It’s another day.

I am up in the endless sky. Sat on a plane high amongst the clouds staring down at the sun kissed ocean far below. I can look back on my near miss with a crystal clarity that matches the glistening sea.

We drift back over the waves and over time once again to a drizzly day in February. Back at my desk working through emails or data or something when I received a call from a headhunter.

A talent scout who had found my profile on Linkedin and had done some background research on me and based on what he had garnered contacted me to ask if I might be interested in a new post.

Part flattered, it’s always nice to be sort out, and part intrigued I asked for a few details. He said he was looking to recruit an Executive Head for a large accademy chain.

“It would be working for well known multi-accademy trust”, he said conspiratorially, “do you have any moral objections?” My initial reading was that he meant this as regards to working for an Accademy chain, any Accademy chain.

“No” I replied I work for a trust now why would it worry me?”

I now realise, with hindsight, that he meant working for this one particular trust.

What does it say when the recruiter hints that the client he is working for is questionable and that most people won’t go near them?

Let’s face it recruitment agents are not the most altruistic of folk, they would sell you the rotting corpse of a fox and tell you it was the thoroughbred greyhound without flinching. They would look you in the eyes shake your hand and smile all the while knowing they have just charged you you for rags and bones! But we all like to think we are special, enjoy being flattered and can be blindsided.

“I’ll book you in for a phone conversation with the CEO, if he likes you then it will proceed to interview, can you send me your CV?”

I did as asked and in due course I had a 45 minute conversation on the phone with the CEO. He was slick, personable, insightful and frankly impressive.

“Right come over to our HQ I want you to meet my Head of Primary.”

I trooped through London on the following Friday. A long trek by train and tram across town to a particularly grey soulless town centre on another particularly grey day. All 60’s concrete, charity shops and pawn brokers, frankly the riots in 2011 brought some colour and interest to the area. Says something when civil unrest marks the cultural high point of a town.

HQ was a similar set up to any LA but more businesses like, more corporate, think private school not state, business not borough council. The resources they had in the central team were very good and a real contrast to the frankly depressing area it was based in.

I sat with the Head of Primary. We clicked. She had one of those CVs that would leave most people intimidated not only had she been there and done that but I think she actually designed the t-shirt. We talked for a little over an hour and I came away thinking this was someone I could work with and respect.

So far looking good.

Her final question was, “what are you doing tomorrow?”

“What do you want me to do?”

Right answer.

Turned out the trust were holding their annual recruitment fair in central London, all their schools would be exhibiting and it would be a chance to meet the CEO in person and the senior staff.

Suited and booted I headed up to town the next day. Interested and excited.

Then I saw the venue and my first doubts crept in.

The Conaught Rooms. It is owned by the Free Masons and is located behind their main lodge just off Covent Gardens. The venue is magnificent, a real palace of power and wealth. Inside the building is beautiful, high ceilings, the Empire at its height. I have been there before, a couple of times, and each time it has proved to be a very unlucky omen.

As soon as I saw where I was I was filled with a sense of foreboding.

This was not some sort of vague superstition but a genuine association with negative events in my life. A real visceral reaction to times when I experienced the sharp end of politics and political agendas. Events that have had a high personal and professional cost!

But I thought to myself maybe this time it would be different.

The event itself was as you would expect a real celebration, an advert for the work of the trust and its schools. More impressively I got real face time with the senior leaders, met the billionaire philanthropist who backs the trust and I had time with the CEO.

Now I thought he was charismatic when I spoke to him on the phone. In person he was hypnotic.

The guy is an education rock star. He was tipped for the top job at OFSTED (I suppose he still might be), this guy rubs shoulders with the great and the good and it shone out. He has an almost magnetic personality, a seriously impressive guy. I admit to being a little star struck. Still I held it together and acquitted myself well, he seemed to like me and I was invited to interview. He felt I would fit in well with the team.

Two days before the interview I got a call. “Go to East London we want you to spend the morning in one of schools.” Off I trotted.

