Are headteachers really staying less time in post?

Posted on October 2, 2025 by John Howson

As someone that started collecting data about the turnover of head teachers way back in the 1980s, and added deputy headteacher posts in the 1990s, and when the Assistant head grade was created added those to my dataset, the latest research from the DfE on leadership turnover is very welcome. School Leadership retention, Reporting year 2024 – Explore education statistics – GOV.UK

However, it comes with a health warning. The methodology section contains the following

Exploratory analysis of Teacher Pension Scheme (TPS ….. suggests that the number of head teachers still in service but not being reported in the School Workforce Census has been increasing in recent years, substantially impacting the trends seen in this release. School Leadership retention: methodology – Explore education statistics – GOV.UK

This warning needs to be borne in mind when considering the trends of length of service in post. The DfE data also excluded headteachers on a temporary contract, and those over 50 where retirement is likely to be their next career move.

On the face of it headteachers are spending less time in post.

Primary
Year of Census	Base	% 1 Year	% 5 year
2011	974	93.7%	78.8%
2012	1075	92.4%	77.0%
2013	1177	91.1%	76.4%
2014	1302	90.2%	73.3%
2015	1311	90.5%	74.4%
2016	1349	89.6%	73.9%
2017	1404	87.8%	71.6%
2018	1262	88.3%	70.0%
2019	1219	90.2%	70.0%
2020	966	89.2%	z
2021	1114	89.2%	z
2022	1414	88.9%	z
2023	1273	89.7%	z
2024	1199	z	z

Primary head teachers in post one year after appointment seem to be around 4% less for those appointed in 2023 compared with the class of 2011. After five years, there is around an 8% decline from nearly 79% to 70%, although we have yet to see the effect of covid on turnover.

Secondary
Year of Census	Base	% 1 Year	% 5 year
2011	240	91.2%	65.0%
2012	289	91.0%	64.7%
2013	327	87.2%	62.1%
2014	378	85.4%	61,4%
2015	384	86.7%	62.0%
2016	430	84.7%	60.5%
2017	437	84.9%	63.6%
2018	440	85.0%	60.2%
2019	421	87.6%	62.5%
2020	317	90.2%	z
2021	329	83.9%	z
2022	404	84.9%	z
2023	416	85.6%	z
2024	419	z	z

For the secondary sector, turnover after one year has increased by nearly six per cent, and by around 5% after five years. In this respect, secondary teacher seems more likely to stay in post longer.

This is not surprising, as an appointment to a secondary headship historically was less likely to lead to another appointment, whereas in the primary sector many heads were first appointed to a small school and then took a subsequent headship in a larger school.

However, the defining feature of the period under discussion is the transfer of a large number of schools from maintained school status to becoming an academy. The next decade will help explain where that period of change was a temporary change in turnover rates or the creation of a new landscape where headteachers move more frequently.

The DfE research also has analysis on whether headteachers remain in any posts in a school within the sector. Again, secondary heads are more likely, (as retirements are excluded), to remain in a secondary school, whereas primary teachers are now less likely than in 2011 to remain in a school. It would be interesting to know where those teachers are now employed, and whether they are still working in education.

No doubt the pressure on the primary sector has been harder for heads to deal with than for their secondary colleagues since many primary schools do not have the same range of support staff as their secondary colleagues. Many more may have also had to content with the outcomes of an ofsted visit.

This is a useful dataset, but it should be made more comprehensive by ensuing all MATs complete the School Workforce Census and that new categories of posts, such as Executive Headteacher, are captured within the census.

Virtual Schools have a key role

Posted on September 8, 2025 by John Howson

Do you know what a Virtual School is? I will assume that regular readers of this blog will know, but for the newcomer or casual readers, it is the local authority service that provides support for the education of both Looked After Children, and those children previously looked after. Recently the role of the service has been extended to include all children with a social worker and, even more recently, children in kinship care.

In many respects the virtual school embodies the very essence of local authority Children’s Services, bringing together support for children in need and their education. In that respect, it is disappointing that too often the Head of the Virtual School is often only a third-tier officer not reporting directly to the Director of Children’s Services.

The extension of the work of virtual schools to include children with a social worker has been the subject of a recent research report looking at the outcomes of extending the role of the virtual school to encompass all children with a social worker.

