Being a New Head of Year: The First Year

A new head of year answers to a lot of people: students, tutors, subject teachers, TAs, parents and senior leaders. It's easy to spend the first term reacting to all of them, and to become the place every misbehaving child gets sent.

This helps you lead instead. You'll practise explaining your vision for the year group in the time a lift takes to reach its floor. You'll use transactional analysis to keep conversations adult to adult, so tutors and students sort out more for themselves. And you'll pick up habits that change how families see you, like sending home good news and not only the bad.

There's advice on managing change, and on handling criticism, which in this job is usually about a decision you made rather than about you.