Now this was a school in a deprived part of inner London most of the houses had bars on their windows. The streets were covered in rubbish but despite this the school made a positive initial impression. Good branding outside, a tidy reception area and a warm welcome clearly the trust had brought in some clear expectations…

Then the harassed looking senior exec-head greeted me and we took me on the obligatory tour.

It soon became apparent all was not well, the school was in a real state: the classrooms were a mess; displays poor; behaviour not great; their SATs results had nose dived; there had been huge turbulence in staff; many of current the staff were unqualified (training on the job) or in their NQT Year; their were few experienced or senior teachers; they had a newly appointed head of school (deputy+) and no substantive head. The infant department was in a better state than the juniors but not by much.

“We want you to do an observation and give feedback,” she said.

I did. It was not great. The kids were lovely but very challenging. The real kicker however was that they were in charge and the teacher was intimidated by them. His lesson was all over the place, the kids got bored and it started to slide. His timing and pace were poor, he talked for too long, gabbled on and even confused me! To be honest it was really not clear what he was trying to achieve.

A cursory glance at the books showed he was not marking regularly, not really differentiating for the kids’ needs and his planning was ropey. All in all, not a recipe for success or an advert for quality first teaching, he was struggling.

I fed back to the chap, I gave him some pointers as to what he could do, should do, must do. What became clear though was that worryingly he did not know he was failing.

But the real bulk of the feedback I gave to the senior exec-head. I asked if the teacher was on a support plan? What were they doing to mentor him and meet his needs? What was in place to date? I ran through my expectations and outlined what I would put in place.

In my school he would have been in the second term of a comprehensive support plan or heading for the door. Here while they were not surprised by my assessment, they were by my assertion that he had the right to expect support… The attitude I met was sink or swim.

The lesson and tour raised real questions for me about the support the trust were giving their schools and about their capacity and priorities. I had questions about the culture of the school, of the group and the way they worked. Ok I figured it might be a capacity issue, my being there might have represented a drive to address an identified need in capacity, to ramp up their resource base… I hoped so, rather than a replacement of existing staff who were moving on a continuation of the status quo…

What I was seeing had not happened overnight it represented a systemic failure over time. A failure that had not been picked up by monitoring systems. What I could not understand was why it had been left for so long and been allowed to slip so far? Where were the early warning systems and the early interventions? Clearly expectations had been established for the school to be rated good by OFSTED three years earlier, you could see evidence of how it had been, how it should still be but wasn’t.

I questioned the senior exec about this and it became clear that normally the head of school was expected to fulfil the role of head and deputy under the watchful gaze of an exec-head who had oversight of a group of schools.

However because it was not working out or because the school was struggling the senior exec-head had been parachuted in full time for a few months to stop the slippage. The task in hand was huge!

It was clear from a few minutes with her that the exec-head was massively stressed and on the edge. I recognised in her the signs I had been suffering four years earlier. It was also clear she was a hugely capable leader but really under pressure and as close to burnout as anyone I had seen. She was working every hour, morning, noon and night, weekdays, weekends, term time and holidays and it was not enough. Her reason for this was you did what was needed to do, you did it for the kids, it was expected. The same thinking was the one applied to NQTs they either succeed or they left, there was no point investing time in them just get a new one…

Not good.

Perhaps because she was so exhausted, perhaps because she wanted to warn me she let slip that a three fifths of the exec-heads were leaving their posts, in some cases the trust, in others returning to being heads. Maybe recruiting me would not represent increasing capacity I speculated it might…

The next day was the interview, back to head office. The normal questions, back and forth.

“Having visited our school how would you grade it?”

I answered honestly, clearly RI and unless something is done soon it will be Inadequate. I explained my judgement and what needed to be done. Mainly around capacity building, staff training and building expectations back up as it seemed like they had been there but we’re not embedded. The judgement I gave them was accurate and they agreed with my assessment.

“You did not feel the teaching you observed was good enough, why didn’t you tell the teacher this?” came one question.

I told them I did not feel it would have been appropriate for me to go in and pull a teacher apart and then leave, all for the sake of an interview, it would not help him and would not help the school.

In point a fact it would have been irresponsible for me to have done so. I explained that I had made the call to give him some key points for improvement and I gave the exec-head the full feedback and points for action.

