Why set up a brand new business in the independent sector at a time like this? Why start trying to help families choose an independent school for their child?

To understand it - you’ve got to get inside the mindset of a Head and have the workload broken down. Understand the journey that they have been on. So let’s begin - because I have had conversation after conversation and it turns out, very few other than those of us who have run a school understand how that journey happens and how we end up looking in the mirror one day thinking “How did I get here and learn all this?”

When you start out in teaching, your classroom is your kingdom. It isn’t just the wall displays and the exercise book storage. We do floorplans, table layouts…we are architects and chartered surveyors in our own little world. We probably look after it better than we do our own houses because let’s face it, we spend more time in it than anywhere else.

Then come the promotions because in a bizarre way, if you get noticed as a good teacher, it’s assumed that you can then step up. Head of Department, Head of Year…more responsibility, a little less teaching, a little more pay. You move into a position where as well as guiding 100+ children each week, you start to counsel parents, resolve conflicts, help colleagues and the skillset develops. It grows at a lightning pace. I’ve known some, but not many, who have actively climbed the ladder. A lot of the time, again, you get noticed for the job you are doing and all of a sudden, you are sitting at Assistant Head level.

Now before the comments start about what I’m about to say next - everyone’s view is different. I think that Assistant Head is probably the hardest job in terms of physical workload and man hours that there is in a school. Not quite at the lesson remission you need because of tight budgets, squished between department heads and pastoral leaders but with the Head and Deputies above you, there is often no way of winning as an AHT. I’m not saying it is more stressful - but I think it is the hardest job to juggle. Godspeed to all those at that level in schools reading this right now.

Deputy is where I think it starts to get a little easier in terms of the freedom of managing your own schedule and have the clout to say “no”. You can also make structural changes and you really start to enjoy altering the fabric of how things are done. Does the pressure increase? Possibly - but it was the job I really enjoyed the most - yes, even when you’d have an angry Head of English show up at your office bellowing at you for kids being out on fixtures instead of working through their poetry anthologies YET AGAIN.

Then you move up to Head - and everything changes. You see - and I’ll brace for the comments - I don’t think you need to have been a teacher to be a Head. I think you need to know schools and have been in and around them - but the job is just so different to anything that has come before.

I’ve been a Head in the state and the independent sector and they are unbelievably different worlds. I would say that roughly 50% of my week was spent on marketing and pupil recruitment. I think that if you move to Headship in the independent sector, it’s sink or swim time. I was delighted to learn I swam, and swam well - I increased my pupil roll by 10% over my time as a Head. I loved the test, the thinking on your feet but most of all, I came to realise that the advice that I was giving to parents around why they should send their child to my school was lacking in our sector. There are some great sites out there, and I’m sure there are some great agencies as well - I’ve worked with some of the very best! - but I’ll pin my colours to the Chattan Harbour flagmast and say that Heads know schools and their sector better than anyone else does. You see, schools become an obsession for Heads. Your own school burrows inside of you and becomes part of you. Both of mine certainly did.

That’s why when the idea for Chattan Harbour was born, we were inundated with conversations, emails, text messages, Whatsapps…you name it, with people within our sector saying “But of course - Heads know their sector. You’d be hard pressed to get better advice!”

We aren’t anti-agent at all. It’s just that as Heads…we know this sector. We live and breathe it - and at the heart of our motivation to now work with families choosing a school, you have to go all the way back to when we were in our own little classroom. You see, in our minds we might not have the energy or the zip to teach a 22 lesson week anymore…but we all remember the point where it “clicked” and it was like finding the trot when horseriding. The world became a smoother place.

We want to help families to find those classrooms. The ones where changing a life happens every single day.