Product reviews for Making The Leap

I stumbled across Jill's book, as I do so many things these days, on Twitter. I've been a deputy for five years now and for the last couple have been attending - with no great success - headship interviews. My little library of headmaster autobiographies, including those of John Rae, Ian Beer, Nick Bomford, and Jonty Driver, has little to say on the subject of interview preparation - still less on the experience of failure. These heads went from one august post to another without ever appearing to break their stride. So it was that I devoured Jill's book greedily: the first I had seen with practical advice on making the transition from deputy to head. In focusing her research, and her considerable first-hand experience in this area, Jill has given to the wider educational community an extremely valuable resource. You won't find here trite advice that is the stock-in-trade of most how-to-prepare-for-interview books. Jill addresses the reader as a fellow professional, quickly getting down to the more detailed, nuanced material that aspirant heads must grapple with in order to impress at interview.

There are chapters here on the nature of headship itself, including extensive material on those crucial first few weeks and months. Passages in which Jill describes her research are interspersed with ones in which she discusses her own experiences as a head. For me, these personal recollections brought the book to life; they left me with the reassuring sense that I was in the company of someone who'd seen it all before, first hand. Jill encourages her readers to think carefully, before they make the leap, about why it is they want a head teacher role. She cautions against applying for posts on a whim:

-˜Not getting a job is not the worst scenario. Somehow managing to secure a job which is not the right job for you is definitely worse-¦'

When or if you do decide to start applying, Jill's book provides detailed advice on how to prepare and perform well at interview. This is material which I will certainly be checking over again the next time I find myself summoned to interview. She is excellent too on the topic of failure, reassuring those who, like me, have tried and failed. She advises disappointed applicants to go back to their mentors:

-˜If they believe in your ability to step up to headship, take reassurance from that. They know you better than a selection panel who met you over one or two days.'

More than this, Jill goes on to suggest that the experience of having failed might make for a better head in the end: being willing to risk failure, and to cope with the fallout when it occurs, are important attributes of those who lead. As she explains:

-˜...heads, in particular, should bear the scars of earlier disappointment to strengthen their sense of empathy with those who do not succeed in the appointment process.'

I was also particularly struck by the concluding chapters in which Jill grapples with the problems which heads face once they are in the role. She has particularly sensible things to say, for example, about the important first few months in post. In getting to know a new school she suggests adopting an -˜appreciative enquiry' approach: one in which people's strengths and things that are going well are actively sought with a view to capitalising upon them. Jill's probity leaps out of every page: -˜Always treat staff with respect and humanity,' she counsels in one passage on dealing with underperformance.

In the closing chapter, having given so much good advice on the ins-and-outs of headship, Jill encourages her readers to keep it all in context. Being a head can be an all-consuming job - Jill is clear that she never worked harder than in her role as head teacher - however, she reminds us that:

-˜If all our self-worth derives from our professional identity this can be quite dangerous. People lose their jobs. This is a job, not your entire life, and not the sum total of who you are.'

Amen to that.



Whether, like me, you aspire to headship, or you are already an incumbent, Jill's book is packed with the sort of wisdom that only a lifetime spent in schools can bestow. It is a book I enjoyed reading immensely, and is one I will return to again regularly in the future.