Blog #Gove

One thing I’ve learnt during my time as a headteacher is that compromise is king. Back in the day as a new headteacher I naively always saw compromise as a weakness – that staff would see me as being a lame and indecisive leader if I didn’t insist on doing things my way.

When you visit the DfE offices in London you are greeted by a wall of portraits of every Secretary of State for Education since 1945. There are a lot of framed pictures. Since the Second World War there have been 34 different incumbents, equivalent to an average tenure for each new Education Secretary of just under 2 years.