Evaluation of the Extension of Virtual School Heads’ Duties to Children with a Social Worker Final Report

The report indicated that attendance, and the consequences of challenging behaviour – suspensions and exclusions – have featured significantly in the work of virtual schools with this new group of young people. Improved attainment, has been less of an outcome. The effects of covid-19 on both attendance and exclusions may well have meant less resources for improving attainment of this group; or that improving attainment may just take longer, and be a consequence of improvements in attendance. Either way, I would have liked to see more discussion about the age at which a child is linked to a social worker, and whether it is easier in the primary sector than the secondary schools to improve attainment?

In many ways, the report makes disappointing reading more than 15 years after the government department at Westminster responsible for education added children’ services to its remit under the last Labour government.

Too often there has been a lack of awareness of the educational needs of these vulnerable young people on the part of schools and social workers, and a real lack of data to allow effective tracking of such young people’s education attainments, partly because of data protection issues.

I understand that concern, and there is an interesting vignette in the report of child that had a social work for a brief period because of domestic abuse being offered extra maths teaching by their new school because of having been a ‘child in need’ for a brief period. The mother had hoped for a new beginning at a new school. This illustrates the complexity of the challenges in working with these young people and their families.

Many ofsted reviews of Children’s Services highlight challenges with inter-service working, and this report also has concerns. My worry is that in education, the growth of MATs and the downgrading of local authority roles, has made it more challenging for the development of policy around the education for all children with a social worker. The almost total absence of any contribution for elected cabinet members to the review worries my immensely. As with the NHS, local political input is seen as of little effect and not worth considering.

Personally, I think that view is wrong, and a strong local political sense of place in both education and social work with children is vital, as those that have read my demand over the years for Jacob’s Law, and the success of the Clause in the new Bill on in-year admissions will understand.

Headteacher vacancies: even in August

Posted on August 9, 2025 by John Howson

More than 40 years ago, I first started counting heads. That’s actually headteacher vacancies, not actual heads. With some spare time on my hands, I thought that I would go back to my roots and look at what is the current state of play this August?

Of course, August is a quiet month, and there are currently fewer than 60 headteacher vacancies listed on the DfE website that is the main go-to place these days, just as the TES was in the 1980s.

The DfE vacancy website still contains some of the flaws created when it was established. Anyone trying to use modern methods of’ scraping’ jobs will come across the random duplication outcome that has been a feature of the site ever since its inception. I am not sure whether it was deliberate or a fault in the coding, but it always used to annoy me when I was running TeachVac to see the same job repeated in the listing more than once.

The alternative, pioneered by TeachVac was to ‘scrape’ school websites where schools placed their jobs. However, for obvious reasons, not all schools placed headship vacancies on their website. Presumably not to let staff and parents know of the impending departure of their headteacher.

At least with headteacher posts, there is no problem deciding whether the vacancy is a repeat listing or a re-advertisement. Headteacher posts are unique, and thus easy to track.

Anyway, what did I learn from collecting the first 50 vacancies? Special schools were over-represented, with eight such schools looking for a headteacher this August. As a part of the White Paper on SEND, I hope that the government will consider the staffing and training of staff for the special school sector that has long been a Cinderella, and if not bullied by the bigger primary and secondary sectors, it is certainly still in search of a fairy godmother.

There are only two secondary schools in the list, and one is a 10-14 school, and the other a private school. That doesn’t surprise me, as secondary schools usually sort out headship vacancies well before the start of the school year. If there is an unexpected vacancy, then there is often a deputy head that can ‘act up’ until an appropriate time to advertise the vacancy.

Of the 50 or so primary schools, including one First School, 17 were faith schools: ten Roman Catholic; six Church of England and one other Christian faith. These numbers don’t surprise me in the least; indeed, I would have been surprised if there were fewer Roman Catholic schools in the list. All the years I monitored headteacher vacancies, Roman Catholic schools often featured prominently in any listings.

The relative absence of schools from London and much of the South East is interesting, but I need more data to say anything else than that.

Almost all schools provide a starting salary, either as a point on the scale or as a cash sum. One academy adds 5% to the quoted salary. The indication of a starting salary is an improvement over the time when schools rarely quoted a starting salary for those interested in becoming their headteacher.

Whether I keep us this task will no doubt depend upon how much else I have to do, but it was interesting retracing my footsteps.

Ethnic Minority Head Teachers: scant progress

Posted on July 15, 2023 by John Howson

In October 2021, I wrote a blog about the number of ethnic minority head teachers ‘We need more black headteachers in our schools’ | John Howson (wordpress.com) I thought it was time to bring the data up to date.

