At the end of this month, I will put together my latest annual report on headteacher turnover across state-funded schools in England. Today, the total number of vacancies recorded since the 1^st August 2025 has reached 1,400. Add in re-advertisements, and the total number of different advertisements for a headship in a state school in England has reached nearly 1,650 by this morning.

Apart from seven small local authorities, details of at least one vacancy have been recorded from all other local authorities in England. In some large authorities, more than 30 vacancies have been recorded during the past 12 months.

Themes the report will consider are likely to include: the pay of headteachers, and especially the pay of headteachers of small schools; whether some schools have more difficulty recruiting a new head and what matters? This will include, location, percentage of free school meals pupils; academy or maintained school; religious or secular; large of small, and finally, the time of year of the original advertisement.

The headteacher advertisements from 1,004 schools admitting primary age children (including all-age schools) collected so far, compares relatively closely to the 1,101such vacancies recorded in a previous report compiled in December 2018. A more detailed look at longer-term trends will be included in the January updated report that will also consider re-advertisements, including the re-advertisement posted during the autumn term of 2026.

The current age profile of the teaching profession – see 36^th Report of the STRB for details, should be relatively helpful for headship vacancies, with a respectable number of possible candidates within the age-groups from which headteachers are traditionally drawn.

The market for secondary school headteachers is usually more buoyant than that for headteachers of primary schools, partly because the ratio of deputy heads to headteachers is greater in secondary schools.

Each year, a number of headteacher switch to another schools. Sadly, just reviewing vacancies cannot identify the number of such moves.

Another issue is that of the undefined term ‘Executive Head’. The term can mean a variety of different things, from just head of a single school to headship f a couple of schools to a post in a multi-academy trust with responsibility for a group of schools. This year, my study of vacancies has largely only considered vacancies for a headteacher of a single school, whatever their title. However, a couple of vacancies for ‘executive heads’ of infant and junior schools with the same school name have been included, as I consider that they are effectively one unit.

I first started collecting data about headteacher vacancies more than 40 years ago in the early 1980s, many of the issue I encountered in those early studies are still visible today.

Finally, are all vacancies now advertised? An annual check of the headteachers’ name on the DfE site containing school information should provide the answer, but it may be complicated by any interim headteachers pushing up the totals. No doubt AI can solve that problem. I will consider it for the report next January.