It has struck me before that the HEART values can be deceptive: they are Good Values that are about fairness and decency and respect and striving for something better for us all and for the world we inhabit. They are also exacting, in some ways unforgiving, and intensely difficult to live out daily. Carrying these values at heart can prove challenging to all, and they require of leaders in particular a higher standard than they might encounter in some others.

The fault lines of our beliefs, values and actions are no more visible than in our approaches to behaviour, communication and need, and these ruptures can quickly become heated sources of debate and recrimination between different colleagues with very similar values, according to how these values are interpreted and find their way into action. Inclusion overall can be a challenging matter to negotiate – one person’s inclusion can be another’s exclusion; one person’s healthy boundary, seen by another as obnoxious and arbitrary.

Through the prism of the HEART values we can articulate some of our deeply held beliefs in light of our shared values, and through this articulation, we can achieve more clarity together about what it means to meet the needs of all without penalising the few; how we can support those with the greatest need without impacting upon the learning rights of their peers.

High Expectations centre on clarity, articulation of a standard, and a refusal to accept less for a student than that standard. It is less about what might be accepted from a student (it is our role to teach them the skills and behaviours necessary to meet these expectations after all). High expectations are not hopes. They are not hit and miss, pass or fail. They are consistent, exacting, and the unspoken undertone must always be that “You are worth this level of effort, you can achieve this standard, and we will not patronise you by lowering an expectation we can support you to meet”. The key for school leaders is determining what the High Expectations actually mean (is there a universal high expectation? If not, what accounts for this difference?) and what support must be in place for all to meet them. Where expectations are not reached (by adults and by students) what happens? What conversations occur to ensure clarity, consequence and support? How much of that conversation demonstrates an unswerving belief that the person can and deserves to achieve? Through these conversations, and the language we use, we can just as easily build up a child’s self-confidence as tear it down, we can connect or disconnect. We can make ourselves enticing – a community within which a child wants to belong – or exclusive – somewhere that compounds what is likely already to be a sense of rejection, of unloveliness.

We hold high expectations as means to communicate what we want, and at which standard a child or adult can expect to achieve. Without regular, detailed reinforcement of what these expectations are and why they exist, the expectations themselves become a meaningless hurdle to clear or at which to fall. Without a passionate commitment to seeing every child succeed, they become a means by which to filter out the vulnerable and leave them out in the cold.

With expectations high and clearly articulated, our energies can best be spent on enabling a child to meet them – by arranging with them where the uniform will come from, by modelling the work we wish to see, by teaching them the communication skills necessary to succeed. We do not compromise on, or lower the standard for any child or adult because all children are worthy – in this respect we are inscrutable, ruthless even in our decision to uphold a standard. This can be tempered by compassionate execution – by language of connection, of hope, of reconciliation as we support the child to reach it at their point of readiness to accept our help. If in the intervening time they need space, thinking time or a different kind of support, we allow it. If they need different interventions from different people, we broker it. At the moment of readiness we give them what they need to succeed, highlight their achievement, and enable them to move on.

Some questions we might ask ourselves as school leaders as we set our expectations might be:

• What do these mean for all children?
• What do these mean for those experiencing the greatest disadvantage?
• Whose expectations are they?
• What if they are different, in different parts of the school? Department? Classroom?

Expectations serve as a determiner of just what and how much support a child needs. Our curriculum, both formal and ‘hidden’ focuses on knowing our place in the world and knowing how to interact with and affect it. High expectations support children to learn a language that they can choose to step into, out of and beyond, once they have mastery of it – be it attire, articulacy or approach.