How easy is it for a mature entrant to become a headteacher?

Posted on October 3, 2025 by John Howson

The recent DfE research into promotions provides some food for thought School leadership in England 2010 to 2020: characteristics and trends

Page 69 of the report contains the following paragraph.

‘Teachers may enter a leadership grade more than one step above their current grade or may enter a leadership grade after being outside the system. These non-sequential promotions make up a significant minority of promotions. In primaries schools, for example, for every 100 senior leaders in 2016 who were heads in 2020, 12 classroom teachers, 12 middle leaders and 11 system entrants also became heads. In secondary schools, for every 100 senior leaders from 2016 who were heads in 2020, 3 classroom teachers, 5 middle leaders and 5 system entrants also became heads. Non-sequential promotions appear to be more common in primary schools, where leadership roles are more limited and ‘linear’ progression may be more difficult.’

Interestingly no mention is made in the text of the position in special schools, a disturbing oversight in view of the current concerns about SEND.

Following on from the text there is a histogram of ‘The Grade occupied by 2020 heads in 2016, split by school phase in 2020, in terms of FTE’.

Grade	Primary	Secondary	Special
Head	64	52	52
Senior Leader	26	39	32
Middle Leader	3	1	4
Classroom Teacher	3	1	3
System Entrant	3	6	9

There is no mention in the text of the fact that in many small primary schools there may be no senior leader, so any internal appointment would inevitably come from either a middle leader or classroom teacher.

What is interesting is the fact that almost one in ten headteachers in special schools in 2020 were system entrants in 2016. Where did these entrants come from, were they from special schools outside the state sector or did they bring other expertise to the post of headteacher.

How long does it take to become a headteacher?

In view of the fact that most headteachers seem to be appointed as a result of ‘linear’ progression through the different grades, especially in secondary schools, how long does it take to reach headship?

Is there an age or length of service by which, if a teacher has not reached assistant head grade, they unlikely to ever make it to a headship? If so, do mature entrants that become teachers after the age of thirty face a promotion ceiling in their careers? Is the position different in primary schools, with their flatter leadership teams, than in secondary schools with assistant, deputy and headteachers roles, often now overseen by an executive head.

The DfE research showed that in 2010, headteachers had a median of 27 years since qualification, and that this reduced to 23 years in 2016 and then rose slightly to 24 years in 2020. The median years of experience of senior leaders reduced from 18 years in 2010 to 17years in 2014 where it remained until 2020. The reduction between the upper quartiles for years since qualification was greatest for senior leaders, 24 years since qualification in 2020 compared with 30 years in 2010. There was virtually no change in the lower quartile between 2010 and 2020, for example, this was 13 years since qualification for senior leaders in both 2010 and 2020.

As this data covers both primary and secondary schools, it is difficult to know whether promotion is faster in the smaller primary schools, if you are lucky with turnover, that in large secondary schools with many more layers of leadership. Clearly, some mature entrants achieve headship, but the message must be that if you want promotion as a mature entrant, start your journey quickly and use the skills you have brought to the profession from your former career. A decade ago, I wrote this blog about the career of Mrs Clarke who went from volunteer to headteacher in the same school. Congratulations Mrs Clarke | John Howson

Sadly, the research is silent about entrants from different subject backgrounds. Do historians and geographers, generally joining smaller department, find progress to a headship easier than teachers of English and mathematics where there may be several grades of middle leadership within the department?

We should encourage mature entrants, but make it clear that those joining after the age of thirty may find career progression more of a challenge, especially where governing bodies value length of service rather than skills and expertise for the role. No doubt MATs with more professionals involved in promotion decisions will be more open to those entering teaching later in life.

