John Dewey once said, “We do not learn from experience. We learn from reflecting on experience.” Too often in the hurly burly of the close of the academic year, school leaders neglect to pause and quietly reflect on the year that has been.

Sure, the Speech Night and graduation speeches contained overviews of successes and maybe you have had a chat with the Chair or with your Senior Leadership Team members about what has transpired in 2020, but when was the last time you sat down, closed the door and asked yourself the hard questions about what and who have contributed to the success of the year, and what and who have blocked progress.  More importantly, in the light of your conclusions, have you asked yourself what you are going to do to move things on and, let’s face it, also move some people on?   One of my favourite mantras is, “It’s not the ones you sack who make your life miserable; it’s the ones you don’t!”

The following ten questions are, in some instances pretty hard-nosed but necessary if your school is to move into 2021 stronger, more resilient and more focused on each student achieving their personal aspirations.

End-of-Year Review Questions for Principals

1. What is the one thing your school did best this year? What do you need to do to turn that success into a repeatable process?
2. What is the one thing your school was worst at this year? What single thing most needs to happen to fix it?
3. Which faculty, department, team or function was most responsible for your school’s success this year? What are you going to do about it?
4. Which individual was most responsible for your school’s success this year? What are you going to do about it?
5. Which faculty, department, team or function was most responsible for standing in the way of your school’s success this year? What are you going to do about it?
6. Which individual was most responsible for standing in the way of your school’s success this year? What are you going to do about it?
7. What is the single metric or measurement in relation to the school’s performance that you least liked hearing about this year? What will you do to prevent the same thing happening next year?
8. What is the single metric you will measure your own success by (not how anyone else will measure your success– how you will measure your own success)? What are you doing about it?
9. If you fired yourself today, and came back tomorrow as a new Principal with a clean sheet, what would you do?
10. If a new school came into the market and opened up tomorrow across the road from you, what would they do that would take enrolments away from you?