Rob Ford reflects on his time as an educational leader in Moldova and how challenging it can be to ensure young people achieve the outcomes they deserve.
"“Every ending is a beginning. We just don’t know it at the time.” -Mitch Albom"
“Existence flows past us like a river: the “what” is in constant flux, the “why” has a thousand variations… So it would take an idiot to feel self-importance or distress. Or any indignation, either. As if the things that irritate us lasted.” – Marcus Aurelius
“Every ending is a beginning. We just don’t know it at the time.” -Mitch Albom
On a number of occasions through 2024 and into 2025, I found myself repeating the same phrase, mostly at Moldovan educational conferences; what didn’t work 30 years ago in education, certainly will not work now. I have also added to it, something along the lines of; as a student and teacher of history, it is one thing to learn from the past, another thing to want to permanently live in it.
As 2024 came to a close and we reach the halfway point of the 2020s, it is hard to even gain some idea of what the next few years will bring leading up to the 2030s. We have just seen the bedrock of the World upended with Trump’s appalling treatment of President Zelensky in the White House and all the Kremlin’s lines being repeated by Trump and Vance. Even the most certain of things, such as our global universal values and institutions, can become uncertain in this age of uncertainty.
Anyone leading a school community in this decade knows that making “good decisions” is challenging, especially alongside the need to provide stability, certainty and hope on a daily basis in our school communities. The “social compact” within a school community has been severely tested by the times we live in and it is not hyperbole to say education everywhere is not in a settled place. The innate desire for most school leaders to pause, take a breath and say goodbye to the fray, is not limited to a few.
These past few weeks and months, I have been meeting and speaking with a lot of school leaders and teachers, from Moldova, the UK and around the World. All of them speak about the same challenges, the need to lead and make the good and right decisions, but also how tough the circumstances are getting to operate in an environment where we can achieve all the desirable and visionary outcomes we all believe young people deserve. Especially where the hope for the future lies.
There are those, who believe that we can go back to the “good old days”, the halcyon analogue age that never really, truly existed, and in this part of the World, this can be seen a lot in recent elections and the narrative that is pushed about history and society. Normally peppered liberally with phrases such as “traditional values”.
There are those who believe they are “disrupting”, moving fast and breaking things, as if tearing down support structures of society, respectful arenas of dialogue and institutions bigger than one person, is the way forward. “Tech bro billionaires” seem to be in the ascendent right now but it would help them if they read their history more closely and this will not last for long. We see a lot of the latter around the World right now and outside of a tiny minority, it frightens the vast majority and looking forward to the next five years or a new decade, feels bleak. Words like “hate”, “fear”, “might is right” seem to prevail and to even think as a global citizen, to believe in equality, diversity, collaboration and internationalism, is openly attacked by the very countries that held them up as self evident truths to live for and strive for.
The model of change, the strategy we need for our schools, our communities, has to be more than a binary choice of desperately trying to live in the past or destroying everything and taking a chance of what is left afterwards. I haven’t found too many people who really want to trust a dying, decaying old nationalist politician with a warped view of history and an inhumanity that is beyond belief, or tech billionaires whose egos far outweigh any real, once admired talent.
The student of history in me, has been again looking at where I have been, in Eastern Europe, and in Moldova for nearly 6 years, for possible answers to how we can lead and build in our school communities.
"But knowing what I know now leading schools in the UK and abroad, the role is very different and it is the wise school leader who thinks of their time as having a finite amount and to set out what is needed to achieve this before passing on the baton to the fresh faced, eager and earnest successor."
The challenge for any school leader is knowing when the time to leave is upon you. The wrench of leaving a place and community, a country even, that you have invested so much into as a leader. Leaving a school is just leaving a job, right? Wrong! In “How successful head teachers survive and thrive”, the late, great Sir Tim Brighouse, outlined four distinct stages of Headship, lasting around 10 years for the whole cycle of leadership in one school. After getting established, Brighouse saw the 3rd stage, around 4-7 years, as the “thrive” stage for any school leader who got that far in one school. The final stage, 7-10 years, were in decline and a school leader needs to think of renewal or a new challenge altogether.
When I first started as a Head, over a decade ago now, I was fortunate to be in a cohort of new Heads who were mentored and coached by Sir Tim. I remember being very sceptical back then about this idea of a fixed term linked to effectiveness in post. Especially knowing school leaders who had stayed in post between 10 and 20 years, some even longer. But knowing what I know now leading schools in the UK and abroad, the role is very different and it is the wise school leader who thinks of their time as having a finite amount and to set out what is needed to achieve this before passing on the baton to the fresh faced, eager and earnest successor.
What no Head or leadership conference has ever really conveyed is the emotional wrench involved when leaving a school community for the final time after leading them for a number of years, often through difficult times, emotional times, uncertain times, and believe it or not, good times as well. Headship is like no other job when it comes to how much personal investment a leader makes in the organisation, people and place. In those final moments of goodbye, the final assembly, the staff meeting, the leaving meal, the silly stuff fades and the reality of what you have all been through together takes centre stage of the mind and memory.
