Matt Topliss is the principal at Kyoto International School in Japan, a role he has held since August 2024.
Prior to this, he led schools in Bahrain, Egypt and Morocco. He began his career in Kent, working as a PE teacher, before moving internationally in 2016.
He talks to Tes about his leadership role, including his commitment to have a one-to-one with all teachers every two weeks, moving meetings to free up more time for staff, and why he’s embraced video newsletters.
Meeting all teachers regularly
I meet all the teaching staff once every two weeks in a one-to-one conversation. I schedule in 30 minutes but it’s not compulsory. If they are busy or don’t feel the need to catch up, we can leave it, but most staff use it and find it helpful.
It helps me to keep a temperature check on the school and pick up any issues or to help people with problems. Sometimes it’s just about staff having some affirmation that things are OK or wanting to explain what they’re working on.
I have 26 staff members so it’s 13 meetings each week but some may only last five minutes. You couldn’t do it in a bigger school but you could direct divisional heads to do it and feed back. I think it’s important to give staff space to talk.
Mentoring
Another element of this is around coaching and mentoring, and asking people questions – so not necessarily advising but asking, “What do you think? What have you done so far?”
And then people come up with the answers or want to check things out with me, and I might say, “Oh, you might consider this, or have you thought about this?”
I think it really gives me an understanding of where people are, allows me to react to things and gives confidence, I think, in leadership. I’m training my other leaders into that mindset as well. We’re not quite there but it will come.
Finishing the week early
We used to have an all-staff meeting on a Wednesday after school but I moved it to a Friday and made it earlier in the afternoon.
This means school can finish a bit earlier so if parents want more time with their children they can get away for the weekend or have a nice evening. And if we can finish the meeting early we can give staff that time back.
We’ve also moved quite a few end-of-term deadlines to the week before the end of term or half-term, so staff don’t have everything piling up towards the end and instead can space out when they are working towards submitting anything.
Meetings that deliver decisions
I have a lot of meetings through the week; for example, I have a weekly educational leadership team meeting, with subject coordinators and my head of learning.
I have a primary, secondary and inclusion coordination meeting and a senior leadership team meeting on a Friday morning, and a part of that is talking logistics with my director of operations and business manager.
Finally, every two weeks I have a meeting with my board chairs, who come to school, and we talk about the structure of board meetings.
All of those meetings are really crucial – they’re not just talking shops, we make decisions and get things done. They are important for building relationships so we can be honest about what we’re doing and the opportunities in front of us.
Video newsletters
I make a video recording of our newsletter each week – this involves me talking alongside slides that contain the key information.
We have found that parents really engage with this and it means they can listen if they’re driving or working. They can also put subtitles on in their language, which helps with any translation needs.
It only takes about an hour to put it all together on Zoom and then we host it on our private YouTube channel for parents to access.
Keeping emails under control
I’m on emails most of the time really – that’s my work-life balance choice – but we are a school that doesn’t send any emails after 6pm or before 7.30am unless it’s a safeguarding issue.
We use scheduled send a lot, and parents have got really good with understanding not to message us out of hours.
I tell staff that if they get a message from a parent that doesn’t warrant a reply out of hours, then they shouldn’t do it.
Enjoying city life
I run a lot here, probably about 50km a month in total, and I cycle everywhere, too. I don’t have a car so it’s fantastic to get out and unwind. It’s a lovely city to explore. We’ve bought a house here that’s a bit of a fixer-upper, so that will be a project to get stuck into.
Matt Topliss was talking to Dan Worth
“My Week As” is a series exploring how senior roles – from heads of safeguarding to education directors, and from CEOs to COOs – are performed differently in different trusts, organisations and contexts.
The series’ aim is to explore how and why roles are performed differently – and whether similarities can provide a blueprint for best practice. You can find the full series here.
AloJapan.com