Leadership Experience Case Study
School calendars tend to grow more easily than they shrink.
A celebration is added one year. A themed day is added the next. Someone introduces another competition, campaign, awareness day or special assembly. The event remains on the calendar because it was there last year. After several cycles, the academic calendar can become crowded with activities whose original purpose nobody can clearly explain.
During one school leadership assignment, I began reviewing the next academic year’s calendar with the principal and coordinators. The review exposed several activities that appeared unnecessary or irrelevant to the school’s academic priorities, including light-hearted observances that had simply remained in the calendar. One team member explained that she had not removed them because she did not know who had originally inserted them.
That small comment revealed a larger leadership problem: institutional inheritance had become a substitute for educational judgement.
An Academic Calendar Is Not an Events Calendar
A school calendar must contain events, but its first responsibility is to protect the learning year.
Before adding activities, leaders need to account for:
- the number of teaching days;
- assessment and examination periods;
- revision and intervention time;
- teacher professional-development days;
- parent meetings;
- holidays and likely disruptions;
- curriculum-specific requirements;
- major institutional events;
- age-appropriate student experiences.
Only after the academic skeleton is protected should optional events fill the remaining space.
The Hidden Cost of “Just One More Event”
An event may occupy only one hour on paper but consume far more instructional time through rehearsal, movement, preparation, costume, decoration, practice and timetable changes.
This is especially important when several departments independently plan activities. Each event may appear reasonable in isolation. Collectively, they can fragment teaching.
The leadership question is therefore not simply:
“Is this a good activity?”
It is:
“Is this activity worth the learning time, staff effort and timetable disruption it requires?”
Do Not Retain an Activity Because Nobody Knows Who Added It
The calendar review reinforced a principle that applies far beyond events. Schools often preserve practices because removing them feels riskier than continuing them.
A leader may hear:
- “We have always done it.”
- “It was there last year.”
- “Someone from management added it.”
- “Parents may expect it.”
- “We are not sure who approved it.”
None of these is an educational rationale.
Every recurring activity should be able to answer three questions: What purpose does it serve? Who benefits? What does it cost in time and effort?
A Practical Calendar Review Framework
I recommend reviewing every proposed activity through five lenses.
- Purpose: What educational, cultural, wellbeing or community purpose does it serve?
- Priority: Is it important enough to compete with curriculum time?
- Participation: Does it create meaningful student involvement or mainly produce a display?
- Proportion: Is the preparation effort proportionate to the value?
- Placement: Is it scheduled at a time that minimises academic disruption?
Some Events Should Stay
The solution is not to turn school into uninterrupted classroom instruction. Assemblies, arts, sports, exhibitions, field experiences, celebrations, service activities and community events can be deeply educational.
The issue is intentionality.
A well-designed school calendar should reflect the institution’s values and curriculum priorities. It should create memorable experiences without allowing the academic year to become a sequence of rehearsals interrupted by lessons.
Build the Calendar With the Curriculum, Not After It
During the same planning period, I had already emphasised that the activities for the coming year should be checked thoroughly so that academics would not need to be compromised later.
This sequencing matters. Curriculum pacing, assessment and major learning milestones should inform the calendar before optional activities are finalised.
Once the calendar is published, removing events becomes politically harder. The best time to protect learning time is therefore during planning, not during the week when teachers realise they are behind.
The Leadership Learning
The experience reinforced a broader lesson about school improvement:
Not every inherited practice deserves to become a tradition.
Leadership includes the responsibility to stop things, not only to start them.
A disciplined academic calendar tells teachers and students that learning time matters. It also makes the events that remain more meaningful because they have survived a deliberate test of purpose rather than simply another year of institutional habit.