When I left my Headship at Wyedean School in the Forest of Dean in 2019, I had already stated to the governing body and the staff that I saw it as a 4 year tenure, especially as we had so many intractable issues to put right including an ongoing staff strike, a falling roll, a million pound deficit and a redundancy programme to manage. Thanks to a great team, a fantastic school community and a clear strategy to solve what we had to put right, we achieved this in 4 years. More importantly, I made sure we got people ready to lead and we didn’t base it on me but succession planning.
I left at the same time as the Year 11s and 13s going on study leave, so it didn’t seem too dramatic, or so it did to me. It was emotional and the community and school are forever with me but more importantly, what we achieved and what Wyedean continues to achieve in the past 6 years under its new Head and the team there. When I left for the last time, they all came out to see me off and as I drove back over the Severn Bridge and the next stage of my career, the wrench leaving this school hit me hard. In my final “This Heart Shaped Land” blog as Head, I quoted Forest of Dean son, Dennis Potter; “…it is a strange and beautiful place, with a people who were as warm as anywhere else, but they seemed warmer to me”. I would say the very same words of the Heritage community and Moldova.
I never imagined I would be leading Heritage International School and live and work in Moldova for nearly 6 years. On the plane flying east to the further corners of Europe in May 2019, I couldn’t even begin to imagine what the challenges of Covid, the war in Ukraine, societal destabilisation and just establishing the first international school in Moldova, the most sovietised part of the old USSR, would entail. I worry for the future of Moldova but the country has already proved it doesn’t want to go back, to live in an awful history dominated by corruption and the few. When all is said and done, I am an optimist always and I hope this blog has conveyed it.
What the blog could never really convey is the toll being away from my family had on all of us. Especially now, as my children need me more than ever with the challenges we to have face as a family over the weeks and months. We need to pay much more attention to our own wellbeing, mental health, stress, families and hinterland. This much I have understood over these years in the dark, lonely moments of being a school leader.
Flying home at the end of January 2025, with a sense of “mission accomplished” 6 years on and a very established, successful and high reputation international school ready for its next director, the wrench this time was even more harder to leave behind an amazing school community, colleagues and wonderful students precisely because of everything we had been through and faced together. Sir Tim never warned us about how emotional all this would be when the time to leave finally came. But that time did come. I have done what I can do at Heritage and in Moldova. Heritage works and my successor, who will have all my support, inherits a strong platform to take Heritage to its 10th birthday and beyond to even more success.
This was one of the hardest decisions of my life and I am extremely proud of my work, contribution and leadership at Heritage, over the last 6 years. I am extremely proud of what we have all achieved, what Heritage stands for nationally and internationally, in an unprecedented and extremely challenging educational environment and in the wider national and global context of existential events throughout the 2020s. We have a strong platform of stability at our core.
This role hasn’t been an easy one at times, and can be one of the loneliest jobs in education. The certainty of international education at Heritage in uncertain times though, is unique and a legacy I will take with me always as we have established our wonderful school as a force for innovation and good in education. We have brilliant school leaders, Heads of Schools, support staff, teachers and it has been a privilege to serve them all and work alongside them but especially the Board as my colleagues and critical friends as governors and Founders, Natalia Ciornia and Sinan Bora. We have the best students, success breeding success in a virtuous cycle of achievement and a wonderful wider community, we certainly can engage more with going forward. These are all our core strengths, aligning with our core values as an international school.
Even being honoured by the Chisinau city Mayor and the wonderful UK Ambassador to Moldova, at a special reception, didn’t make the pain any less. Messages, gifts and cards from across the community, only made the flight back to the UK even harder to bear. Having worked for so long with great friends and colleagues such as Tatiana Popa, my “Lionel Messi”, achieving so much for Heritage, made my mind wonder about my new role as a Founding Head back home to the UK and my family finally, the new challenges to face and the new team and community to make this all thrive. Where will the new “Messis” come from now? Or a brilliant Chief Finance Officer such as Marina Bilivskaia, an incredible communications mind such as Ludmila Gurau, an exceptional photographer as Olga Tserulnik, an outstanding Primary Head as Adriana Bujag, the brilliant Lyceum Team, a dedicated Deputy such as Inga Chiosa and the countless brilliant teachers and support staff, it has been my privilege to work with and know? Time will tell.
"Thanks to these years and places, I have so much rich material for future characters"
I am not sure I will continue a blog from the new role but I certainly will continue to keep writing and look forward to seeing “Mail from Moldova” come out later this year as my second published book. Also, wait for book 3. My first fiction, as I enjoy future semi-retirement living quietly in Wales and being able to write more. Thanks to these years and places, I have so much rich material for future characters…
It has been my career privilege to lead the remarkable Heritage International School and vision and I am proud to continue to play a future role in this story. It definitely tested me and changed me, mostly for the better. John Dewey said true learning doesn’t come from experience but reflection on experience. This is what I hope the Mail from Moldova blog has helped to achieve for me and anyone who has followed it. I left Moldova knowing I would return to the land between the Prut and Nistru. It is a place and people in my heart forever and that I will support the brilliant Heritage community from the Board. The words given to me in a quote from A A Milne, seemed to sum up all that I was feeling, the wrench in my heart, as I left for the last time as Director to return to the UK and my next chapter;
“How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard“. Winnie the Pooh.
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