An interview with Liam Collins, former headteacher of Ark Alexandra Academy, for Hastings Independent.

I decided to contact Liam Collins shortly after I left Ark Alexandra Academy. He was my headteacher for the first two years I worked there. He was gentle and approachable, with a relaxed smile, and would make an effort to put junior teachers, like myself, at ease with a joke or a saying applicable to the experience we had just endured. I engaged with him most during inset days, where, speaking to the whole staff, he would encourage us to stick with the strategy, or notify us of changes, and the reasons for them. His talks always contained an inspirational saying, like ‘work hard and be nice to people’, or ‘excellence is not an act, but a habit’. When he announced he would be leaving, staff were surprised, but there was also an acceptance that the school was underperforming. Having steadily improved over the 2021-22 academic year, narrowly missing out on a ‘Good’ Ofsted rating, the following year there was a sense the school had slid backwards.

Collins is an experienced school leader, and has held various senior positions in both local authority (LA) maintained schools and academies. He has been a Vice Principal at a school in Bexley in Greater London, a Deputy Head at Roding Valley High School in Essex, and a Head at two schools in East Sussex; Uplands Community College and Ark Alexandra Academy. In 2023, he left Ark Alexandra Academy to work in a role offering guidance to senior leadership teams across a number of schools within the Beckmead Trust, who serve students exclusively with special educational needs.

His experience makes him well-placed to weigh in on the debate around who should run our schools, academies or LAs. The debate is between, on the one hand, a belief in large-scale market processes to drive improvement, and on the other, council-run schools that protect local interests and are more accountable to the community they serve.

However, Liam Collins believes that, for a leader trying to improve a school, this debate is peripheral. Speaking to me on the phone as he drove home from work, he was adamant: “The first thing to say is the structure of the school makes no difference. Ultimately it is the people. It doesn’t matter if you work for an LA school or an academy trust. Everything comes down to the autonomy you are given, and the way the trust or the local authority operates”. 

Though I had set out to discuss the differences, positive and negative, between academies and LA schools, Collins emphasised that it is the values, practices and professionalism of the people in charge that are important, and these can differ greatly between individual LA maintained schools, as well as academies. So we set aside this question and spoke instead about leadership styles, and his particular approach to driving positive change.

Features of successful schools

Interestingly, when talking about his identity as a leader, Collins did not stress the type of school he wants to produce; art-focussed or science-focussed; academic or vocational; learning through action or by listening to the teacher in silence. He was more interested in talking about how schools drive change; the means, not the ends; the how, not the what. The reason the how is of more interest to Collins than the what, is because there seems to be consensus between heads around the type of school they wish to produce. The important question then becomes, how should they go about getting schools there?

So, what is the agreed ‘gold standard’? Broadly, heads believe that institutions need a ‘culture’; the customs and norms which make behaviour in a school consistent and predictable. This focus is encouraged by the government’s lead Behaviour Advisor, Tom Bennett, who urges schools to think of their culture as ‘how we do things around here’. Though the specifics may differ, what is understood as ‘positive culture’ is similar everywhere. Leaders want calm, respectful classrooms, where students try, and recognise the teacher’s authority. “Once you’ve got the culture in the place you want it to be”, Collins says, “then you can start to drive through improvements”. 

Heads are also united in their pursuit of good exam results. When I asked whether education has become too results-driven, Collins replied, “I don’t disagree with people who talk about holistic education. However, it is no good to anybody if we’ve managed to shape a student into a reasonable human being, but they haven’t got the opportunity at the next step because we haven’t worked hard enough with them to get good results. Results are their passport to further opportunity”. It is the ‘how’ of getting schools to a point where there is a positive school culture, and the results are good, where he differentiates himself. “The thing that we all know,” he says, “is that there are 1000 different ways to achieve the same goal”.

Rapid and inclusive change

A key marker of difference between school leaders is how they respond to the expectation of schools to improve rapidly. There is pressure to achieve good results and avoid a less-than-good Ofsted rating. “It is a P45 moment if your results are not where they should be,” Collins says. While caring about the destination of a school with a positive culture and good outcomes, he also cares about the integrity of the process. “Being able to connect with people is a really important part of a role. Have I got the staff on board? Have I got the students on board? And once you find that tipping point then generally the parents are on board”. 

Collins was most motivated by working with the ‘characters’; those students, and their parents, who initially struggle to adhere to the demands of the culture. “What’s the saying? You’re judged by how you work with the most vulnerable people, and that was always my moral purpose so to speak”. This approach comes with challenges. Valuing the participation of each individual means bespoke treatment of each individual’s needs. “I was always interested in the nuance, and the grey”, he says, “but of course that does make you an inconsistent decision-maker”. An alternative, as he characterises it, is a ‘my way or the highway’ approach, where leaders want all students to walk from A to B, and anyone who falls outside of that is rejected. Contrary to his intuition though, this approach can produce the rapid, transformational change headteachers are increasingly expected to deliver.  “Some of these leaders have turned round schools in areas of high deprivation,” he says. 

Change takes time

Ultimately, Collins is proud of the breakthroughs with students and parents who may otherwise be left behind. He remembers how one of his most vocal critics, a student’s grandmother, became an outspoken supporter after he visited her at home to explain his vision. “Go talk to Mr Collins” she’d say to online critics, “he’ll sort it out”.

It raises the question of whether we should expect, or want, rapid change. Education places unique pressures on headteachers. Its ‘marketisation’ during the late 80s means education is results-driven and competitive, yet also a public service. Headteachers are expected to deliver results expressed in data or lose pupils and funding to competing schools. Yet they are also expected to serve the complex patchwork of individuals in their communities. Difficult though this may be, Collins believes leaders should strive for both. On how long it takes to get there, he says, “I strongly believe that you need to be prepared for things to take time”.