07 October 2026
The Speed of September
Published by Amanda Anderson
The Speed of September
Over the first few weeks of the new academic year, one phrase has surfaced repeatedly in my coaching conversations with school leaders.
The pace.
Not necessarily the workload. Not one particular problem. Just how quickly everything seems to happen once September begins.
In conversations with leaders from different schools and settings, I have heard variations of the same experience:
→ “It’s always that rush at the beginning.”
→ “It’s been a bit of a crazy start.”
→ “You forget how quick everything happens.”
→ “I didn’t realise that we worked at this speed.”
That last comment stayed with me. Because there is something about the summer break that seems to allow us to temporarily forget the speed at which schools operate. Then September arrives.
Within days, the machinery of school life is running again. Pupils return. New staff begin. Results are analysed. Targets are set. Routines need establishing. Open evenings appear. Staffing issues need resolving. Improvement priorities restart. Conversations that could wait during the summer suddenly need answers.
None of these things is particularly surprising. Yet their density can be.
What the speed of September looks like in schools
What I have noticed isn’t simply leaders describing themselves as busy. Busy is very familiar in education. What they are describing is acceleration.
The transition from summer to September can be remarkably abrupt. Leaders move from the relative space of the summer into an environment where multiple things require their attention almost simultaneously.
The individual demands may be entirely manageable. However the difficulty is the pace at which they arrive.
→ A staffing issue needs resolving.
→ A pupil needs support.
→ A parent needs a response.
→ A new colleague needs guidance.
→ Data needs reviewing.
→ A meeting needs preparing for.
→ An improvement priority needs moving forward.
→ Another conversation needs having.
And all of this sits alongside the normal work of teaching and leading.
One leader described the start of term as “plate spinning”. Another talked about the familiar “rush at the beginning”. Another described a “crazy start” before reflecting on something I found particularly interesting:
“You just sort of forget how quick everything happens.”
Perhaps that is why September can feel so intense, even to highly experienced leaders. We know September is busy. But perhaps we forget just how fast it is.
September has very little runway
Reflecting on these conversations also made me think about my own years working in schools.
I always liked September. There was something about the reset that appealed to me. A new timetable. New classes. New priorities. Fresh stationery! The sense that you could begin again and perhaps do some things slightly differently this time. But looking back, I also recognise how quickly that fresh start became full speed. There wasn’t much runway!
Within days, the calendar was filling, issues were emerging and decisions were needed. You quickly moved from preparing for the year to being completely inside it. I don’t think I ever questioned that particularly. It was simply how schools worked. But hearing leaders describe the same experience now has made me wonder whether we underestimate the impact of that acceleration.
The challenge isn’t necessarily September itself. It is the speed at which we expect ourselves, and sometimes everyone around us, to move from returning to full operation.
Why It Matters Through an Educational Leadership Lens
The speed of September matters because leadership depends on the quality of our thinking. School leaders are constantly making judgements. Some are relatively small. Others affect staff, pupils, families or the longer-term direction of the school.
Leadership also requires listening, reflection, curiosity, prioritisation and sometimes the confidence to sit with a problem before deciding what to do. Pace can quietly interfere with all of those things.
When everything feels urgent, we naturally become responsive. We answer the email. Resolve the staffing issue. Respond to the behaviour incident. Make the decision. Attend the meeting. Move to the next thing. That responsiveness is often necessary.
Schools are dynamic organisations. Things happen and leaders need to respond. But there is a difference between being responsive and becoming permanently reactive. When the pace remains high for long enough, it can become harder to distinguish between the two.
The important question isn’t simply:
Can I keep up?
Most school leaders can. Perhaps a better question is:
What is this pace doing to the quality of my thinking?
The workload may not have changed. The density has.
This is where I think The Speed of September differs from a straightforward workload conversation.
Workload tends to focus on quantity: how much there is to do.
But two working days containing exactly the same number of tasks can feel completely different depending on how those tasks are distributed.
Thinking time matters.
Transitions matter.
Interruptions matter.
The number of different contexts we move between matters.
September can compress a remarkable amount of school life into a short period.
That creates density.
A leader may move from a safeguarding conversation to curriculum planning, to a staffing problem, to a pupil issue, to an email from a parent, to an improvement meeting, sometimes within the space of an hour. The issue isn’t necessarily that any individual task is unreasonable. It is the speed of switching between them. That distinction matters because simply telling leaders to manage their time better doesn’t address the pattern.
Sometimes there isn’t too much work in one particular moment.
There is simply too much happening too quickly.
Why naming the pattern matters
One of the reasons I write these reflections is that naming an experience can change how we respond to it.
If September feels difficult, the immediate assumption can be:
I need to get more organised.
I need to catch up.
I need to work faster.
But what if working faster isn’t always the answer?
If the underlying issue is pace, increasing our own speed may simply amplify it.
Perhaps sometimes the more useful leadership response is to deliberately slow something down.
A conversation.
A decision.
A response.
A piece of thinking.
Not because we are unable to keep up, but because some parts of leadership deserve more than our quickest thinking.
Pause for a Moment
You might pause for a moment and ask yourself:
Q. Where has the speed of this term started shaping the quality of your thinking?
It may not be everywhere. There may simply be one area where the pace has begun to determine the response. Noticing it is a useful place to start.
One Small Doable Action
- Identify one decision, conversation or piece of work this week that would benefit from being slowed down rather than sped up.
Give it ten uninterrupted minutes before responding or acting.
No email.
No switching to something else.
No attempt to fit another task into the gap.
Just ten minutes to think.
Because not everything that arrives quickly needs to be dealt with quickly.
Noticing patterns in schools
This article forms part of the Noticing Patterns in Schools series, where I share patterns that emerge through leadership coaching conversations with school leaders across the UK.
The aim isn’t to prescribe quick fixes or offer generic advice. Instead, it is about noticing what might otherwise go unnamed and helping leaders create space for clearer thinking.
If you’d like to receive future reflections as new patterns emerge, you can subscribe to the LinkedIn newsletter.
Because resilience in leadership rarely comes from working harder. More often, it begins with noticing the patterns shaping the work.
You may also be interested in previous articles in this series:
The Emotional Release After Exams