What Lib Dems want for SEND pupils and their families

Posted on July 9, 2025 by John Howson

I was delighted to see the Liberal Democrats weighing in on the SEND debate by writing to the Prime minister and setting out five key principles behind any reform of the SEND system. This is what their letter to the Prime minister said:

Our five principles and priorities for SEND reform are as follows:

Putting children and families first Children’s rights to SEND assessment and support must be maintained and the voices of children and young people with SEND and of their families and carers must be at the centre of the reform process.
Boosting specialist capacity and improving mainstream provision Capacity in state special provision must be increased, alongside improvements to inclusive mainstream provision, with investment in both new school buildings and staff training.
Supporting local government Local authorities must be supported better to fund SEND services, including through:
1. The extension of the profit cap in children’s social care to private SEND provision, where many of the same private equity backed companies are active, and
2. National government funding to support any child whose assessed needs exceed a specific cost.
Early identification and shorter waiting lists Early identification and intervention must be improved, with waiting times for diagnosis, support and therapies cut.
Fair funding The SEND funding system must properly incentivise schools both to accept SEND pupils and to train their staff in best practice for integrated teaching and pastoral care. Our five principles for SEND reform – Liberal Democrats

These principles come from a motion debated at last year’s Party conference and represent a check list against which specific policies can be measured, such as increasing the supply of educational psychologists to deal with both the annual reviews and initial assessments of EHCPs.

If there is anything missing from the list, it is the role of the NHS, and specifically around mental health and education. This is the area of need where the system has really broken down. Many of the other issues are cost related due to inflation and more young people living longer as well as increased demands from an age range of support than can now reach up to the age of 25. The issue of mental health has swamped the system and the NHS must play a part in helping define what is needed.

With the main opposition at Westminster disinterested in the issues of education that are facing most families, the Lib Dems should be leading from the front. This letter should have been sent at least a week ago.

As my earlier posts of today have shown, the Lib Dems next education campaign can be around securing enough teachers for schools in our more deprived areas. Such a campaign can take on both labour councils and Reform voters to show there is a radical alternative in the Liberal democrats.

Education may not feature very high in polling about issue in elections, but on a day-to-day basis it isn’t far away from the conversations in many households. From mobile phone to AI, funding for school meals to citizenship, Liberal Democrats should be calling the government to account.

All agreed then: there is a teacher recruitment and retention crisis

Posted on June 20, 2023 by John Howson

The House of Commons Education Select Committee held its first oral evidence session this morning as part of its inquiry into recruitment and retention. The Committee discussed with representatives of the teacher and further education professional associations their views on the present state of affairs with regard to recruitment and retention.

It was not a surprise to hear all the witnesses explain that the present situation in both schools and colleges represented a crisis, and that there was no solution in sight. Interestingly, nobody mentioned the effects of any downturn in the economy on teacher recruitment – not even evidencing what happened at the start of the covid pandemic when interest in ITE increased sharply. There was also no mention of teaching as a global career and the growth of UK private schools overseas as a source of jobs for teachers.

Pay, working conditions and morale all came up, and were cited as areas where the DfE needed to take action. The fact that all four professional associations are in dispute with the DfE was mentioned, but the lack of the STRB Report received relatively little consideration.

Two issues discussed in detail were the question of school leadership and how attractive it is. There was the usual discussion about how to keep good teachers in the classroom and some statements about teachers not wanting to become head teachers. There was also a discussion about how teaching behaves in relation to ‘protected’ groups in society.

Talking the first issue on leadership, it is interesting to look at the recent data from the School Workforce Survey on deputy and assistant heads working in the primary school sector in the under 49 age groups and specifically, for assistant heads, the under 39 age groups.

		AH	DH
FEMALE	25-29	388	99
	30-39	4352	2571
	40-49	3954	4123
		8694	6793

MALE	25-29	111	43
	30-39	1108	962
	40-49	674	888
		1893	1893

NON-G	25-29	1	0
	30-39	0	2
	40-49	0	0

ALL	25-29	500	142
	30-39	5460	3535
	40-49	4628	5011
		10588	8688

There were around 6,000 assistant heads in the primary sector under the age of 40 in November 2022. That ought to be sufficient to provide candidates for deputy headships, at least at the national level.

There are somewhere around 1,500 primary headships advertised each year. With less than 4,000 deputy heads under the age of 40 that means schools will need to draw heavily on the 5,000 primary headteachers in their 40s for many vacancies. This does leave the ratio of candidates to vacancies worryingly low, especially as the recruitment round progresses, and good candidates are appointed to vacancies. I think that there is a matter for concern here that the NAHT were wise to draw the Committee’s attention to in oral evidence.

