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3 changes we need for more teachers to become heads

3 changes we need for more teachers to become heads

The education system is in desperate need of more headteachers, but we won’t get them unless we make some major changes, argues Leyla Gambell

17th September 2020, 3:00pm

Leyla Gambell

It’s no surprise, really, that it has become increasingly difficult to recruit a headteacher over the past decade. In more normal times, the job brings intolerable stress, workload and pressure to perform. Right now, it looks like one of the toughest jobs going.

So there are likely senior leaders all around the country eyeing the top job, thinking “No thanks, I’m fine where I am.”

That’s a huge problem for education: we desperately need highly talented people to take charge of our schools and make lives better for our young people.

Recruiting headteachers

So what are the practical steps that could be taken to make this role more attractive to a new generation of school leaders?

I think these three things would make a big difference.

1. Get rid of punitive accountability

In the past six months, we have experienced a life without Ofsted, without league tables, without Sats - a life in which schools have been permitted, for the first time in decades, to follow the needs of the children alone.

This has brought with it a significant workload reduction for staff with less marking, assessment and data entry.

There is so much here that could be adapted to take forward in our schools to improve the lives of those who work and learn there. It would just require a greater sense of trust in, and autonomy for, headteachers.

2. Make it acceptable to expect a decent work-life balance

If the average teacher is working 50-plus hours per week, then what about the average headteacher?

In today’s online world, the constant flood of emails and WhatsApp group messages, as well as the omnipresence of the mobile phone, make it hard to build a work-life balance.

We need to normalise a more normal working pattern. That can only happen if more money comes into schools so that leadership responsibilities can be better distributed, so we are not left in a position of a headteacher having to try to do everything with very little time to do it.

3. Normalise flexible working

For working parents, juggling their home life with the working hours of a teacher or middle leader can be challenging enough. But as a headteacher?

There needs to be more flexibility on working patterns for heads. Particularly in the primary sector, where 82.4 per cent of teachers are women, but only 67 per cent of headteachers.

Governing bodies should be encouraged to seriously consider applications from candidates who are seeking a job share, or who are looking for small flexibilities in their working pattern that would make it easier to juggle a family life alongside a role as a headteacher.

Leyla Gambell is assistant head for inclusion at a mainstream primary in North Kent