Is it about me? No, yes, sort of.

Every year I introduce myself to prospective parents at Open Evening. For a while, I had convinced myself that the school should stand alone, without me talking about me. It’s a corporate entity. Its mission and purpose are its own, and one day I will no longer work there.

However, schools, especially standalone ones, come from people. The adults, the children, and the wider community. One of the things that helps parents and children understand them is to have some sense of the person who makes so many small decisions, so often, that over time, they add up.

I have had the privilege of my role at the school now for eight years. The experience of it has increasingly come to reflect the hundreds of thousands of decisions I have made, as it will be affected by the ones I make over each seven-year journey children take through the school.

So, on the night, I introduce myself as Mr Medway, Headteacher of Kingsmead School. I also introduce the 11-year-old version of myself, because his experience of secondary school continues to shape the decisions I make today. In many ways, that boy is still in the room. He just happens to be wearing a suit now.

There are two key experiences I had at school, or more precisely, he had, that now form the cornerstones of what I care about most as a leader. 

The first was being in the right room, at the right time, with the right peers, which meant I pretty much fell into going to a top university. The second was the deep yearning to be seen, to be understood, and to matter to people enough that they might be curious about me and show me how to succeed, rather than assuming I already knew.

So, firstly: I was lucky. I had a leafy suburban childhood that meant the chances of being academically successful were higher, just because of the rooms I was in and who I shared them with. My school was in a postcode in the top 20% wealthiest in the country, and I was streamed into the top third. That meant I was in classrooms with the children of graduates at a time when probably only 15% of our parents’ generation had gone to university.

15 was the age my mother had left home without any qualifications, to live in a shelter. My father had two O Levels, but neither of them had any sense of the world my teachers may have assumed was natural for someone who looked and sounded like me. There was no structure at home for school work. My parents wouldn’t have been equipped to help, and I barely remember doing a jot of it. They were remarkable people in their own way, but it was only when they realised, at 17, that I might be trying to go to university, that they started buying a broadsheet newspaper for me, on advice from my teachers. They didn’t tell me why this had suddenly happened until many years later. I barely read it.

I firmly believe that if I hadn’t landed in the kind of school I did, I wouldn’t be writing this now. That same 11-year-old, the boy I once was, still struggles with the idea that I was lucky through no merit of my own, while so many others weren’t, through no fault of theirs.

That’s why the first of my two central beliefs is this: no child should have their future determined by something beyond their control. The attitudes and actions of the adults in the building are what most shape a child’s life chances. Luck is not good enough. We are responsible for helping them become anything they want, even the things they cannot imagine for themselves.

The second experience that shapes my leadership is how I felt throughout school. I was a sensitive, socially awkward kid who wasn’t easy to relate to. I had lost a sibling when I was young. My parents had become very, very eccentrically Christian. Between starting secondary school and taking my GCSEs, my mother suffered accidents that made her permanently disabled and she battled cancer. My father lost his business and never worked again. I became the one who tried to mediate their arguments as they navigated enormous changes. It was not a calm or predictable household. I watched a lot of TV and played a lot of computer games. I increasingly felt responsible for my sibling, over a decade younger. I was very lonely and even now I have to remember that I can rely on others.

None of this needs pity. My family was also warm, kind, and clear in many ways. They modelled the self-reflection and transparency that has served me well. And I know many children go through much, much worse. But this was still my reality. I was a child, and no one at school knew. No one seemed interested enough to find out.

I desperately wanted to do well. But to most of my teachers, I was an inconvenience, someone who was distracted and didn’t seem to listen. What I got told was: “YOU want to study English Literature?!” or in one case “He’s a delinquent.” On my GCSE results day, my Head of Year demanded to see my results sheet. Her only comment was: “David, you really could have done better.” I desperately wanted to have done, but that was only the second time she had spoken to me, so even now I’m startled by her lack of self-awareness.

One of my A Level teachers was so angry with me, after two years of nearly falling asleep in her lessons, that she told me: “I hate you and I hope you get what you deserve.” What she didn’t bother to find out was that every weekend, I worked an average of 20 hours in a local hotel, from 6pm Friday, back up the next day to go again to the early hours of Sunday morning. I did nearly three working days in just over a day, on top of school, then got up to go to church on Sunday and often got home mid-afternoon. Rarely had I written her essays for Monday.

I’m glad I did well enough. But my crime to these people was inattention. They thought the solution was judgement and shame, rather than curiosity and collaboration.

I was in school 15 minutes early every day. I never missed a day. What I really wanted was to be seen, understood, and shown how to succeed. I was there, hoping.

So when I stand in front of parents on Open Evening, I introduce myself as the Headteacher, but also as that 11-year-old boy, wondering what was going to happen.

Not because I want sympathy, or because he’s extraordinary. But because that boy is still in the room. And because I know how it feels to be full of potential, full of hope, and still invisible to the people who could have helped the most.

The two experiences that shape my leadership are simple. The first: I was lucky. I ended up in the right rooms, with the right people, and that changed my future. The second: I wanted to be seen and guided, and I wasn’t. Not because I wasn’t worth it, but because no one asked, and I didn’t feel I was allowed to expect.

These are the two strands I return to in every decision I make as a Headteacher: no child’s future should be decided by their luck, and no child should go unseen by the adults in the building.

Neither of these things are fully achievable. I set myself an impossible task and sometimes I hate that teaching means failing slightly every day.

But still it is not enough to run a school that gets good results, or sets high standards, or has excellent facilities, even if they all matter. What matters even more is that we try to build a school where children are known, and free to present themselves with pride. Where we are curious about who they are and generous in how we help them grow. Where we ask questions before we pass judgment. Where success isn’t assumed or presumed, it’s shown, shared, and built together.

I turn up every day before almost everyone else, with the same open heart I had at eleven, hoping still. Hoping that this will be true for every child that comes through the gate. I want to honour that commitment to them.

I find saying this a touch scary; I know it cannot always feel true for every child in my school. Nonetheless it is what I want at anywhere I lead and will expect others around me to believe too. It is what influences those tiny decisions, that add up.

Talking and writing about me is not about me. It’s about values and priorities and being honest about where they come from. Whether they are anchored in real people, real lives, and real experiences, or just a paper exercise of mission statements and strategy documents. The boy I still am helps me stay honest. He reminds me why this work matters, and who it is for. So when I speak to parents, I introduce him not for sympathy, but for accountability - to him, to their children, and to the idea that a school should be a place where every child is seen, supported, and never left to rely on luck alone.