Getting Started

How to Lead a Tutor Team You Didn't Pick

A practical guide for Heads of Year on leading inherited tutor teams, building better tutor meetings, supporting willing tutors and handling difficult conversations.

Nobody hands you a tutor team and asks if you'd like to choose.

You become Head of Year in September, and the timetable lands in August with eight names on it.

Three of them are excellent.

Three of them are fine.

One of them doesn't really want to be a tutor and never has.

One of them is brand new to the school and has never run a form group in their life.

Your job is to lead them.

None of them report to you in any formal sense.

Most of them are senior to you in years of service, in pay scale, sometimes in both.

You don't choose who joins the team next September.

You don't choose who leaves.

You can't really hold them accountable in any formal way without going through their head of department, who has their own priorities and probably doesn't want their staff member's tutoring being discussed.

This is one of the hardest bits of the HOY role.

Most of the leadership writing in education is about leading people who report to you.

This isn't that.

This is about leading a team that, on paper, you don't lead at all.

Here's what I've learned about doing it well.

Start by being honest about the team you've got There's a temptation, in your first year, to pretend the team is fine.