Headteachers experienced substantial increases in anxiety about work throughout the pandemic, causing potential consequences for the future recruitment of senior leaders, according to a new study.
A University College London (UCL) study released today shows that in January 2021 almost two-thirds (65 per cent) of headteachers in England felt highly anxious about work, compared with 42 per cent of class teachers.
Figures for before the pandemic show that around one in four headteachers and classroom teachers reported high anxiety about work in October 2019.
According to the findings, work periods during the pandemic often constituted longer, more unpredictable hours for headteachers, who reported regularly working around 20 hours more per week during the first lockdown than class teachers and around 10 hours more per week during the rest of the pandemic.
“It’s unsurprising that the pandemic had a major impact on staff across the sector but the differences in levels of anxiety are quite shocking, and the additional strain that was put on headteachers, in particular, is clear,” said UCL’s Professor John Jerrim, a co-author of the study.
“It’s vital that the government now reflect on guidance and support given to school leaders during difficult periods.”
Low morale and burnout were widely reported among school staff during the pandemic, with the stresses of remote teaching, finding supply cover and continuous U-turns from Whitehall cited as primary factors.
Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said the survey’s findings were “not surprising” due to headteachers being “incredibly badly treated” by the government.
“Heads were constantly subjected to ever-changing, and often incoherent, guidance, and expected to implement substantial public health measures with very little public health support,” he said.
School leadership ‘increasingly challenging’
“All of this is on top of years of underfunding of education, which has made running schools and colleges increasingly challenging, and a punitive system of inspections and performance tables.”
The “nadir”, Mr Barton said, came in October 2020, when the government used temporary continuity direction powers to place an obligation on schools to provide immediate access to remote education for pupils if they were off school with Covid, which unions said at the time could lead to headteacher resignations.
These duly came, as headteacher vacancies registered an increase of 18 per cent across the first three months of 2022 compared with the same period in 2020.
UCL’s study found that the problem remains significant, with the proportion of deputy and assistant heads saying they want to become a headteacher one day falling to 48 per cent post-pandemic against 56 per cent pre-pandemic.
Dr Emily Tanner, of the Nuffield Foundation, which sponsored the study, said: “By tracking anxiety levels, this research provides an important new perspective on the immediate and longer-term impact of Covid on the school workforce.
“The heightened pressures faced by school leaders and the declining appetite for headship among deputy and assistant heads highlight the need for better support to shore up sustainable leadership.”
However, the research also highlighted that levels of anxiety were not uniform across different groups of teachers, with differences seen across gender and parental status.
Before the pandemic, around one in five male and female teachers with children under 5 experienced high levels of work-related anxiety. But at the height of the pandemic in winter 2020, around one-third of female teachers with a child under 5 felt highly anxious about work, compared with one-fifth of males.
“In our unequal society, women still too often bear the brunt of caring responsibilities, often alongside highly demanding jobs. The pandemic shone a light on this,” Mr Barton said.
“As the current cost-of-living crisis bites, it’s vital that the government does more than pay lip service to the need for high-quality, affordable, widely available childcare and early years education to benefit both children and working parents. It is essential if the government is to have any hope of achieving its growth aspirations.”
The Department for Education said:
“The overall picture of school leadership in England is positive - vacancy rates are low and the quality of leadership is high, but we do recognise school leaders have faced challenges.
“That is why we are taking a wide range of action to support the profession, including committing to the delivery of 500,000 teacher training and development opportunities by 2024, and funding a support scheme specifically for leaders.”
