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Leading roles: Vanita Uppal

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Director, The British School, New Delhi

The new chair of FOBISIA, Vanita Uppal talks to ITM’s Andy Homden about leadership, service and what excites her about education in the 2020s.

Destiny?

Vanita Uppal knows she is a bit of a leadership anomaly. She has worked at the same school since 1991 – The British School (TBS), New Delhi and she never really set out to be a leader as such. Opportunities simply arose – and after 14 years teaching History at the school, she was persuaded to consider the role of Dean of Students in 2005. After being in her company for 30 minutes or more, you can see why others wanted her to consider stepping up the ladder still further and by 2015 she had become the Director of the school.

You could be forgiven for thinking that is TBS was somehow her destiny, or if you like, her karma. The school has been a continual source of inspiration for her as she discovered new responsibilities which challenged her energy and growing skillsets. She had no reason to go anywhere else:

“I love what I do; I love who I do it for; I love who I do it with . . . “

The key phrase here is “ . . . who I do it for”.

Time bandit

She has no doubts about the challenges of being a head of school, even after nine years in the post, a period during which TSB was named British International School of the Year:

“You have to be CEO, Pedagogical Leader, Counsellor, Commander-in-chief, legal expert and health campaigner . . . you have to be all those things in a credible sense”,

She speaks with a strong sense of (rather old-fashioned?) service and commitment, which brings to mind David-Powlett-Jones, the hero of R. F. Delderfield’s To Serve Them All My Days. The job places great demands on her time: she is a self-confessed time-bandit, stealing and using it in the most productive way that she can think of. Work-life balance to ‘Mrs. U’ is “an abstract idea – 21st Century jargon”: a school head simply can’t timetable downtime – but she does take full advantage of when an island of calm appears in a sea of activity, to sit, read and watch sport – she is “a tennis and cricket buff”. She can lose herself in a book (she is currently reading ‘A Sense of Belonging’ by Dr. Hokin Liang – ‘very different and quite brilliant’) and she is clearly devoted to he first academic love – History – which she still teaches as a guest speaker and resident expert:

“I still teach as and when I can . . . I love, love, being in the classroom. Every conversation with a student is a conversation to savour – to value”

And if her ‘reservoir of personal energy’ needs refilling on a tough day, there is no better way than sitting quietly in the school’s Early Years centre and just taking pleasure in the way that good teaching has such a clear impact on a child’s development. These are the things she makes time for and enjoys.

Creative solution

She also enjoys reading with others – and here appears a touch of leadership genius, combining her love of debate (she wants to create “that space where it’s OK to disagree”) and her desire to spend more time with her staff while building their capacity.

She is clear about the importance of professional learning, and her stroke of genius is the creation of the “Director’s Reading Room”. She chooses an article about education and invites staff to join her in in a reading group of about ten people to discuss it. This is now a regular fixture on the staff calendar that takes minimum preparation, and brings people together. Staff now choose articles as well and Vanita estimates that she has now taken part in sessions with over 100 of her staff in these groups are also having an impact on the way people teach. An example is the adoption by a group of staff of an approach to teaching that involves ‘warm demanding’, originally discussed in the Reading Room. Teachers also go on to conduct action research based on the ideas under discussion. What they do with their new knowledge is up to them.

Instinct and values

Vanita has an instinct for bringing people together effectively and her instincts in a wider sense clearly serves her well. Consequent action, however is taken within a framework of values and principle that ensure institutional consistency, achieved with the lightest of touches. First there are the values, originally instilled by her parents. Her father talked to his daughter about the importance of service, of not asking someone to so something you would not be willing and able to do yourself. He also suggested that “the chair is always transient”. Things move on – therefore don’t get too comfortable in what you are doing and don’t take things for granted. Most importantly “who you are as a person is what you want to be remembered for. That should be your legacy”.

From her mother she learned resilience and determination:

“Just because it’s difficult doesn’t mean you don’t do it. You have to work at it and do what is right. And easy is not always right”.

Like her father, Vanita’s mother also emphasised personal impact on people: “What you do must be positive for others.

The excitement of teaching

With these powerful influences in the background, the young Vanita went into teaching and found that she loved it. What excites her now about the way that teaching is evolving is that it reminds her of her own experience as a young teacher. She relished the fact that although the school was clear about what had to be done, she was allowed to work out her own way of doing it. She wants the same kind of ‘creative autonomy’ for her own staff and celebrates the fact that this approach is moving into the mainstream in schools and that research shows that it works.

Her pedagogy is student centred, couched in the contemporary terminology of building capacity and agency. She is also excited about teachers from different subject areas are finding more common ground with each other. What quickens her step now is when, for example, the Maths Faculty are finding common ground with the Musicians – something definitely to be encouraged.

Past and future

Looking back, she thinks about the undoubted impact of the pandemic. She worries about its effect on the experience of the class of ’25, but draws strength from the fact that during the pandemic, the school evolved a sense of “collective wellbeing” that gave it the resilience to cope and in so doing actually deepened the well of experience that can be drawn on in the future as it demonstrated the power of collaboration and empathy.

And, looking to the future, she thinks that learning will take care of itself if teachers are given the space to develop their practice, encouraged to learn themselves and to enjoy what they do. She is not so concerned about keeping up with the latest trends (or as she puts it with “gizmos and ChatGPT”).

However, looking at her 3- to 5-year-olds she is not without a certain anxiety so far as their future is concerned. Young people now have “access to everything that is good and everything that is bad”. She is strongly of the opinion that schools need to do everything that they can to develop a child’s “moral compass” – as they navigate their way through life.

New responsibility

And now she is moving forward again as she becomes the new FOBISIA chair. She looks forward to the new role with typical energy, seeing further opportunities for collective action and at network of individuals who can draw upon each other’s experience for support. And it is in this context she talks about ambition. With a twinkle in her eye, she contradicts the Bard himself: “Shakespeare said it’s not good to be ambitious – but what does Shakespeare know?” But ambition is not personal, so far as Vanita Uppal is concerned:

“You have to be ambitious for the people you serve”.

That means the students, teachers and parents in her community. And that community has just got a bit bigger. If anyone is up for the job, it will be ‘Mrs. U’.

Andy Homden was in conversation with Vanita Uppal, Director of The British School, New Delhi, and Chair of the Federation of British Schools in Asia.

Feature and support images kindly provided by The British School, New Delhi.



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