Year	Ethnic minority Head teachers (including white minorities)
2015/2016	1,473
2016/2017	1,480
2017/2018	1,512
2018/2019	1,531
2019/2020	1,530
2020/2021	1,532
2021/2022	1,564
2022/2023	1,627

Source Annual School Workforce Census

Despite the increase of 63 in the total number of these head teachers between November 2021 and November 2022, and including all minority groups not classified as ‘White British’ in the total, there were apparently only 1,627 head teachers self-identified as from minority backgrounds in November 2022. This an increase of only around 10%, or just 154 additional head teachers from minority backgrounds, over the eight years represented in the table. There may be more, because the number that refused to answer the question increased from 117 to 192 during the same period.

During the same period, the total of ‘White’ head teachers only changed from 19,520 in November 2019 to 19,104 in November 2022.

There is better news on the ITT front, where ITT undergraduate entrants from minority ethnic groups increased from 12% to 17% of the total intake between 2019/2020 and 2022/2023. For those on postgraduate courses, the increase in the percentage was from 19% to 22% during the same period. However, I suspect that the distribution was skewed towards certain parts of the country. Sadly, we don’t easily have access to that data.

The discussion at the Select Committee last Tuesday about discrimination and unconscious bias meaning that more ethnic minority applicants were not offered places mirrored the finding from the two studies that I conducted for the then National College. Progress is being made, but slowly. My research also found that ethnic minority applicants fared better when there were fewer applicants to select from, as there was in most subjects last year. What will happen if the economy slows and the number of applicants for ITT increases once again?

Given that boys from an African Caribbean background do relatively poorly in our schooling system, it would also be interesting to know whether there is more of a challenge recruiting men form minority backgrounds than there is recruiting women and whether certain subjects struggle more than others? How many physics ITT recruits came for ethnic minority backgrounds in each of the last five years, and were they recruited mainly from a small number of courses. If they aren’t in the pipeline of learning then they won’t be there to become teachers of future generations.

For over a quarter of a century we have been urging women into science, engineering and other STEM subjects. Should we now look to do the same with other under-represented groups. As a large employer of graduates, does teaching have a responsibility to not just recruit graduates but also to influence the pipeline. After all that pipeline starts in schools.

Trends in school leadership

Posted on May 1, 2022 by John Howson

Last week, the DfE published an interesting paper about the characteristics and trends in school leadership over the decade from 2010 to 2020. School leadership in England 2010 to 2020: characteristics and trends – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) This document will no doubt provide the basis for many higher education dissertations and academic research articles. The DfE data also helps to validate the annual Leadership Review produced by TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk over the past few years that in itself has been the successor to the research into headship turnover that I commenced with Education Data surveys way back in the 1980s: genuinely a lifetime ago.

One of the issues that the DfE paper doesn’t draw out enough is the fate of older entrants into teaching. Now, I assume someone switching career in their late 30s isn’t normally interested in aiming for headship unless they have been persuaded to teach for that very reason. But, what of those in their late 20s? Can they expect the same promotion opportunities as new graduates? I expect that to be the case in the relatively flat hierarchies in the primary sector, but what of those talented career changers in large English and Mathematics departments? Can they achieve promotion fast enough to reach headships? Or is there still a barrier of age by which you must normally have reached first an assistant headship and then a deputy headship to be considered not ‘too old’ for a first headship in a secondary school?

The second leadership issue not adequately considered by the DfE paper is that of the staffing of leadership teams in faith schools, and especially Christian schools, in an increasingly secular society. Requiring adherence to the faith, not just in a notional manner but as a practicing adherent, can restrict the supply of candidates. How far, especially in the primary sector, where faith schools form a large proportion of the overall total of schools, does this issue affect leadership appointments. TeachVac annual review suggested that faith schools are more likely to need to re-advertise a headship than non-faith schools, although better management of teacher supply by some diocese has reduced the size of the problem from the levels seen more than a decade ago.

In terms of middle leadership, there seems little about difference between subjects in the study and any strain that a shortage of teachers in subject such as design and technology or business studies may place on middle leadership isn’t considered. Do teachers in these subjects reach middle leadership positions sooner that say, English or mathematics teachers?

Not surprisingly, in a survey that runs for 2010 to 2020, headteachers and other school leaders are more likely to be younger in 2020 than in 2010. This is partly due to the retirement of the ‘baby boomers’ in the years around 2010, and their replacement with new headteacher, usually in their early 40s. The trend to younger headteachers seems once again to be in evidence with record number so headteachers below the age of 40, although there are still relatively few headteachers appointed in their 20s. The ending of the compulsory retirement age has meant that in 2020 there were a record number of headteachers over the age of 65 still in post. Some may even be old enough to qualify for their bus pass.

