We said goodbye in winter, and now it is summer and we say goodbye again.  The word goodbye is a contraction of ‘God be with you’, a blessing or wish from one person to another as they part. It’s a hope of protection in uncertain times. Farewell means the same – I hope you do well, that nothing terrible happens to you until we meet again. All the other languages you speak will have similar words, usually based on an ancient ‘go with God’ or ‘until we meet again'. Although where I come from people say ‘ta ta’ or ‘ta ra then’, which doesn’t really mean anything, to be honest.

Since March, the words ‘stay safe’ have appeared instead of goodbye, all over the place. That’s very specific in some ways, it means ‘I hope you don’t catch the virus’ or even ‘I hope you don’t die’. It sounds new, but it’s really just a way of saying ‘God be with you’ or ‘until we meet again’ in a modern way.

When we said goodbye we didn’t really know what was about to happen. We didn’t know if we’d all be safe, or if we’d all meet again. Some of you, sadly, have lost people you loved to the virus, and that’s tragic. No one at Tallis has died. With the exception of year 11 and year 13 all of us who left in March will be back in September. That makes us very lucky. 

We don’t know if the virus will come back and we don’t know what it will do if it does. We all have to be careful, so when you come back in September you’ll find a whole new range of routines and things which are designed to keep you safe, designed to fight it off. Be prepared for change!

And speaking of change. We know that the virus hasn’t been fair in the same way that lots of our experiences as humans aren’t fair. Most of the 60,000 people who’ve died have been old or ill. People were also much more likely to catch it if they are poor or live in overcrowded housing. Too many black and minority ethnic people in England are disadvantaged in these ways, so they were more likely to get sick than white people. And that’s not fair. The Black Lives Matter protests point out the other ways in which the way we live is unjust, and we all need to do something about that. 

Fairness is big for us at Tallis. You expect your school to be fair and with your help we try to make it so. We are one big family from all sorts of backgrounds, but we’ve been lucky and we’ll all be together again.

As a way of celebrating our good fortune we should commit ourselves to fairness, to understanding injustice and to rooting it out. Be ready in September to change the world for the better.

Enjoy the sun.  Stay safe. Fight injustice and come back to us fit and well in
September.

When I was clawing my way up the greasy pole, what I really wanted to be when I grew up was a Deputy Head. I worked with 11 before I got there and they ranged from those who never left their offices or the staff smoking room to those who did absolutely everything, but who you didn’t dare ask a question because they looked as though they were about to burst. I became a young Deputy in a stable of three on a split site school: I learned the most when I went to manage the lower school site alone. In 19 years as a Head I’ve had 10 Deputies.

For me, the biggest wrench returning to London in 2013 was leaving a brilliant senior team behind which had taken me 6 years to gather. The Tallis I joined was emerging from choppy waters: I inherited 4 Deputy Heads and made some adjustments during the course of the year. Ashley Tomlin was Head of Sixth at the time, but I changed that to Pastoral Deputy at Easter 2014 – minutes before Ofsted appeared – then again to Curriculum when Douglas Grieg first took on Plumstead Manor in October 2014. I changed it back to Pastoral in September 2018: he has had a full training programme for headship here.

With typical thoroughness Ashley came to visit me in Durham before I started here. Ostensibly to see what we did with our sixth form but probably actually to see if the school was what I claimed it to be. He’d decided by then to give me a year and move on if I didn’t suit.  It is with a certain amount of pride therefore that I say goodbye to him after 7. [The full contents of that speech contain anecdote, rambling, some violent references and occasional coarse language and are therefore unsuitable for the website!]

However, on behalf of us all, I’d like to say thank you for all of Ashley’s incredible hard work and determination, his tenacity and commitment – not only exemplified in his hands-on strategic work in school but also in his appearance at the Dover night after night: a feat of courage and determination to help our young people to live safer lives.