They agreed this was appropriate but seemed surprised as if they would not have handled it the same way.

Then finally the CEO asked me what my vision was for the role.

“My vision? I think first you better tell me what the role is. I have spoken to you on the phone, met your number two, spoken to you at the recruitment fair and visited one of your schools and at each stage the role has changed. You tell me what the post actually involves and I will tell you how I will do it”.

He laughed and said “fair enough”. His senior inspector stepped in. “You will have sole responsibility for three to four schools, you have to fix them”.

“What support will there be? What resources from the trust can I draw on?”. Blank faces.

“You will be the support…”

“Yes I understand that but what about drawing in specialist teachers from the local secondary schools? Letting staff see good or outstanding practice in other schools? How are you building in long term capacity?”

“Eh?”

“Your present model does not seem to build stability, it seems more like fire fighting. You drop in support for a period, it goes away and then when the school gets in trouble you drop it back in. How do you build capacity, how do you get schools to a point where they can stand on their own. Become self sustaining?”

I think at this point I must have been talking Martian.

The CEO said they wanted people on the ground who would turn schools round and do what needed to be done not pontificate. I laughed. I could turn schools round but did they want he job done quick or did they want it done right?

We wrapped things up and I left.

On the drive home I reflected about all I had seen and heard and realised that it was the wrong job for me.

My realisation and reflection through this process has been that English education is in a state of turmoil and what I needed was not more of the same, not accessing the next rung on the same ladder but something very different.

Anyway I got home and wrote an email thanking them for the opportunity but withdrawing from the process as I did not feel we would be a good fit for each other.

So what have I learnt?

Academies are the Wild West of education.

Many academies set out to improve pupils life chances. Taking on failing schools in deprived areas and turning them around. Succeeding where local authorities had failed for years.

But where serving deprived communities and turning schools around may have been the original aim it has in too many cases been warped, lost or corrupted and the stated moral imperative now only masks a grimmer reality.

The pressure to obtain results has created the conditions in which pressure is pushed down onto staff. A culture of just fix it I don’t care how you do it. Just get it done is becoming accepted and normal. Never mind the personal and professional cost to the staff on the ground.

But quick fixes don’t stick, they are cosmetic. The pressure to ‘get results’ from the Department and OFSTED has led to a culture of short-termism. An at all costs approach that demands rapid results and in effect replicates the same dynamic that, under the LAs, created sink schools. Only now for academy chains the stakes are even higher and the culture even less forgiving.

The new model no more establishes a culture that breeds long term success than its predecessor because it does not allow schools to stand on their own two feet and thrive. Does not build capacity does not develop staff.

The cycle just continues. Maybe even spins faster.

Shrinking budgets have led to some academies hiring NQTs and non-quals cheap, burning them out so they leave before they get too expensive. The same is true of senior leaders. In some MATs primary school budgets are being used to prop up ailing secondary school estates a culture of using them like cash cows. Peter is being robbed to pay Paul.

Perhaps saddest of all the lack of governance at the highest levels, poor regulation and oversight has created the conditions where some MATs which were originally set up for the kids and their communities have actually evolved to benefit the ‘not for profit’ groups that run them. At a time when schools are driving to make huge savings some of the most senior leaders are seen to be getting rich. And sitting on top of this are CEOs who are paying themselves mega bucks because they can and as insurance against the day it goes wrong and they are out of a job.

The end result is that vast amounts of money are being siphoned out of deprived communities to the enrichment of a very small group. The biggest danger going forward is that this could become a conscious and systematic drive by unscrupulous people to get rich at the expense of some of our poorest communities.

I have since spoken to teachers and heads that have worked for the trust I visited, some liked it and some described it as having ‘been through the grinder’. But overwhelmingly they have said that what I suspected exactly reflected their own experiences. It not about long term sustainability, capacity building and CPD, that’s too costly. It’s about quick wins and they don’t care about the individuals… ‘its for the children’ is used as a bludgeon to override all objections.

So like I say a lucky escape I would have been really unhappy it would have been the exact opposite of what I needed, what I was reaching for. And if I had taken it I would not have been available for a certain Skype interview.