This research is worth considering by policy makers, and it might be useful for the House of Commons Select Committee on Education to study the findings along with a discussion about whether or not the problems recruiting teachers has a longer-term effect on middle and senior leadership appointments?

Will you find a teaching post in 2021?

Posted on January 19, 2021 by John Howson

How easy will trainees find job hunting in 2021? The following predictions are based upon an analysis of vacancies for teaching posts recorded by TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk over the past four years. The raw vacancy data is then linked to the ITT census of trainee numbers produced by the DfE and based upon returns from providers.

As noted in another post on this blog, there are fewer trainees on classroom-based courses than a few years ago. This pushes up demand for trainees and returners to fill posts these trainees would have occupied. Assuming similar completion rates for trainees as in the past, and that with rising rolls in the secondary sector, if total vacancies are no worse than in 2020, and hopefully closer to the 2019 total it is possible to estimate the shape of the labour market in different subjects during 2021. However, much will depend upon how many teachers retire or leave the classroom for other jobs. If teacher stay put in larger numbers than usual, vacancies will be lower than in the past.

So, before I list some my predictions it is worth reminding those looking for teaching posts to register with the platform that provides the best opportunity for them to be pointed towards possible vacancies. I am, of course biased in favour of TeachVac, but there is the DfE site that also contains non-teaching posts, and the TES, as well as local authority job boards. Candidates might want to register with agencies and let them take the strain, but it is worth asking about their success in the geographical area where you are likely to be looking for a job.

So what might the picture for 2021 look like? Physics, design and technology and business studies teachers should still have little problem find a teaching post either during 2021 or for January 2022.

On the other hand, history and PE teachers will continue to find that there are more candidates than there are vacancies across much of England. The ability to offer a second subject might be worth thinking about in any application. Teachers of geography will also likely to find job hunting challenging later in the year.

This year, teachers of art may struggle to find teaching posts, especially as the year progresses, as there are considerably more trainees than in recent years. Teachers of RE and biology may also face similar challenges in job hunting as 2021 progresses towards the start of the new school term in September.

The outlook for teachers of sciences, other than physics, is likely to be similar to the situation in 2020, with teachers of biology unable to offer other sciences at most risk of finding a teaching post challenging as the progresses.

Mathematics and IT/Computing teachers should find plenty of choice of jobs early in the year, but possibly not as much choice as in recent years.

It is difficult to predict the market for teachers of languages other than English in Britain’s new post-EU membership world. At present, it looks as if across England there is a good balance between supply and demand, but there may be regional shortages if vacancy levels increase. On the other hand, if vacancies decline, there could be a surplus of teachers of some languages, notably Spanish.

Teachers of music are likely to find enough vacancies for trainees unless there is an inflow of ‘returners’ from outside of the profession as a result of changes in the wider labour market for those with music qualifications and a teaching background.

Each month TeachVac updates information about overall vacancies in the monthly newsletter. Details can be found at: https://www.teachvac.co.uk/our_services.php

Market forces or national pay scales?

Posted on February 5, 2019 by John Howson

The DfE has announced that the Academies Minister, Lord Agnew, has written to 28 chairs of trustees as part of the Government’s commitment to curb what it feels are ‘excessive’ salaries based on the size, standards, and financial health of trusts. The academies have been asked to provide more details on the pay of executives who earn more than £150,000 – and those earning £100,000 if two or more people in a school earn a six-figure salary. https://www.gov.uk/government/news/schools-minister-calls-on-academies-to-justify-excessive-pay

This issue of six figure salaries has concerned the government for some time now, and comments about their letters to Trusts have featured in previous posts on this blog during the past year, ever since the issue first surfaced as a matter of concern.

Schools Week has publish a full list of the Trusts the DfE has written to at https://schoolsweek.co.uk/holland-park-school-warned-over-heads-260k-salary-as-minister-writes-to-28-trusts/

Interestingly, Holland Park School is one of the Trust to receive a letter. Their accounts lodged at Companies House, for the year to end August 2018, show the highest paid staff member receiving an emolument [sic] in the range of £260,000-£270,000 for the year.

