The week before staff return sets the tone for everything that follows. Teachers use it to set up classrooms and plan. A head uses it to decide what kind of year the school is going to have.
Five things to get right in that week, and then a checklist for every month of your first year.
1. Give teachers the week back
There should be structure to pre-planning week, and there should be far less of it than you think.
This is the only stretch of the year when teachers can prepare without a class in front of them. Whatever else goes on the schedule, protect a few uninterrupted hours a day in their own classrooms.
2. Decide what the building should feel like
Think about how the school should feel when families walk in on the first day. Then create that same feeling for staff a week earlier, because whatever you set in pre-planning week is what carries into the first week of term.
Be in the building. Ask people about their summer. Walk into classrooms with something encouraging to say rather than something to check.
3. Ask five questions, in writing
Give every teacher a short questionnaire before the week starts:
- How do you feel about last year? What should change, and what should stay?
- What are your goals for this year?
- How can I support you better?
- What is one of your strengths, and one thing you want to get better at?
- What problem should we deal with now, before it becomes one in November?
Read the answers. They tell you where the staff room actually is, and asking tells your staff that you intend to run the school with them rather than at them.
4. Pick one or two priorities and say them out loud
You want to do twenty things. You can do two.
Name them before staff return, and connect each one to something a teacher will notice. Then ask each department or age group how they would make it work, and let them shape the delivery. Committed staff execute; instructed staff comply.
5. Give new staff more than you think they need
Every new teacher gets an experienced mentor and a named person in the office who handles the practical questions — where things are, who to ask, how the school actually runs.
Put a handbook in their hands. Walk into their classroom twice a day during pre-planning week. In the first month they will have a hundred questions, and the only thing that decides whether they ask them is whether asking felt safe in week one.
Before that: what to do over the summer
Two things belong to the summer rather than to pre-planning week.
Get clear on the mission, in one paragraph. What is this school for, what are you trying to achieve this year, and what will it look like when you have. Everything you say yes to during the year gets measured against that paragraph. So does everything you say no to.
Work on your strongest teachers, not just your weakest. Most heads spend the summer thinking about who is struggling. The better return is on the people who are already excellent. Pair them with new staff. Have other teachers observe their lessons. Ask them to run the professional development sessions in their area of strength. Supporting your best teachers is how the rest of the staff improves.
And put your own family's dates in the calendar before the school year fills it. A head who burns out by March costs the school more than any single initiative gains it.
A month-by-month checklist for your first year
Written for a head or director taking over an independent school or a childcare organisation. If you run a centre that operates through the summer, the July and August items still apply, alongside the programme you are already running.
July
- Sit down with your predecessor and get the handover: the families to know about, the staff situations in progress, the commitments already made.
- Meet the board chair and, separately, the parent association lead. Understand what the board wants from your first year.
- Confirm your enrolment numbers for September and chase anyone who has not returned a contract or paid a deposit.
- Set the fee schedule and the payment dates for the year, and confirm how families will be paying.
- Review the policy handbook and decide what changes now rather than mid-year.
- Confirm your licensing and regulatory paperwork is current, and diarise the renewal dates.
- Finalise the calendar of school events and assemblies.
August
- Walk the building with your facilities lead. Every room, every exit, every piece of equipment.
- Plan the welcome for staff and the welcome for families. They are different events with different jobs.
- Set the two or three measures you will judge the year by — retention of families, enrolment, staff turnover, whatever matters here.
- Publish the staff meeting schedule for the whole year.
- Meet each senior staff member individually. Ask what they would fix first.
September
- Be in classrooms. Watch how each teacher works and how the school actually behaves when nobody is presenting.
- Review the emergency procedures with staff — fire, lockdown, evacuation, medical. Find the gaps now.
- Confirm every family's records are complete: contacts, permissions, allergies, custody arrangements, authorised pickups.
- Run collaborative goal-setting with staff so the year's priorities belong to them too.
October
- Look at attendance and at anything you are tracking on student progress. Act on what it shows while there is still time in the term.
- Prepare for parent conferences and make sure teachers have what they need for the difficult ones.
- Publish the next quarter's calendar.
- Survey staff on how the year is going so far.
November
- Recognise staff who have delivered, by name and specifically.
- Identify students who are falling behind and agree the interventions with their teachers.
- Confirm the professional development plan for the second half of the year.
December
- Take stock: where are students, where are staff, where is the school against the two or three measures you set in August.
- Start planning the second half of the year.
- Survey staff again. Things move.
- Celebrate properly before everyone leaves. It costs an afternoon.
January
- Run mid-year reviews with staff.
- Adjust the year's goals based on what the reviews and the data actually say.
- Review the budget against the calendar year and fix what has drifted.
- Ask every teacher what support they need for the second half.
February
- Open re-enrolment for the following year. This is the month that decides next September's revenue.
- Check that concerns raised in January are being handled, and be seen to be handling them.
- Review behaviour and wellbeing data.
March
- Confirm staffing for next year and start recruiting for anything open.
- Plan the end-of-year events, ceremonies and trips.
- Check in with every first-year teacher on how their year has actually gone.
April
- Review the year's assessment and progress data as a whole.
- Set next year's budget, informed by where re-enrolment has landed.
- Prepare staff contracts and supplier agreements so nothing lapses over the summer.
- Interview for open positions.
May
- Support teachers through end-of-year assessments and reporting.
- Confirm summer programmes, camps and enrichment, and open registration for them.
- Hold the end-of-year celebrations.
- Compare this year against last year honestly, including where it went backwards.
- Get signed contracts back.
June
- Make next year's decisions now, while this year is fresh.
- Publish next year's key dates to staff and returning families.
- Thank your staff specifically and publicly.
- Take the first two weeks of summer off. Then start again at July.
The administrative half of this list
A large part of that checklist is one job repeated: getting information and money from families, on time, without chasing.
TUIO handles that. Enrolment and re-enrolment run online, contracts and forms come back signed and complete, tuition and childcare fees are billed on the schedule you set, and every payment lands in one place with next-business-day payouts. Student and family records live in one file in Canada, on AWS, so the office is not reconciling three lists. Payment receipts and donation receipts go out automatically.
One decision on that July list is worth more thought than it usually gets: how families pay. If a family pays by cheque or by bank debit, they can stop the payment, and there is no mechanism to contest it — you are left chasing the debt or writing it off. If they pay by credit card, the only way to reverse it is a chargeback, and a chargeback can be disputed. With the signed enrolment agreement and the record of what the family agreed to, TUIO files that dispute for you and recovers the funds.
See what your first year looks like with the admin handled. Book a demo