As to minority groups, there is work to be done here to encourage men, ethnic minorities and those with disabilities to take up teaching as a career. Here are a couple of links to my blogs on the topic written in past years

Are new graduate entrants to teaching still predominantly young, white and female? | John Howson (wordpress.com)

‘We need more black headteachers in our schools’ | John Howson (wordpress.com)

This is an area where clearly the DfE seems to be paying less attention than in the past. Perhaps, it shows a consequence of the lack of a dedicated unit on teacher supply, training and professional development.

Such a unit might have helped the DfE create a coherent policy to solve the current staffing crisis in our schools and colleges that should have caught nobody unawares.

London teacher labour market most active

Posted on September 1, 2022 by John Howson

August was a more active month than normal in the labour market for teachers. Although vacancies in the primary sector were subdued, the secondary sector remained active, with nearly 800 new vacancies published during the month according to TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk

Nearly two thirds of the vacancies, 64%, were posted by located schools in London, the South East and East of England regions, with the remainder of the country accounting for only around a third of vacancies. In some subjects, the percentage was even higher, with 29 out of the 40 posts for teachers of geography listed by schools in these three regions. No such posts were tracked across either the North East or North West regions.

As might be expected, demand for teachers of history during August was limited, with just 14 posts identified. Interestingly, only two of these posts were advertised by schools in London and the three regions of London, the South East and East of England only accounted for 5 of the 14 vacancies.

TeachVac provides a regular monthly newsletter for both schools and teachers. The service is free to teachers, as is the use of the jo board to match teachers to vacancies on a daily basis.

Schools pay a nominal fee of £10 for their newsletter.

From the end of this month, TeachVac will end its free matching service for schools. To cover its operating costs, and ensure that data collection remains of the highest quality, from October schools are being asked to pay £1 for every match made between a teacher and one of their vacancies. There is an annual limit of £500 per secondary school, beyond which point remaining matches in the 12 months are free. For primary schools, the cap is set at £75. This means just 75 matches are required to hit the limit, and all further matches that year are free.

During September, TeachVac has put in place a special offer of £250 for secondary schools and just £50 for primary schools: effectively, half-price for an annual subscription regardless of the annual number of matches made during the year.

To date, in 2022, TeachVac has made 1.95 million matches between jobseekers and schools with vacancies, covering both state-funded and private schools across England. By the end of September, the 2 million matches mark will have been passed.

Schools, MATs, diocese and other groups signing up now at enquiries@teachvac.co.uk will always be placed at or near the top of the daily matching algorithm, ensuring teachers see their vacancies first. This is an added bonus on top of the half-price offer.

If you would like more information, either email enquiries@teachvac.co.uk or send me a message via the comment section.

Please circulate this post to those responsible for recruitment in schools. Sign up in September for a half-price fixed fee. If you need convincing, ask TeachVac how many matches have been made in 2022 for your school or group of schools using the email address above and the code MATCH22.

The revolving door of school leadership

Posted on April 26, 2022 by John Howson

The National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) has published some interesting research on the amount of time newly appointed senior leaders stay in post as part of their contribution to the debate about the pay and conditions for teachers. Apparently, more are leaving within the first five years after appointment. New data reveals sharp increase in number of school leaders leaving the profession within 5 years (naht.org.uk)

After 40 years of studying leadership trends this is an interesting set of data. The key results are shown in the table below.

Percentage of postholders that are new to post that have left within 5 years of appointment
		Head teachers	Deputy heads	Assistant heads	Middle leaders
Primary phase	2011	22%	25%	26%	43%
	2015	25%	26%	29%	46%

Secondary phase	2011	35%	32%	37%	43%
	2015	37%	37%	39%	44%

Source: NAHT

The first thing to notice is that the data are expressed in terms of percentages. Taking just headteachers, as an example, in a typical year TeachVac records around 1,500 advertisements for primary headteachers, and 350-400 for secondary headteachers.

Using those numbers, the change would be from 330 to 345 departing in the primary sector between 20111 and those appointed in 2015, and in the secondary sector, assuming 400 vacancies each year – the upper end of the range- the change would be an increase of eight headteachers.

Since the press release didn’t calibrate the size of the market in each year, it isn’t clear whether more opportunities in the five-year period would have provided more leaders with a chance to move early in their careers. Certainly, the period from 2019 onwards has seen the start of the bulge in secondary pupil numbers and the creation of some new schools requiring new leaders. The period also witnessed the development and consolidation of Multi-Academy Trusts central staffing and some of those posts may well have been taken by school leaders in post for less than five years.

