30 minutes with…Dr Nigel Winnard, international school leader

When the uninitiated think of international school teaching, they might still imagine sun-soaked lives in luxurious compounds, teaching the children of oil workers.

But for Dr Nigel Winnard, a career in international schools has not been one of ceiling fans and colonial complacency.

Indeed, during a career that has spanned the globe, he has “survived a few revolutions”, experienced shooting on campus in Rio de Janeiro, survived being on a Muslim fundamentalist “death list” in Sudan, and narrowly escaped a suicide bombing.

“Working through that…getting through the trauma was very formative for me,” he says. “I’ve been through a lot of situations and somehow developed a skillset by managing quite extreme situations.”

He was more prepared than most for the Covid pandemic, he says, with his experiences “very useful to draw upon”.

But how did this state-educated boy from Bolton end up leading schools in the Philippines, Sudan and Brazil? As a young teacher teaching English literature at Queen Elizabeth’s Grammar School Blackburn, UK, he was inspired to put his foot into the sector by his cousin who was a teacher in Kuwait.

“She got caught up in the first Gulf War and was stuck in Kuwait and had to escape over the desert. She was terribly exotic and when she arrived back she kind of transferred the baton to me.”

Teaching overseas definitely felt like a bit of a deviant decision.

So, after five years’ UK teaching he headed off to St Christopher’s school in Bahrain. In the 1990s, Dubai was on the verge of exploding economically, but the famous F1 racetrack in Bahrain was still a camel farm. The atmosphere in the kingdom was “sleepy”, he says.

He says: “It felt definitely a bit of a deviant decision, everyone said you would go out for a couple of years then come back, it wasn’t a valid career track.”

But everything has changed since then, he says. “Now you can go overseas and develop and grow into leadership if that’s what you want, all of that is available to you now.”

When he was starting out, he says, the international schools world was far more fragmented than it is now. “Now it’s much more connected there are a lot more deep networks,” he says.

Since Bahrain, his career has taken him to International School Manila, St. Paul’s School, Sao Paulo, Khartoum International Community School and until June this year, he was head of school at Escola Americana do Rio de Janeiro. He is currently supporting ACS Doha International School as its interim head.

So apart from how to manage a school in a crisis, what else has Winnard learnt during his unique career? The importance of longevity as a head is a key lesson, he says. Having spent seven years in his last post in Rio and 12 years as the founding head in Khartoum he practices what he preaches. But circumstances often conspire against heads staying and seeing through their vision, he says.

“The most important thing for me is showing up and sticking around as a school leader…the longevity of school heads is we know a massively powerful driver of school sustainability. In international schools the churn can be a real meat grinder.

The most important thing for me is showing up and sticking around as a school leader.

“The ability to stay in post really inspires so many things that are just not possible with revolving door headships. This is something that needs to be valued a lot more.”

“It’s not unusual for the tenure to be three to four years, which is low, to see through the consequences of your decision-making as a school leader, you’ve got to stick around a little longer than that.”

Winnard says research indicates one factor is the churn on elected school boards which can mean the board that welcomes the head is not the same as the one that appointed them.

“When you have elected boards then the lack of stability can lead to quite large swings in priorities and therefore the required skillset of the CEO may have changed. It’s not because the board is bad or the head is bad it’s that they want different things.”

Those kind of things force people to get through the speed bumps and stick at it.

He talks about how financial tools such as golden handcuffs and golden parachutes – where both heads and boards can be penalised if they “give up” too soon, can help.

 “Those kind of things kind of force people to get through the speed bumps and stick at it,” he says, adding that 12 years working Khartoum “was not always plain sailing”.

Other big lessons from Winnard’s career include an appreciation of the importance of local hire colleagues. “They show up, turn up and stay,” he says. “I invest a lot of time in that area, supporting and developing local hires”

Connected to this, he says, is the importance of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and the importance of white men in particular educating themselves on their own privilege and biases.

Over the past five years, Winnard has been heavily involved in DEI, working with the Association of International Educators and Leaders of Colour. “It’s been very informative for me, made me look at myself differently,” he says.

He adds: “[I’ve been] learning that how I see the world has centuries of implicit bias within it. How I look at the world as a consequence has to be tinkered with and dismantled a little and reassembled in a way which is much more inclusive – which is a serious work in progress still. It’s work I hope a lot of leaders and educators who happen to look like me are also doing.”

But he feels he might be in a minority himself in taking this seriously.

“I’m not sure that there’s a strong enough imperative yet amongst leaders who look like me to do that work openly and visibly and courageously. I’m hoping that I’m wrong…I would love to see that groundswell more visibly.”

DEI work has been very informative for me, made me look at myself differently.

He also warns that it is wrong to assume that somehow international schools have less racism and discrimination than other schools.

“By their very nature, international schools tend to be high socio-economic base so the people that access them tend to be folks who have benefited from privilege. They are often quite conservative institutions, often heavily dominated by white, middle to upper middle class representatives of whatever the dominant hegemony might be within that culture.”

Another key theme of Winnard’s career has been the International Baccalaureate, the principles of which he embraces.

Most recently in Rio, he supported the school to become a three programme IB school across two campuses, and he introduced it in Khartoum as well.

“I’ve become quite an advocate for the principles of the IB, I have a lot of questions still, about the practices and about all sorts of things to do with the implementation but it’s fundamental premises I still have a lot of time for.”

He adds that he is “increasingly uncomfortable” with the IB’s  “western European positionality”. “I think there’s work to be done there in internationalising itself in terms of its world view,” he says.

And what about the future of international education in general? What are Winnard’s concerns and hopes for the sector?

Big for-profits move in…and suddenly you’re strip mining local talent.

The potential impact of for-profit chains weighs heavily on his mind.

“I’m curious to see what the evolving role of the for-profits is going to do to the whole eco-system, because they’re very disruptive, when they move into a landscape where there were no for-profits before, what will that look like?

“I’m curious to see, the large groups, they can bring in a heck of a lot of capital and they can hit hard and fast, what is the impact on the local private education scene and how is that disruption managed?”

He also has concerns about recruitment when there are increasing numbers of schools competing for sparse numbers of suitably-qualified teachers.

 “Suddenly big for-profits move in with the ability to pay higher salaries and suddenly you’re strip mining local talent”, he says.

Alongside this, these new for-profits might not feel the same obligation to be part of their communities as more-established non-profit international schools, he says.

It is an obligation that Winnard himself clearly takes very seriously.