School outcomes are strange currency. They are handed to leaders as though a single figure could summarise the daily judgement calls, the relationships repaired and the children who arrived unable to hold a pencil and left able to write a paragraph. When results are strong I am praised for vision. When they dip I am deemed to be filed under “coasting” or “in decline” by people who never sat in the classroom. The credit and the blame both attach to one person when in truth they belong to a cohort a set of circumstances and a hundred small decisions made by many hands. Some of those hands are simply not good enough and have been left, unchallenged before you arrive.

I know that cohorts genuinely differ. Anyone who has stayed in a school for more than a few years knows this in their bones. Yet the system prefers a trend line to a truth this messy, so it draws one anyway and asks leaders to answer for it. I understand why some colleagues choose to move on before a difficult cohort reaches the years that get measured. It is a rational response to an irrational pressure and I do not think less of anyone for making that choice though it does leave something unresolved for the children and staff who stay behind. I have followed people into positions both as a class teacher and headteacher where this was the case.

The harder truth is that the leaders who care most tend to absorb the most pressure because they will not distance themselves from a cohort even when it would be easier to. That is not weakness. It is integrity meeting a system that rarely rewards it in the moment. I do care and will never stop, and this is where I, and others, pay the price.

There are days I question whether this is still the world I want to be in. I do not think that makes me any less committed to the children in front of me now. It makes me honest about what the job actually costs and honesty is something I have always tried to hold onto whatever else the role demands of me.

Education has changed. For leaders, it is unsustainable. What happens next is anyone’s guess but I for one and seriously considering the options.