Those with a long memory stretching back into the early 1990s will recall that as a large secondary school Holland Park always paid at the top end of the salary scale. But, how to justify around double the national rate for the job as identified by the School Teachers Review Body and the Teachers’ Pay and Conditions Document? Well, ever since a Secretary of State allowed academies to ignore both of those documents, the genii was out of the bottle. Indeed, Holland Park School had three staff earning more than £140,000 in 2017-18.

The school is judged ‘outstanding’ by Ofsted and is a Teaching School. The examination results are excellent, but does any of this justify paying such high salaries to senior staff? As a single school trust the head isn’t managing several schools, so there cannot be that argument for additional pay.

Is there an argument around market forces? Without such pay the school would not attract and keep a head teacher? Research into the turnover of senior staff in school using TeachVac data for 2017-18 suggest that only around 12% of secondary schools failed to appoint a head teacher when seeking to make an appointment. The figure is higher in the primary sector.

After more than 30 years of studying the labour market for senior staff in schools, I would suggest that rarely has there been a period when finding secondary head teachers that been easier than at present. You can justify a recruitment allowance to help heads settle in a new area, but is a differential of around ten times the pay of a newly qualified teacher acceptable? The government clearly thinks not.

Should all public sector schools be brought back within a national pay framework and was it a mistake to allow schools to go their own way? Perhaps the real mistake lies with a refusal a decade or so ago to set rules for what was an Executive Head Teacher and how much they should be paid.

A question for the Cardinals

Posted on December 31, 2018 by John Howson

Why do Roman Catholic schools find more difficulty in recruiting a new headteacher than do other schools? I first posed this question more than thirty years ago, soon after I started looking at trends in vacancies for school leaders in the early 1980s.

After a break of five years, I returned to the subject of vacancies for school leaders in a report published last January. I have just completed the first draft of the 2018 survey into leadership vacancies. The full report will be available from TeachVac at enquiries@oxteachserv.com early in the New Year. You can reserve a copy now.

Once again, in 2018, Roman Catholic schools, and especially those in some diocese, weren’t able to appoint a headteacher after the first advertisement by the school. The data comes from TeachVac, the free job board that costs schools and teachers nothing to use.

(As an aside, I wonder why the DfE didn’t contract with an existing provider such as TeachVac, eteach or even the US owned TES to provide a comprehensive free job site rather than building their own site. Perhaps there are different rules for Brexit and hiring ships from companies still to start their service than for designing government web sites for far more money than it would have cost to buy in the service.)

Anyway, back to the matter in hand, TeachVac recorded that some 57 of the 124 Roman Catholic schools that were recorded as advertising for a primary headteacher during the 2017-18 school year needed to re-advertise the post: a re-advertisement rate of 46%. Other schools had re-advertisement rates for vacancies first advertised during this period in the low 30%s.

Now, some diocese, have reduced re-advertisement rates by appointing deputy heads from secondary schools to run primary schools. I was once sceptical of this as a solution, but can now see that just as a secondary school headteacher isn’t an expert in all subjects taught in the schools, so a primary headteacher needs leadership qualities, backed by experienced middle leaders that understand the different stages of learning and development in the primary sector.

Using a different measure of total re-advertisements to schools advertising a vacancy for a headteacher reveals that a small number of schools have extreme difficulty in recruiting a new headteacher. Some of these schools just start at the wrong time of year.

Overall, almost every primary school of any type that advertised a headship in December 2017 re-advertised the post at some point during 2018. Unless, these schools used a subscription model that allowed for as many advertisements are required to fill the post, the governors were just wasting the school’s money if they used a paid for publication or job board for the December advert. Those that used TeachVac would have not faced that problem, because it wouldn’t have cost them anything.

As Britain becomes a more secular society, all faiths will need to address the question of how to find the next generation of leaders for their schools. With the approach the 150^th anniversary of the 1870 Education Act, such schools seem likely to remain a part of the landscape, whatever the feelings and views of those that would prefer an entirely secular state school system.

Update on head teacher recruitment

Posted on August 27, 2018 by John Howson

Way back at the beginning of May this year, I reported on trends in primary leadership recruitment. The data came from TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk the free to use recruitment site that costs both schools and teachers nothing to use, and where I am chair of the company.

With a miserably wet day yesterday, I thought I would take a second look at the data for 2018 in the area of primary head teacher recruitment. So far, it I seems to be turning out to be a pretty average year. TeachVac has records of more than 1,200 advertisements for a head teacher, placed by primary schools. Of these, around 22% are re-advertisements placed more than a month after the original advert appeared. In May, I reported some 175 schools had been forced to re-advertise a headship; by last week that number had risen to close to 225.

