Mind the Gap, Episode 20 — Putting Staff First with John Tomsett & Jonny Uttley

Episode Overview

• The podcast explores the leadership philosophy of "Putting Staff First," which requires leaders to stay connected to the daily realities of teaching in order to effectively support their teams.
• A core theme is that the primary role of a school leader is to systematically identify and remove bureaucratic barriers and ineffective policies that hinder teacher effectiveness and create unnecessary workload.
• The conversation advocates for a shift from top-down, compliance-driven management to a culture built on professional trust, autonomy, and evidence-informed decision-making.
• The guests argue for an ethical approach to leadership that prioritizes collaboration and system-wide improvement over competition between schools, ultimately boosting staff well-being and retention.

Key Concepts

• Frontline Leadership: Leaders must remain actively involved in the day-to-day life of the school—teaching, performing duties, and experiencing the environment—to avoid becoming disconnected from the realities their staff face.
• Removing Barriers: The fundamental role of a leader is to actively listen to staff, identify systemic obstacles and inefficient policies, and take responsibility for removing them.
• Professional Trust and Autonomy: Effective leadership starts from the assumption that staff are dedicated professionals. This involves delegating responsibility, empowering departments to create context-specific policies, and abandoning punitive, one-size-fits-all mandates.
• Evidence-Informed Decision-Making: School leaders should resist making superficial changes or launching major initiatives based on trends or hunches. Instead, all significant changes should be grounded in solid evidence to avoid creating pointless work and disrupting the school environment.
• Challenging Ingrained Practices: Many burdensome school policies exist simply because "it's always been done that way." Leaders should constantly question the impact and necessity of existing systems, particularly those related to marking and data collection.
• Ethical System Leadership: The conversation broadens to the moral responsibility of leaders to think beyond their own school's performance. True success lies in improving outcomes for all students and contributing to the health of the entire education system, rather than competing with neighboring schools.

Quotes

• At 4:45 - "I'm, at the moment, the best-paid Year 11 toilet attendant in the country." - John Tomsett humorously illustrates his commitment to being a visible, "hands-on" leader by describing the amount of time he spends on duty.
• At 8:58 - "The fundamental role of a leader is to remove barriers to good teaching." - Jonny Uttley explains his core leadership principle, emphasizing that leaders must actively seek out and solve problems that hinder their staff.
• At 21:39 - "We start from the assumption of professional trust. We just start from the assumption that everybody is coming in trying to do a good job." - Jonny Uttley outlines the foundational principle of their trust's leadership approach.
• At 24:14 - "He said, 'There's no evidence that says that's... that will have any impact whatsoever... a hell of a lot of work for absolutely nothing.'" - John Tomsett recalls being advised against a major, disruptive change to the school day because it lacked an evidence base.
• At 36:37 - "If you take pleasure in your school doing better than the school over the road, you're taking pleasure in young people doing worse than your young people, which is ethically corrupt as an educator." - John Tomsett makes a powerful statement about the need for system-level thinking and collaboration over competition.

Takeaways

• Effective leadership is about removing systemic obstacles for your staff, not imposing top-down directives.
• Build a culture on a foundation of professional trust, granting autonomy and assuming positive intent rather than managing through fear and compliance.
• Ground all major school-wide initiatives in solid evidence to avoid "initiative-itis" and ensure that changes genuinely improve outcomes.
• Adopt an ethical, system-wide perspective; focus on collaboration and collective improvement rather than on competing with other schools.