I was circling another school’s car park recently, despairing at the prospect of finding a space. All hope seemed lost when my eyes fell on a miraculously empty bay just outside reception. Maybe another teacher had suddenly opted to leave the profession and had roared away into the sunset just a couple of minutes beforehand. What luck!

Unfortunately, as I began to home in on that space, I saw that it had “HEADTEACHER” neatly painted inside it. This is not something we do at my school. What kind of a head must this be? And why should any school put up with such an arrangement?

If there is one member of staff who should be prepared to park anywhere and occasionally hike across the premises, it should surely be the head. The weight of the world may be on their shoulders, but the weight of a crateful of exercise books is not. If there are to be any designated parking bays at all then they should surely go to the teachers with the most classes. These people - in terms of conveying books and files to and from their cars -  literally have the heaviest workloads.

If a headteacher occasionally has to park up in some far-flung corner of the site, they should welcome the chance to stroll across the premises, meeting and greeting along the way - a natural extra contact with staff and students. The fresh air and extra steps will bring health benefits, too. For these reasons, I expect most heads (including our own) are perfectly happy to park wherever the fates take them.

A sensible car for a sensible school leader

That school’s reserved parking bay seemed to speak volumes about the likely relationship there between head and colleagues. The yellow-painted “HEADTEACHER” sign was essentially saying, “I am the head and my time and space is more important than yours,” rather than, “We are all in this together, in the great parking lot of education.”

The other noticeable feature of that designated parking bay was that the headteacher’s car was not actually there. This brings us to our next car park-based clue about headteachers, the next flickering indicator as to what he or she is probably like: just how often is the car there? If it is almost as regular a fixture as everyone else’s then this is an encouraging sign. It suggests a leader who puts the school first and turns down most of those invitations to attend or speak at courses and conferences.    

Consider, also, the type of car the head has chosen. There will be exceptions but I would suggest that the heads most committed to the betterment of their school will be the ones who are not all that interested in what kind of car they drive.

The best heads tend not to be petrol heads. They will be content with a functional and not particularly glamorous model - a mid-range Mondeo, say - and will happily keep the same car for many years. Their ambitions are school-centred rather than self-centred, driven by ideals, not wheels. Perhaps they even cycle into school. Compare and contrast with some of the tawdry high-end vehicles flaunted by some academy leaders.

It’s often claimed that you can tell what a teacher is like within a few seconds of walking into a lesson. But when it comes to finding out about a headteacher, I am not sure you even need venture beyond the car park.

Stephen Petty is head of humanities at Lord Williams’s School in Thame, Oxfordshire