Coaching has helped head teachers in the North of England navigate pandemic-related challenges, delegates at the EMCC conference heard.
Cheshire-based former head teachers Louise Gohr and Helen Morris, both trained coaches, joined Durham-based head teacher Dominic Curran to share stories of how coaching has benefited teachers, parents and schoolchildren.
Coaching has helped head teachers cope with challenges including high pressure and high workloads, increased accountability and negative media attention, remote learning and key worker provision, and the need to adapt their leadership style. Morris, who is now solely a coach, and has coached Gohr and Curran, said: “Headteachers had to be that face of calmness that everyone was looking up to. …It was really challenging for them and they’re the last people to think about themselves…. They had to be like a swan, calm… but their feet going like mad because there was so much to do and to control. It was a very difficult time and they had a lot of vulnerability.”
Morris said because those schools with a coaching culture were used to finding solutions, the pandemic didn’t stop the collaboration between the schools.
Curran said: “I’ve seen a lot of changes being a head teacher for five years but for me coaching is one of the most exciting changes. I was increasingly fed up with external (factors including) high-stakes accountability with Ofsted (school inspections) and league tables. Coaching empowered me; it gave me back control and (helped me) connect to my innate wisdom. And this increased my new sense of a mission to bring coaching into the county and beyond.”
Those who adopted a more coaching style of leadership found this was challenged in the pandemic, yet coaching helped them be adaptable, agreed Gohr and Curran, who is headteacher at St Bede’s Primary School in Durham.
Gohr, chief executive of Chancery Multi Academy Trust, a group of schools in Cheshire, said: “From a leadership point of view, I found my style had to adapt very quickly. Normally, it’s very coaching and collaborative but I had to default to not my preferred style because there was urgency and a need for answers for things we didn’t even know were coming.”