����Vlog

Julie McCulloch is CEO at the Education Policy Institute (EPI). She was previously director of policy, strategy and personal development at the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL), following a career in education publishing. She writes:

I feel very conscious of not having been a teacher. Some in the profession are understandably wary of people who haven’t done the job who are pontificating about it. I really get that. But I do think, if approached in the right way, it can sometimes be a benefit. I have no experiential base of opinions and bias to fall back on; I have no “dog in the race”. For me, it’s very simple: what does the evidence say? What do people in schools tell me? And how do I bring those two things together?

I had been in education publishing for many years before I was seconded at Pearson into a new policy unit. I saw clearly there how the sector has different levels of engagement with policy, and how anything from the centre dilutes and morphs as it moves through those layers. You have to be so careful at a think tank because it is so easy to get drawn into a world obsessed with its own presumed cleverness and to become divorced from the chalk face. Ideas are important, but the challenge is always connecting ideas back to what it means to a teacher standing in from of 32 kids, or a headteacher overwhelmed by AI-generated complaints.

I was acutely aware in my policy role at ASCL that it was a unique privilege to have access to - and influence on - the people pulling the levers and making the decisions in education. The vast majority of teachers and leaders have no seat at the table, so those of us who take those seats need to recognise and fully understand the responsibility we have to represent them properly and faithfully.

Covid was a huge test of that responsibility. My team and I would be speaking to Department for Education officials several times a day, and having regular meetings with scientists, and what we said in those meetings really mattered as it led directly into policy. We all felt the weight of that; we knew how important it was for all those people in schools to be heard. ASCL had this email address where members could send their worries, challenges and questions, and thousands got in touch. We read them all. We got those messages to those who needed to hear them. I’m proud of what we did. I think we made a difference.

��

There was a moment post-Covid when everything needed to slow down, and conscious decisions had to be made to reset expectations about what those in schools could do, what we, as a union, could do or say. Because we were not in that crisis any more. But everyone in the sector had been running on adrenaline for so long, that adjustment was hard.

I spent a long time being second in command, which I think I’m good at. But I’m enjoying now being in a position where I get to make the decisions (alongside my team!). It’s come at the right time. I’m incredibly lucky that what is basically my dream job came up at the point when I felt I had enough experience to believe I could do it. That belief in your own leadership is critical.

You find so many women behind the scenes in big organisations in this sector, quietly doing amazing work. And I think they often tell themselves that is the role they want, that this where they feel comfortable. But how far has that choice been made for them by the system and the society we work within?

Female leaders are held up as models to aspire to for other women in a way men are not. That’s not fair, but it is inevitable in a society in which we have far more men than women leading organisations. I don’t feel a responsibility to be a “female” leader, though; I feel responsibility for modelling the sort of leadership I think is effective and is fair and right.

I’m not a “boat rocker”, but I’m not a people pleaser either. I am in a phase of my life where I am becoming more comfortable with that. I’m not a loud leader, but I also realise that not being loud doesn’t mean not being interesting or challenging. I want to be - and my organisation to be - both those things.

��

As a leader, I think you do need a sense of what it is that you want to achieve, but with an appropriate level of humility that means you are able to change your mind. It’s that balance between vision and humility to recognise and learn from others that has always been important to me.

I wouldn’t want to be a leader of an organisation where people will only do something for me if I shout at them or if I keep nagging them about it. I want to be running an organisation where people believe as strongly as I do in the mission and where they’re empowered to do what they think they need to do, within certain structures. And if it doesn’t work, the culture should be that we work out together how we do it better next time.

I’m very mindful of talking about my kids. Sometimes women talking about their kids and men talking about their kids comes across differently. If women do it, it can feed into existing and damaging perceptions: “There she is talking about her kids again. Can’t she focus on the job?” It shouldn’t be like that, but it is like that.

I am at a stage of my life where I am looking at the next generation of leaders coming up and wanting to do what I can to support great people to succeed. I want to help create the conditions where we get a diversity of people seeking roles and where the system is one in which they can thrive. We’re not there yet. I hope we soon will be.

��