Coping with 100% teaching
All day, every day
In the early 2000s, I was the head of science at a challenging secondary school in West London. Unfortunately, while I was in this post, the daughter of a senior teacher had a serious accident while riding her bicycle and was in hospital for a long time. The senior teacher took several months of leave and I took on his classes in addition to my own. As a result, I taught every single period of every day during this time.
This made it a challenge to do my job as head of science. In addition, we worked under a capricious system regulated by Ofsted, the schools inspectorate. It was not possible for any school or department to meet all the widely understood requirements of Ofsted and so, when an inspection was announced, people would busy themselves to put on a show, staying up late every night to prepare. It felt like we were moving a single-sized blanket around a king-sized bed, hoping the inspectors would not notice. The fact I could never do all the things demanded of me, not just by Ofsted but by the onerous accretion of school policies and initiatives, led to a certain amount of anxiety. I was pretty stressed at times.
I don’t recall being asked to cover all my colleague’s teaching. Even then, that would have been considered extreme. However, nobody stopped me and I felt it was an expectation of me, given my role. We were already short of teachers, with casual teachers required on most days, and so introducing another one into the mix hardly felt like a good idea. This was a time when I had to send a casual teacher home because he smelt of alcohol which, if you’ve ever done it, you will know is a challenging conversation to have.
I was busy. Yet this is a time of my life that I remember fondly. I was out most weekends, and many weeknights, at clubs and cinemas and comedy nights. Camden, Soho and Farringdon were my playgrounds. How did I find the time? Partly, by not doing everything I was theoretically supposed to do and partly through the magic of being in my mid-twenties.
Despite the stress I experienced, I never interpreted any of it as a mental health risk. I don’t think people generally did back then. We did not have the framework. We would complain and gossip and attend union meetings, but it never occurred to us that what we were experiencing was a health issue. In my mind, mental health problems were grave conditions such as severe depression or psychosis that most people never experienced.
In 2025, we are far more conscious of mental health issues. Today, I would say that the conditions I worked under in the early 2000s were a psychosocial health risk. As a school leader, I would simply not allow someone to do what I did and teach every single period, five days a week, even if they volunteered to do so. As a school leader, ensuring the psychosocial safety of staff is something I consider a key duty. It is not the only reason why I prioritise bureaucratic efficiency, but it is one of them.
We have, therefore, made significant progress in 20 years, but I wonder whether we have also lost something along the way. Back then, although placed under stress, I did not label what I was experiencing and I did not ruminate on my situation. This was protective because rumination is not good for our mental health. If I were under the same pressure today, I would no doubt have a name for it. This might make me more proactive and assertive with my managers but it would also probably have caused me to think about my mental health more. Would that be a good thing? I’m not sure.