As you’ve gathered, I like to be busy in the wider school system in one way or another. This would be impossible without someone very reliable to hold the fort, someone whose judgement I trust completely. Without Ashley, the Ethical Leadership Commission would never have happened: the whole system owes him a debt for this. He’ll tell you that he’s moving largely because of the journey form Gravesend, but that’s not true. Ashley has been more than ready for his own school for years now but stayed here through loyalty to the children. Borden School don’t know how lucky they are in their new Head. We thank him for everything he’s done for Tallis.

Kenneth Noland, Beginning, 1958

September and teachers settle into the school halls of the land for HTs’ call to arms. I can’t speak for others, but mine was absolutely gripping. Then we remind each other of routines and expectations, spend time in departments and, whoosh, the hordes descend. Two hours bonding with the form tutor, assembly, timetables, routines and expectations then lessons start after break and we’re off. See you in 195 days. If you’re in year 7 all this is a bit of a blur. Everything is new and, while exciting, very little makes sense. Where’s the next lesson? The nearest toilet? It’s a long time since breakfast: where’s lunch? And the next lesson? What do I need for PE? How does my planner work? What’s my log-in? Which door do I go through to get to music? Really? Do I know you? Are you in my tutor group? What, registration again?  New year 12s have to seem a bit cooler. They can’t bucket about the place like turbocharged squirrels. They develop a mooch, a sort of quick saunter, and ask for advice judiciously where they can’t be overheard, all the while wondering if their chosen outfit really expresses what they intended.  Some can’t quite pluck up courage to spend time in the sixth form rooms at break and still occupy the yard. The weather usually forces them indoors.

Over the last 20 years or so we were really worried that lots of young people left school without the qualifications they needed to prosper.  We devised systems so that school leaders had to focus on this. We combined that with macho rhetoric about school leadership, and a hero-head cult that, in retrospect, was unfortunate. It’s taken us a while to redevelop the qualifications and performance measures to our satisfaction, but we’re very nearly done.  Unfortunately, the KS4 focus of the past led pressured secondary schools to undervalue consolidating the excellent work of primary schools.  Our report demonstrates this, and we are sorry.  Now we intend to support schools to make KS3 the best it can be and we will inspect for this - not this year, but from September 2016.

Sir John Everett Millais The Boyhood of Raleigh, 1870

Perhaps the stripy tops and nautical imagery have overwhelmed me this week. If we were a ship entering harbour at the end of term then what are we doing now? In dock being - what's the term? - fitted out? What happens in school in the hols?  Infrastructure, enabling works, drainage on the west field, painting and decorating. Refurbishing the foyer, tidying classrooms, clearing emails, moving offices, not being ruled by the bells but working at another pace. Wandering about without any shoes on, archiving stuff, battening down the hatches for when we put to sea again.  And much more. Thinking, preparing for new roles, writing schemes of work, hosting the summer school, sixth form enrolment. Quiet reflection on what we know, about our subjects and how to teach them. Reading new books, and research, reflecting on our pedagogy: what went well, what needs changing, what could be better, what’s new. Dragging our families to bizarrely fascinating subject-related destinations. And we think about the assessments we have and the progress that our young people have made. National attention is focused on the 16 and 18 year olds, but we are on a longer voyage.

What really would be news would be if Eton decided to stop entering pupils for any public examinations until the system was reformed. Then, especially if a number of other such schools followed suit, we might get a Royal Commission with the remit to examine both why such an anti-educational system of examinations had emerged and what might be the alternatives.

No complex modern education system could exist without some form of examination system….. The problem is that the relationships between public examinations, the curriculum …and the professional work of teachers, have become grossly distorted. Instead of examinations guiding teachers and students and providing feedback on the curriculum, they have come to replace the curriculum in deciding what is taught and how, and to be a major control force over teachers’ pedagogy and student learning. Taken to its limits, this turns teachers into technicians and all but the very highest achieving students into exam fodder, those that do not give up.