The press release also doesn’t make clear whether departures were tracked to see where the school leader went? If young leaders are quitting the profession, then that’s a serious situation, especially in the primary phase where there are fewer deputy headteachers and headteachers and any departures at that stage would be challenging to the sector.

As primary teaching, even at the more senior ranks, is now largely populated by women, the age profile of those leaving may also be worth exploring. Are some taking a career break for caring roles, and do we need a ‘keep in touch’ scheme for these leavers? Are there issues with certain types of school and does the data say anything to the levelling up agenda that might interest the STRB?

School leadership, whether at middle leadership or senior leadership levels is a challenging task and these percentages must be viewed with concern, but there is much more to discover from these percentages than might appear from the headline. However, that’s the aim of a good headline; to make one read the text that follows.

Sluggish start for teaching vacancies in 2021

Posted on January 16, 2021 by John Howson

January 2020 was a bumper month for teacher vacancies. Trainees, returning teachers and those looking for promotion were spoilt for choice across most of England, as secondary schools started recruiting early for September 2020. Fast forward a year, and with different priorities on the minds of school leadership teams, the slump in vacancies that started when the pandemic struck last spring has continued into the first part of January 2021.

TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk the vacancy site for teachers, where I am Chair, has recorded a 50% reduction in vacancies during the first 15 days of January 2021 compared with the same period in January 2020. In some secondary subjects, such as English and history, the slump has been even larger in percentage terms; vacancies are more than 60% down on last year.

Over England as a whole, there 1,300 fewer vacancies recorded by TeachVac during the first 15 days of January this year than during the same period last year. Looking back beyond the record rate of 2020, the January 2021 number is also below the number of vacancies recorded by TeachVac in both January 2018 and 2019.

Will these jobs return? The answer is that some will, but some won’t. The suggestion in the press that London has lost 700,000 of its population over the past twelve months, as foreign workers have returned home, may help to explain why vacancies in the capital for teachers have been especially hard hit over the past twelve months. At present, the Midlands, both East and West, are also regions where there has been an appreciable fall-off in vacancies compared with last year.

In a recession, public sector workers with a secure job tend to stay put, so fewer teachers leaving either to take the chance on a new career or to teach overseas. This lack of movement has the effect of reducing demand for replacements. School budgets are under pressure as a result of the pandemic, so that is another factor that will delay recruitment activities, although TeachVac and the DfE site don’t cost schools cash. The DfE site does cost time and effort not required of schools by TeachVac.

As has been said in the past, there is no point in spending cash on recruitment until you have tried the free option and it hasn’t worked. TeachVac has matched 120,000 vacancies over the past two years and even if half resulted in an appointment that could have saved school millions of pounds in recruitment advertising.

TeachVac is currently preparing its reviews of 2020, and that on the Leadership Labour Market should be published next week: watch this blog for details. The wider review of classroom vacancies will appear later in the month. Both would have been faster had the government’s KickStart Scheme worked. On the Isle of Wight we still haven’t been offered any candidates through the Scheme, despite signing up almost on day one of the scheme’s announcement.

In summary, this may well be another year where the labour market favour employers over job-seekers, so registering with job sites such as TeachVac sooner rather than later may make sense for those seeking a teaching or school leadership post.

Leadership trends in schools- 2020

Posted on January 9, 2021 by John Howson

TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk the free to use teacher vacancy site is putting together its annual reviews of the labour market for teachers in England. The first of these is on leadership turnover in schools.

Here are some of the headlines from the draft report.

More leadership vacancies were recorded in the primary sector during 2020, while vacancies recorded in the secondary sector during 2020 remained at a similar level to 2019.
In the primary sector some 1,497 head teacher vacancies were recorded. The number for the secondary sector was 387 vacancies during 2020.
For schools advertising during the 2019-20 school year, there was a re-advertisement rate for primary schools of 28%: for secondary school headteacher vacancies, the re-advertisement rate was lower at 23%.
Schools in certain regions and with other characteristics that differentiates the school from the commonplace are more likely to experience issues with headteacher recruitment.
There were a similar number of vacancies for deputy heads in the secondary sector during 2020 than 2019. Fewer vacancies were recorded for the primary sector.
Secondary schools advertised slightly more assistant head teacher vacancies during 2020 than during 2019. There were fewer vacancies recorded in the primary sector during 2020 than in 2019.
Tracking leadership vacancies has become more challenging as the means of recruitment have become more diversified in nature.
The covid-19 pandemic had a significant effect on the senior staff labour market from April 2020 until the end of the year.

