Harry French

Reflections of a Head Teacher

A space for honest reflections on school leadership – exploring how consistency, care, and clarity create lasting improvement.

Welcome to Reflections of a Headteacher – a space for honest insight, practical leadership thinking, and the occasional hard-earned lesson from life inside the school gates. As a serving headteacher, I write about the realities of leading schools: the balance between rigour and care, the importance of consistency, and the small, daily decisions that shape a culture. These reflections are not theory, but lived experience written to encourage, challenge, and connect those who believe that calm, principled leadership can change lives.

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My next blog:

Developing the middle layer.

In this post, I explore the next phase of leadership development — moving from consistency to capacity. Once whole-school systems and expectations are established, the real challenge is empowering middle leaders to sustain and extend that consistency across their own teams.

  • In school leadership, it’s easy to confuse rigour with relentlessness.
    We assume being rigorous means increasing intensity, driving harder, pushing faster, and adding more layers to what we already do. Yes this can, under some circumstances drive rapid improvement but in my experience, intensity burns people out. Consistency builds them up

    True rigour looks different. It isn’t about doing more, it’s about doing what matters consistently well and repeating.

    Throughout my leadership journey and particularly as a Principal leading schools through challenging circumstances, I’ve underpinned leadership behaviours with a shared language and a replicable, steady, sustainable rhythm of daily activity. This approach generates the rigour but embraces sustainability – leaving intensity for the moments when it is really needed.

    At Cliff Park, we talk a lot about Everyday Excellence. Excellence is achieved through consistency and that repetition gives people confidence.

    As that level of consistency flows through every layer of leadership, we have been able to harness a slow yet relentless momentum for school improvement.

    That’s really the heart of leadership rigour – repeated consistency in every interaction and intensity in bursts when required.

One year ago, we took a bold step at Cliff Park Ormiston Academy: a genuine mobile phone ban. It wasn’t easy, but the impact has been transformative on behaviour, focus, and school culture. Here’s what we’ve learnt, and why we’re proud to be part of a grassroots movement across Ormiston Academies Trust.

One Year On: How Removing Phones Created Space to Transform Our Culture

In October 2024, we made the decision to implement a genuine mobile phone ban at Cliff Park Ormiston Academy. This wasn’t a tokenistic step. It was a strategic decision, rooted in research, behaviour data, and our own experiences. Our goal was clear: to ensure that every student could learn in an environment free from unnecessary distraction.

Why did we take this step? Whilst our self-evaluation had already highlighted positive improvements, mobile phones continued to drive low-level disruption and truancy. Behaviour logs showed that phones almost always contributed to conflict and bullying. The capacity drain on staff was significant and was blunting our pastoral support.

Our experience proved that partial restrictions or “away in bags” policies weren’t enough. To really shift culture, the policy had to be clear, consistent, and enforceable. That meant a complete ban on student use of mobile phones during the school day.

Since implementing the ban, our behaviour data tells a powerful story:

**Behaviour incidents** linked to mobile phones have reduced to almost zero. A distraction we once spent significant time managing has been removed altogether.

**Lesson conduct has improved** Teachers report smoother starts, fewer interruptions, and more sustained concentration from students.

**Social interactions are healthier** Break and lunch times are now filled with genuine conversation, play, and connection rather than screen-time withdrawal.

**Consistency is stronger** Staff no longer have to negotiate grey areas students and families understand the expectation clearly.
Student surveys show that young people notice the difference too. Many describe the ban as “fairer” because it applies to everyone equally, while others recognise how much more focused they feel in lessons.

As we look ahead we are committed to ensuring that every strategic decision we take is about removing barriers to learning and belonging. The mobile phone ban has been one of the most significant culture-shaping moves we have made as an academy.

Lately, I’ve been reflecting on behaviour in my school and where we go next. Over the past three years, we’ve built systems. Sanctions. Scripts. Rewards. We’ve worked hard to embed consistency and rightly so. These things matter. But I’ve come to believe that something matters even more: belonging.

As my good friend Victor Allen says, “Behaviour is not something to be managed, but something to be understood.” That line has stayed with me. Because when we take time to understand, we begin to connect and from connection, trust grows.

So how do we take this forward? Belonging isn’t something you capture in a poster or policy document. It’s a feeling. The kind a child carries in their stomach as they walk through the gates. The kind that says: you are safe here. You are known here. You matter here.

You can have the most comprehensive behaviour policy in the world and still have students who feel school isn’t for them. Structure without connection. Compliance without commitment. Silence without safety and in the process, we risk losing the very students who need us most.

In 2025/26, Cliff Park Ormiston Academy will be intentionally cultivating a culture of belonging – not through slogans or one-off projects, but through the everyday rhythms of school life. It will live in how people are greeted, how voices are heard, and how differences are recognised and respected. It will be seen in the consistent, quiet actions: staff who notice, students who support each other, leaders who hear what is unsaid.

That’s the shift we’re making. Not from behaviour to belonging but from managing to understanding, from reacting to relating. It will be slower. Harder. It’s the work that the foundation for the next stage of our journey will be built. Because when students feel they belong, they don’t just behave better they believe more deeply in themselves, in others, and in what’s possible.

That sense of belonging can’t stop at the school gates. It has to extend to our staff, our parents, and into the wider community. It’s ambitious, but if successful, it won’t just transform how students feel about school it will shape how staff, families, and the wider community connect with Cliff Park into the future.

I recently asked staff to pause and reflect on their why: Why teaching? Why Cliff Park?

The answers were powerful. Caring for young people, making a difference, inspiring others, creating those unforgettable ‘lightbulb’ moments rang out.
When I asked the same of students, their reply stopped me in my tracks:
“When a teacher notices me, it feels like they’re saying: ‘I value you. You belong here.’”

That’s the power of noticing. It’s relational. It builds connection. It doesn’t need a reward shop or a new policy but it does need a culture where adults are consistently tuned in to their students. I remember as a much younger trainee teacher “Don’t smile until Easter.” The idea being that to secure behaviour, warmth, empathy, and emotion should be held back. But students spot when we’re not authentic. When our words and actions don’t match, trust is lost and connection breaks down.

Authenticity matters more than artificial distance. Trust grows when students see the real person in front of them.

As Paul Dix reminds us in ‘When Adults Change Everything Changes’: “A small ripple of kindness and botheredness goes a long way.” At Cliff Park, we’re working to make noticing intentional, by:

– Promoting authenticity
– Using positive narration to highlight effort
– Making time to celebrate the small wins
– Moving away from transactional rewards and towards genuine recognition

Gradually our practice is shifting. More staff are taking a moment to notice the quiet student who tries. Words of encouragement echo through classrooms, helping students push on instead of giving up.

These small, authentic acts of recognition are shaping a culture where students feel valued and belong.  We are learning that belonging isn’t built in grand gestures but it’s created in the everyday interactions. It’s in those tiny moments that all of our why’s truly exist.