Belonging: A Personal and Professional Relationship with SSAT

Belonging is fashionable in education circles right now. Together with achieving and thriving, it forms the first principle for inspectors under the new Ofsted framework. I approve of the sentiment behind this decision, even as I recognise the limitations of any inspection framework in espousing belonging and worry about the impact of a potentially shallow focus on belonging.

As a former Head of English, I have a penchant for definitions, synonyms and etymology for getting under the skin of ephemeral concepts. What can these tell us about the slippery idea of ‘belonging’?

• In terms of definitions, we get the importance of “being happy or comfortable as part of a particular group” (Cambridge), of “a close or intimate relationship” (Marriam-Webster), and of “being treated as a full member of a group” (Oxford).
• The top synonyms for ‘belonging’ include the words familiarity and kinship (both related, of course, to family), friendship, inseparability, acceptance, attachment, affinity and – another key term in education – inclusion.
• Etymologically, the word ‘belong’ has, from the 14^th century, meant to be a member of something. But, further back in old English and German, it meant “to go along with” and, as ever, I like the simplicity and physical groundedness of the roots of the word.

So, why this preamble about belonging?

Well, it has been on my mind recently because I have been appointed as Director of Education for SSAT, an organisation to which I have belonged as an employee for three years now. But, in preparing for my interview for the role, I spent a great deal of time reflecting on how I have belonged with SSAT for over two decades in one form or another.

As a newly appointed Assistant Headteacher in 2005, one of my first significant responsibilities was for student leadership. The scale of the ambition behind this work was enormous, with the school wishing to set up a student parliament covering all aspects of school life and engaging as many students as possible. When planning our training days for this new cohort of student leaders, it was to SSAT that we turned to help shape off-site professional learning for students. In January 2026, I was proud to become the person responsible for reshaping SSAT’s Student Leadership for IMPACT offer. With three decades of wisdom to build upon, it is now my privilege to be supporting the ambitious plans for student leadership by schools and their leaders.

Between 2005 and 2010, at the school where I became a senior leader and subsequently in a school where I became a deputy headteacher, my sense of belonging with SSAT grew as I took on responsibility (at both schools) for rethinking the Key Stage 3 curriculum. This involved convening groups of middle and aspiring leaders to go out on a series of visits to Leading Edge schools who were doing interesting things with their 11-14 offer from which we could learn. SSAT facilitated these amazing experiences to learn from other settings and, in doing so, contributed hugely to the system leadership capacities of many of my colleagues and to the strategic plans we formed that enhanced the lives of the students in those schools.

Having gained so much from working with SSAT through my student leadership and KS3 curriculum reform work, it was to the organisation that I turned when I was putting together plans for creating a Teaching School Alliance. Our innovative approach involved building a strategic partnership with SSAT to support the delivery of effective professional learning for teachers and the quality assurance processes for school leadership of our partner schools. To this latter end, we engaged as a school in the peer review processes informing SSAT’s Framework for Exceptional Education (long before Ofsted stole the word ‘exceptional’ to recognise schools going above and beyond). Although changes in the government’s approach to system leadership meant the end of the smaller Teaching Schools, this was a heady time for all involved with the project, helping us to create a sense of belonging to our soft federation.

As headteacher for nine years, the school I led maintained and gained from our ongoing relationship with SSAT. Over the nine years I spent in the role, countless numbers of students, staff and leaders benefitted from the panoply of audits, programmes, courses and think-pieces we accessed as members. Above all else, it was our relationships with key members of SSAT staff who worked with us that helped our school feel a sense of belonging with them. On a personal level, it was those same relationships that provided the bridge from my time as a school leader to my current post-headship career supporting other school leaders.

One look at the ‘Our Purpose’ section of SSAT’s website reminds me of why belonging matters beyond the current period of vogue in which it finds itself. We are a membership organisation “bringing together” schools, with a focus on “deep social justice” through programmes that “help leaders and teachers” in responding to the needs “of all young people”. I am proud to have been chosen to build on the work of my predecessors, including the most recent postholder Angelina Idun, in renewing that commitment to systemic, organisational and individual belonging for all those involved in the critical business of educating (in the fullest sense of the word) the children in our schools.

And I am particularly delighted that I will be leading SSAT’s educational provision as the organisation celebrates its 40^th anniversary in the coming academic year. SSAT’s longevity is, to return to where I started, a result of the close relationships we have developed with schools and groups of schools, rooted in an affinity with their values and purpose, so that we can “go along with” them as they strive to be excellent for all of their stakeholders.

Belonging matters. It is rooted in connections. It occurs when trusting relationships are sustained over time. As Director of Education at SSAT, it is my privilege to help maintain and enhance these connections and trusting relationships into a new era. It is a responsibility that I welcome having myself, as a school leader, felt belonging to this wonderful organisation.

---

---