What might be the outcome of the new lockdown? As the majority of vacancies at all levels in education are for September starts in a new job the later the more senior vacancies are advertised the more pressure on vacancies for other posts. Normally, half the annual volume of headteacher adverts appear in the first three months of the year. Will that pattern be replicated this year? Perhaps it is too early to tell. Will headteachers, and especially headteachers in primary schools faced with more problems than normal and lacking the level of administrative support that their secondary school colleagues enjoy just decide enough is enough and take early retirement? Will the pay freeze make matters worse, especially if pensions still rise in line with RPI?

TeachVac will be watching these trends for senior staff turnover, along with others in the labour market. Often in the past, a rising level of house prices has been bad for senior staff recruitment in high cost housing areas as staff can move to lower cost areas, but it is challenging for staff to move into those areas without incentives. The Stamp Duty relaxation has pushed up housing prices, at least in the short-term. Will these increases have an impact on leadership turnover?

The current age profile of the teaching profession should be favourable to the appointment of senior leaders but, as this blog has pointed out in the past, there may not be enough deputy heads in the primary sector with sufficient experience to want to move onto headship at the present time.

All these trends will need monitoring carefully as 2021 unfolds.

If you want the full report or data for specific areas, please contact enquiries@oxteachserv.com

Worth a second look

Posted on January 7, 2021 by John Howson

Some posts on this blog deserve a second look. With nearly 1,100 posts now on the site, I don’t have a complete list, so even I am surprised when a visitor digs up a post from over seven years ago that resonates as much today as it did when originally posted.

Many of those that visit the blog today weren’t even in education, at least on the teaching side of the desk or camera, in 2013, so when it reappeared as the result of someone’s trawl through the archives, I thought I would ensure it was worth a second look to a new group of readers.

Winds of change in Manchester

Posted on December 6, 2013

The last two days I have been in Manchester for the SSAT Annual Conference. This is a celebration of many of the good things in school leadership. The delegates here are anything but average in their approach to education. The conference started with Michael Fullan and Andy Hargreaves talking about their new book: Professional Capital. In this increasingly secular age, where many head teachers are probably agnostics, it was interesting to hear Andy Hargreaves take the example of the parable of the master that leaves his servants a sum of money to use wisely in his absence and finds that two have invested while the third had just kept the money safe by burying the cash in the ground. The message of invest for progress was an interesting one.

At the same conference I participated in a panel debate about preparing teachers, and led a workshop on professional development. The following ten phrases are the ones that provided me with a framework for discussion in the workshop.

Hire exceptional people: add value.

Seek heroines and heroes: not villains and scapegoats.

Dump portmanteau careers: welcome career changers

Look for leaders of every age.

Education is a business not a market.

Sell the brand

Engage the family

Cash balances don’t educate children.

Quality assurance before quality control.

know the facts: tell the truth.

I had a good example of the last one of these while I was composing this post. I received an email that a Minister had confirmed the over allocation of ITT places was 9% this year. The fact is true, but disguises the more important information that the over allocation was in the order of 18% for secondary places, but only 6% in the primary sector.

Many of the other statements can generate discussion and some have already been aired in posts on this site. Hopefully, the remained will feature at some time in the future.

Pay Freeze: more churn?

Posted on December 17, 2020 by John Howson

As expected, the main teacher associations acted with condemnation when faced with the Secretary of State’s remit letter to the STRB, the Pay and conditions of Service Review Body for the teaching profession. In a joint statement from ACSL NAHT and NEU they said that;

The narrow remit issued to the STRB excludes the crucial and central issue of teacher and school leader pay, reflecting the Government’s unacceptable pay freeze policy. Teachers and school leaders are key workers who have already seen their pay cut significantly since 2010. With inflation expected to increase in 2021, they know that they face another significant real terms pay cut.

