a 24/7 thing, because crap days happen and bad things happen to really good people. Awful things seem to happen - a lot - to lovely kids. 

We’ve invested in some professional supervision for those staff who work most closely with vulnerable children and vulnerable families. It’s in addition to a free (for the staff) phone and face-to-face counselling service when they need it. It’s for those colleagues who cannot offload in the staffroom because of the confidential nature of what is disclosed. It’s expensive but essential, and I already wish we could afford more days. 

Addicted to stress

I worry that there is something addictive about the stress we experience - that we start not being able to function without it. Perhaps I miss being able to help with nightmare situations for children and perhaps I miss the rage I feel when I can’t. Perhaps that’s why I am drawn to schools in challenging circumstances, as the entire community is often treated so poorly that I feel enraged nearly all the time.

I recently met a headteacher from a primary school in the city and she looked alarmed when I said where I was head. “I thought we had it tough where we are, but I can’t imagine how awful it must be working with those sorts of people,” she said. What sorts of people? I have senior leaders who attended the school. My PA, school business manager, countless teaching assistants and other staff live in the community, and their kids attend the school. The only wrong people are the judgmental arses who think the postcode is shorthand for chav (a loathesome word that betrays the worst of British classisms). When you’re fighting the stereotype held by other professionals working in challenging schools…I restrained myself.

We can’t afford to make cuts

So I need some of the supervision myself, not because I am designated safeguarding lead but because I now take the disclosures of the entire staff. And also because, for the second year running, we have had massive amounts of money stripped from our budget in the kind of way that can only be addressed by reducing services and staffing.

We can’t afford to make any cuts; we were turning the corner. Our student numbers increased, but we have hundreds of thousands of pounds less. The money won’t come back. By the time the fairer funding formula is established, I’ll be millions behind on where I was - with greater numbers of kids with more and more complex needs.

When do you give up fighting? I don’t want to give up, ever, but there comes a time when smacking your head against a brick wall is no longer healthy. When the brick wall is also getting higher and harder, when neighbouring schools stick a few barbs in because it helps them and self-preservation is all, when those in charge of the system look at my children and seem to decide they don’t matter quite as much as they once did…I wonder how long before it implodes.

The author is a headteacher in the South of England. She blogs at Chocotzar, and tweets as @ChocoTzar

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