Tony Fitzpatrick, previously an 'inspirational' Stevenage headteacher, is now Director of Education for Hertfordshire. We asked him about his journey so far.
What's your background and what led to you becoming the Director of Education?
I haven't always been in the teaching profession. I actually started off in sales and, to cut a very long story short, I ended up with my own company in building construction. There are probably two reasons that that I didn't continue with that with that career:
First is that it wasn't necessarily fulfilling me, and the other reason was that I had a bad back and couldn't imagine me in the building trade for another 40 years until I was 65!
I decided that the thing that I was good at was working with children, and my subject was design and technology - I knew I liked making things, so I thought, well, why don't I teach other people to make things?
So, I started as a teacher over 30 years ago and then I progressed to a head of department and then to being an assistant head, then deputy head and then finally headteacher.
I think that the reason that I've stayed in teaching and the reason that I enjoy teaching is that I just like seeing children grow, both in terms of their ability and also their confidence.
I've always been passionate about education and the transformative power of it, how it enables children to grow. I think the thing that I'm very keen on is that equality of opportunity and enabling children to have that love of learning.
I like to listen. I've always liked to listen to children's stories and lives, but also listen to staff and governors when I was at school in the local community, and I always think that you can learn a lot by listening. And then you can take that learning and implement it into changing things in schools for the good of the children that go to the school.
I had been a head teacher for around about 13 years. I felt that it was time to either retire or have a change, and I still wanted to work full time.
The role of Director of Education came up and I thought, well, that seems like an interesting role for me to take on. And I applied for the role and was successful.
I think the thing that I miss is being in a school, but I have in a way the best of both worlds because I'm still very close to schools, but I've got a good new challenge.
Today, for example, I've been in three different schools within Hertfordshire, so I still get into school, see the great work that they're doing.
It's an interesting new role for me as I as I just finished my first term and am now into my second term.
So how is your new role different to headship?
So I would say that the way I see this particular role is to try and provide that strategic leadership across the authority. I do hold the view, and I think it's really important, that Hertfordshire is a family of schools. That’s a phrase that I heard a lot as a headteacher, but I really do believe in the value of schools working collectively together, and that's not just head teachers, we're talking about teachers, finance staff, everybody really. For example, I know that there's a great network of business managers supporting each other.
As Director of Education I oversee standards across all schools, whether they're academies, small schools, large schools, maintained schools. I have worked with lots of schools over a period of time that either are standalone academies or within a multi-Academy trust. Obviously, I play a more direct role, if you like, in terms of the accountability and the outcomes for maintained schools. Academy schools are more independent, but I'd like to think that I work just as closely with those.
It's interesting that the new government have said that they're agnostic in terms of their position on maintained schools and academies, and I would say in a very similar way that's my position and the position of Hertfordshire in terms of we want to work with all schools. It's really important that I have that positive relationship with all schools within the local authority.
The system in Hertfordshire is quite unique and not many areas have a kind of HFL. The local authority, HFL and school systems and trusts all work together as a sort of a triangle… and that's what the family of schools is. I think that's what brings the strength to the system. It doesn't matter what designation you are, you're part of that family and any school that's ever in trouble, we will always help in the same way. Likewise, we celebrate the success of everybody.
What do you see as the big challenges facing schools, settings and trusts and what are your priorities in response to those?
If you ask most headteachers and business managers, I would say that number one would be funding pressures, in terms of the funding that schools are receiving, but then also the rising operational costs within a school.
And then we move on to recruitment and retention, and coupled with that are staff well-being and the workloads of staff in schools and we’re very mindful of that.
You've also got pupil well-being and mental health, and we've seen a great rise in that area and there are lots of schools doing lots of creative things around that. I think some of that does link to the post COVID recovery. I think that there are some challenges that we haven't yet fully understood or managed to support from COVID. You've only got to look at the attendance of children at school, which is still not back to where it was pre-COVID.So, you know, I would say that they're the big things for me nationally.
And then I think that within a local context, you can add in the demographic shift. We know that there's a falling birth rate. We know that that means there is or there's likely to be falling roles in the local authority, and we've started looking at how we can support schools with that.
There'll be a slight variance across the county depending on whether there's new housing growth in certain areas and other areas where there's very stable housing and no new growth, or maybe a changing demographic in the population, then that's going to cause some added pressures and some difficulties for some schools.
I think access to services is another thing that can be nuanced within localities. We've got a good range of services in Hertfordshire, but it might be that it's not exactly the same across the whole of the authority.
There are lots of things that we need to think about and consider. I see the role of the local authority is how can we support best with that? How can we ensure that our schools are thriving?
I think one of the strengths in Hertfordshire, although it's something that we can still build on even more, is school to school collaboration.
Going back to that family that we were talking about with HFL, with the local authority and schools, it's about building that strength and helping schools to collaborate, putting schools in touch with each other.
When I was a head, our advisor from HFL, would actually say, well, why don't you go and talk to this school because, you know, they seem to be slightly ahead in a particular area. We've got some really good links with some other schools about attendance, for example.
I do think that’s important within the local context and I suppose my role now is to be the enabler, as the Director of Education, to see how we can join things up even more. I do think that collaboration is the key in many things.
Obviously, that doesn't necessarily solve, you know, funding pressures and so on, but actually in terms of retention and finding opportunities, if you've got a good member of staff in one school and they're looking for an experience, you know, can you lend them to another school, for example? I do feel that the more you can join things up, the more productive it is for everybody.
And we all share a responsibility, you know, at the end of the day, we're all here for the same reason that this is about enabling children across Hertfordshire, no matter what phase they are to realise their potential, so we have to work together.
We are in quite an exciting time potentially with a lot of change on the horizon. How do you see things developing during the course of the Parliament?
I think it will be interesting and I don't think we've got a complete picture on that at the moment, so I think it is a case of remaining as agile as possible.
There are some great opportunities and some interesting things coming down the line with AI initiatives and I'd like to think that those will support schools in terms of particularly teachers with their planning.
I'm not going to repeat what the government say, but I have had a look at some of the things that that are coming out in that space, and I think that they will make a difference to teachers and to schools.
There's obviously a lot around sustainability and climate that we need to be looking at and I think schools are really well placed for that with the children in schools; they're really enthusiastic.
We know that inclusion is going to be one of the key things that is coming through, and I do think that it's important, that all of our schools are inclusive, which they are.
What I want to see is that there's the right support from the government in terms of funding to enable all of that.
It would be interesting to see how the DfE and Ofsted define inclusion because you know, when you actually ask somebody what they mean by inclusion, you'll always get a slightly different answer. So, I agree with the direction that the government are going in, in terms of inclusion being really important and recognising that where schools are fully inclusive, that might mean something different in terms of the way that schools are measured. So I'm looking forward to seeing that.
I also think we need to define that in Hertfordshire, which is why we're looking at having an inclusion strategy, but we're actually going to roll our send and inclusion into one strategy, which we'll spend this year looking at and then begin to roll it out later on in the year. And it's important to get stakeholder engagement into that.