The number of schools placing multiple re-advertisements, each at least four week apart, had also increased; from 25 recorded in May, to a current number of around 40 schools. This includes one school with an original advert plus four re-advertisements. I do hope each one didn’t come with a separate bill for advertising.

As in the past, schools associated with the various faiths seem to be more likely to have to re-advertise than non-faith schools. Of course, it might not be the faith aspect that is causing the re-advertisement, although I think that may be part of the issue. Size, geography and type of schools, whether or not it is an academy, for instance, can all play a part.

In the past Roman Catholic run schools in the North West rarely featured in the list of schools challenged when seeking a new head teacher. This year they account for more than 40% of such schools that have re-advertised.

TeachVac could also investigate the effects of other variables such as size of school; ofsted grades and timing of any inspection report along with output measures such as Key Stage results and progress of pupils over time. However, we don’t have the research funds for such analysis at this point in time. Nearly a decade ago, the then National College sponsored an investigation into ‘hard to fill headships’. I am not sure it was ever published, and assume that it is now buried somewhere deep in the archives of Sanctuary Buildings, if it hasn’t already been consigned to the National Archives at Kew.

Overall, the message to chairs of governors, and governing bodies as a whole, remains the same as it always has been. If your head teacher announces that they are leaving, either to retire or to take on a new challenge, the two most likely reasons for a change of headship, then ask three questions; is their someone in the school we could appoint either directly or after some professional development; are there likely to be candidates from within travelling distance of the school; if neither of these can be answered in the affirmative, how are we going to ensure a smooth succession that doesn’t affect the pupils and staff at the school?

There is plenty of good advice out there along with lots of high quality candidates. Hopefully, schools will experience a great term recruiting heads to their vacancies: good luck.

Update on Leadership trends in the primary sector

Posted on May 1, 2018 by John Howson

Some primary schools are still finding it difficult to recruit a new head teacher. Around half of the 151 local authority areas in England have at least one primary school that has had to pace a second advert so far this year in their quest for a new head. In total more than 170 primary schools across England have not been successful at the first attempt, when looking for a new head teacher.

As some schools are still working through the recruitment process for the first time, following an advertisement placed in April, the number of schools affected is likely to increase beyond the current number as the end of term approaches. Some 25 schools have had to place more than one re-advertisements in their quest for a new head teacher. London schools seem to be faring better than those in parts of the North West when it comes to making an appointment after the first advertisement.

As expected, some faith schools and schools with special circumstances: small school; infant or junior schools and those with other issues feature among the school with more than one advertisement.

The data for this blog comes from TeachVac, the no cost to schools and applicants National Vacancy Listing Service for teaching posts in schools anywhere in England that is already demonstrating what the DfE is spending cash on trying to provide. See for yourself at www.teachvac.co.uk but you will have to register as TeachVac is a closed system. Such a system prevents commercial organisations cherry picking vacancies and offering candidates to schools for a fee. (TeachVac published a full report on the primary leadership sector in 2017 in January 2018.)

Time was, when appointing a deputy head teachers in the primary sector wasn’t regarded as a problem. Are candidates now being more circumspect when it comes to applying for deputy head teacher vacancies? Certainly, so far in 2018, a third of local authorities have at least one school that has had to re-advertise a deputy head teacher vacancy. The same parts of the county where headship are not easy to fill also applies to deputy head vacancies. This is an especially worrying aspect, since the deputy of today is the head teacher of tomorrow.

Assistant head teacher vacancies are still relatively rare in the primary sector, so it is of concern that 37 local authority areas have recorded at least one vacancy that has been re-advertised so far in 2018. London boroughs that have fared well at the other levels of leadership, seem to be struggling rather more at this level of appointment.

Is this data useful? What should be done with it if it is useful? The DfE have cited data as one of their reasons for creating their own vacancy service, but it will be 2019 at the earliest and possibly not until 2020 that they will have full access to this type of essential management data.

If there is a valid concern about filling leadership positions in the primary sector at all grades then, at least for academies, the government needs to understand what is happening and arrange for strategies to overcome any problem. That’s what strategic leadership of the academy programme is all about. As Labour backed academies in last week’s funding debate, they should work with the government to ensure all academies can appoint a new head teacher when they first advertise. The government should also recognise the role of local authorities in helping with finding new school leaders for the maintained school sector.

John Howson

Education and the numbers that affect what happens

Tag Archives: head teacher