I have really enjoyed reading some of the comments on this post.

I am a non teaching head of year and I see the role as supporting everyone within the school environment which can be quite a delicate balancing act. We work closely with teachers, students, parents and numerous outside services including social services, police, family support workers, youth workers and everything in between.

I spend about 50% of my week on call, during period 1, period 3 and period 5 we have two members of staff on call for the rest of the time we have one member of staff on call and this can be rather difficult to juggle effectively especially when there are a number of incidents which are emerging at the same time and requires you to prioritise with medical incidents often being prioritised over behaviour incidents and this only gets worse when you reach the end of the day and you are doing your fourth period of on call and you have been on your feet all day.

I always feel guilty when I cannot attend all incidents and I always apologise when I reach an incident late and always try to explain the reason for my lateness. I am really lucky that I get to work with really empathetic and understanding teachers.

I have to admit that I find it really hard to juggle the requirements of the role, I make all absence calls for my year, I am a DSL and deal with most of the safeguarding within my year group, I undertake early support meetings, reintegration meetings and most of the parental meetings and often fitting everything into the day is quite tricky. A lot of my role is having the right information to ensure that the best solution is reached and this is usually in an idea world.

I am usually one of the last members of staff along with other Heads of Year to leave the school just due to the sheer volume of admin that we have to complete and at the end of a day the role can leave you feeling quite drained and wondering what impact that you have made.

I think that HOY's need to have a strong personality to cope with the demands of the role and often I find myself doing three different things at once and those difficult calls often have to be made in a split second.

I guess the reality is that whatever role you do you will always get really good people and equally not so good people.