Staff morale – Why leadership must walk the walk
Ed Carlin looks at how the morale of school staff can be improved and maintained via the careful application of some authentic leadership…
- by Ed Carlin
- Deputy headteacher at a Scottish secondary school
Walk into almost any staffroom on a Friday afternoon, and you’re bound to see the tell-tale signs of a school trying to boost staff morale.
It might be a notice advertising the next staff bowling night, a poster for an optional yoga session, or a circular concerning the ever-popular ‘wellbeing lunch’ promised at the end of term.
While these gestures aren’t inherently bad as such, they have become symbols of a deeper issue – attempts at fixing a leaking ship with colourful stickers.
The underlying reasons for low staff morale in schools extend far beyond the restorative powers of pizza and playlists.
It’s not that teachers don’t appreciate small tokens of appreciation. It’s that those tokens often come off as superficial, when the day-to-day realities of their jobs are ignored, or worse, exacerbated.
If school leaders genuinely want to make an impact on the motivation, engagement levels and commitment of their staff, then it’s time to rethink this approach. Not from the top down, but from the inside out.
Leadership and lived experience
In too many schools, the gap between SLT and classroom teachers is growing. Not because of policy changes, or even performance targets, but for reasons of empathy – or a lack thereof.
The truth is that many of today’s school leaders climbed the ladder not necessarily because they were the best teachers, but because they either had a natural affinity for leadership roles, or were simply burned out by the daily grind of teaching.
And here lies the problem. How can someone lead a teaching team effectively if they’ve lost connection with what it actually means to teach?
Imagine the following scenario. A headteacher introduces a new data tracking system mid-year. It requires teachers to log weekly assessments and generate personalised pupil progress plans.
When asked how long this might take, they respond confidently, “Oh, just 30 minutes a week.” The teachers know better. It’s easily two to three hours, per class.
Add that to the backlog of marking, lesson planning and parent communications, and you start to see the friction.
‘Empathising’ isn’t sending a staff-wide email acknowledging the stress and asking for ‘patience.’ It’s walking into those classrooms and helping out. Picking up a whiteboard marker and teaching. Understanding what 32 teenagers look like after lunch on a rainy Tuesday in November, and still finding joy in it.
Staff morale is a culture
Many of us will have seen this play out in our schools’ policies. A new onboarding program is adopted, a wellbeing champion is appointed, and sometimes there’s even a fortnightly cake rota.
Yet real staff morale comes from meaningful interaction, not manufactured celebration. When new staff join, they don’t just want to be welcomed with a branded mug and lanyard. They want to know their leadership team will stand with them during hard times. There’s more to it than simply cheering from the sidelines.
Take the practice of onboarding, for example. Many schools will start strong, with induction days, mentor pairings and informative safeguarding briefings.
But when a new teacher is left alone to manage a difficult Y9 class with no behaviour support in sight, that initial morale boost will quickly disappear.
Staff morale isn’t maintained by having a great first week. It’s built day after day, through consistent and visible support from leadership that sends a clear message of ‘We’re in this together’.
“Staff morale isn’t maintained by having a great first week”
Many of us will have sat through those staff development sessions – all dimmed lights, soft music and montages of motivational quotes over images of mountain climbers, Olympic athletes and Oprah Winfrey.
It’s not that inspiration has no place in schools, because it does. But motivation derived from performance art is fleeting.
Teachers don’t need reminding that their job matters. They need their leaders to show that they matter.
Here’s a common experience. Following a 90-minute session on wellbeing and motivational theory, a school’s teachers return to their classrooms to find a new marking policy waiting in their inboxes, another spreadsheet to complete and a reminder that progress reports are ‘due by Friday’.
The irony won’t be lost on them.
Present and accountable
Motivation is forged in the crucible of shared struggle and joint effort. When leaders step into the same arena to face the same obstacles as their staff – that’s when staff morale shifts. Not because someone said the right thing, but because they did the right thing.
If you’re a school leader reading this, ask yourself, honestly – do I want to actually improve staff morale, or do I just want to tick a box showing that I’m aware it’s a problem?
If it’s the former, then the uncomfortable truth is that you need to teach more. Teach classes. Cover lessons. Walk the corridors not just with a clipboard, but with intention.
Sit down with your teachers after a tough period and acknowledge, ‘That was hard – what could we try together next time?’ Share the marking. Team-teach. Moderate. Plan lessons together.
It’s not about becoming ‘one of the gang’. It’s about being a present, accountable leader who knows what the job actually entails in 2025.
Senior leadership isn’t exempt from the daily pressures of school life, of course, but at the same time, it can add to them.
When school leaders roll up their sleeves and show that they’re willing to share the burden, teachers take notice. More importantly, they begin to believe that their leaders understand them.
“When school leaders roll up their sleeves and show that they’re willing to share the burden, teachers take notice”
From words to action
One of the most contentious areas in any school is behaviour. It’s also one of the clearest indicators of how a school’s leadership either supports or isolates its staff.
Far too often, teachers are told that ‘behaviour is everyone’s responsibility’ – until that responsibility becomes unmanageable.
Senior leaders can’t expect classroom staff to ‘pick up the slack’ if they themselves are too busy in meetings to respond to corridor incidents or student referrals.
Behaviour policies must be led from the front, with leaders visible and involved.
Ask any teacher what boosts their morale the most during a tough week, and you may well hear something along the lines of, ‘SLT came in and helped me with a tough class.’
This isn’t revolutionary, it’s relational. There is immense power in words, but only when those words are backed by action.
A school where the leadership team regularly teaches, shares the workload and stands shoulder to shoulder with teaching staff is a school where staff morale doesn’t need to be artificially inflated, because it’s already become self-sustaining.
Ironically, many leaders reading might well say, ‘But I don’t have the time!’ – and that’s precisely the point.
If you, with all the administrative and structural support your role entails, can’t find the time to teach a lesson or support with behaviour, how can you expect your staff to perform the impossible every day?
So next time you’re considering whether to launch a new initiative, take a moment to ask, ‘Where will my teachers find the time?’
If the answer feels unclear, maybe reconsider. Staff morale doesn’t rise because of one-off wellbeing gestures. It rises when staff feel seen, heard and genuinely supported.
Ed Carlin is a deputy headteacher at a Scottish secondary school, having previously held teaching roles at schools in Northern Ireland and England.