How might their members react in 2021? We can expect a range of reactions. Some will say, there is no point in staying with no pay rise in sight – after all will the freeze really be just for one year? Head teachers at the top of their pay band, and having endured the prospect of two disrupted school years might well throw in the towel and take their pension as that presumably won’t be frozen in the same way; at least at present. We will look at that prospect and its consequences in more detail in a later blog.

Some teachers will seek promotion to secure a pay rise, and others a more appealing post either in a different school or in the private sector where there are no requirements for a pay freeze for teachers. Yet others may look overseas or to the tutoring market that will grow to support the increase in home schooling, especially if the government looks to regulation to ensure a minimum standard of education for all children regardless of how parents arrange to provide it. All these factors could increase ‘churn’.

With a profession dominated by women, at least at the level of the classroom teacher, how they and often also their partners view job security and new opportunities will also affect the rate of ‘churn’ if there is job movement around the country.

I actually think, at least in the first few months of 2021, there will be caution, and a desire to stay put and see what happens. With a labour market in teaching heavily skewed towards the first five months of the year, we could see fewer vacancies than normal in the early months of 2021. This will impact especially severely on two group of teachers: new entrants and would-be returners to the profession.

I well recall a Radio 5 Live interview in 2011, when callers were blaming each groups for taking jobs from the other. In reality, both groups were finding it more of a challenge to secure a teaching post, especially in some parts of England.

So, how hard will it be? We don’t know yet, so this is speculation based upon past trends, but I think some teachers will really struggle to secure a post in 2021.

Now might well be the time to revive ideas of a single application form for teaching, at least for personal details. This would leave just the free text statement to be written specifically for each vacancy being sought. The DfE should consider whether sponsoring that idea from those examples currently in development and on offer might be a better use of funds than continuing with their vacancy site that one person described to me in unflattering terms earlier this week.

In the next post, I will describe a new service from TeachVac to help teachers and schools assess the market and where vacancies might be found in 2021.

Feeling the strain?

Posted on August 31, 2020 by John Howson

After nearly 40 years of following trends in school leadership recruitment, I have rarely had to worry about what was happening during August. Indeed, for many years I used to spend the month compiling a detailed report on the labour market for senior staff during the previous school year for the NAHT.

However, this year, perhaps because of covid-19, there are signs that activity in the market for senior leaders has been a bit different to normal. Using data from TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk admittedly collected this morning, (although I don’t expect many schools in England to add new vacancies on a bank holiday), and not after the end of the month, there seems to have been an increase in advertised vacancies for both primary and secondary headships by schools in England this August.

In the primary sector, vacancies for headteacher posts recorded during August 2020 were 84, up from 57, in 2019, and 54, in 2018. Likewise, in the secondary sector, recorded headship vacancies were 16 in 2020, compared with just six in 2019, and 10 in 2018. Deputy Head vacancies increased, from 10 to 32, between last August and this year in the primary sector, and from just two last year to five vacancies this year in the secondary sector. There were eight assistant head vacancies in the primary sector this August, compared with just three recorded in August 2019.

Promoted posts are rarely seen in vacancies for the primary sector, and none were recorded this August. In the secondary sector, there were 38 this August, compared with 36 in 2019: little change.

For completeness, it is worth noting that classroom teacher vacancies also rose in the primary sector from 96 recorded in August 2019, to 129 recorded in 2020. However, the downward trend in the secondary sector job market continued, with just 223 recorded vacancies for classroom teachers this August, compared with 344 in August 2019.

What might account for this upward trend in headship vacancies? Well, TeachVac might be better at collecting vacancies form the smaller primary Multi Academy Trusts that last year. That might account for some of the difference. However, might some primary heads be feeling the strain of running a school during the exceptional period we have experienced since March 2020, and the start of the pandemic?

If this is the case, then the actions of government over the summer bode ill for the future. Could we see a growth in heads tendering their resignations for January or will they be prepared to carry on despite the requirements imposed upon them by government?

Vacancies advertised during September 2019 for headships were, 102 in the primary sector, and 44 in the secondary sector. These totals provide a benchmark by which to judge the number of vacancies in 2020.

It is also worth considering, at least in the primary sector, what the pool of potential new heads is like, and I may come back to that issue in another post. The key number is of deputy heads with perhaps at least five years of experience and, perhaps, under the age of fifty five.

John Howson

Education and the numbers that affect what happens

Tag Archives: NAHT