GSA Presidential address - Being a Head and staying there

13 November 2006

‘Being a head is one of the most rewarding jobs there is,' says Dr Brenda Despontin in her Presidential address to the Girls' Schools' Association (GSA) conference in Cardiff today. ‘But this country faces a headship recruitment crisis of unprecedented proportions, leading the Government to consider other models for headship.

‘Headship is not a role for the faint-hearted, witnessed by the stark fact that many vacancies for school leadership now attract few applicants. Last year, 1000 headships of maintained schools in the UK were readvertised. From 2004 to 2005, the proportion of vacancies needing a second advertisement rose from 27% to 36% in secondary schools, and from 27% to 38% in primaries. This year promises to be no better.

‘Heads work longer hours now than they did before the statutory changes to schoolteachers' workload. Heads of maintained schools were recently surveyed and found to work on average 62 hours per week, a similar figure to that which emerged from my own survey of GSA heads earlier this year. No small wonder that some posts remain unfilled and that the Government is beginning to show concern. The reality is that by 2009, a significant percentage of the head teachers currently in post in maintained schools will have retired.

‘The age profile of current heads is such that urgent action is required. Our own GSA survey  revealed that 68% of respondents were aged 50+, and that within five years there would be 64 vacancies for heads in our Association alone.

Dr Despontin tells conference delegates that a recent survey by the Institute for Policy Studies in Education revealed that only 2.5% of secondary teachers were considering headship, yet 86% of secondary heads in England are over 45. She believed that too much attention has been paid to attracting entrants into the profession and not enough on succession planning at the top.

‘There is unanimous support across all the associations within the Independent Schools Council to work together to provide the next generation of school leaders,' continues Dr Despontin. ‘This would not necessarily be at the exclusion of any maintained sector initiatives. But we need to be sure that training for headship of ISC schools in the years ahead best meets the specific needs of those 2000 schools.

‘We should give aspiring colleagues the chance to experience the job in action, which was the thinking behind this year's pilot head-shadowing scheme in GSA schools. Head-shadowing will now become a regular feature of services offered to our members. 

‘Classroom teachers are surprisingly unaware of what goes on in the head's office and what the work of the school's chief executive really entails. When we're not sitting somewhere having the "vision", we are managers of personnel, marketing, finance, health and safety, employment and recruitment simultaneously. And the teaching and learning, of course. We are expected to have at hand all data and details whenever a governor has a query, to be Relate counsellors for warring parents, to mediate in staff disputes, to provide meaningful messages in every assembly, to remember to thank everybody all the time, and to understand the management accounts.

‘In the maintained sector, our colleagues are often expected to solve all manner of social ills from obesity to text bullying. They juggle finances to achieve the impossible. They inhabit a culture of constant testing and assessment, leading to ludicrous league table comparisons, together with a woefully inadequate turnaround time within which they are expected to implement improvements in their school is in difficulties. Such unrealistic challenges deter senior staff from seeking promotion. They have read the stories of "superheads" sacked for failing to deliver; they have seen the often quite public breakdown of a few who tried heroically to make a difference somewhere; they have preferred to play safe.

Dr Despontin told her colleagues that she had  recommended to the Association of Governing Bodies of Independent Schools a regular, objective professional appraisal, and the accompanying provision of ample funding for regular training in areas such as financial management, marketing, employment law and health and safety.

Dr Despontin reported that  the National College is currently seeking the views of 1000 heads and governors on how to attract more potential heads. The DfES is also conducting an inquiry into headship and the recruitment crisis, with a report from the School Teachers' Review Body due before Christmas. Education Ministers have come and gone at an alarming rate in the last ten years. ‘I would urge those responsible for the future of our schools to take stock of this leadership crisis,' she said. ‘They can start with supporting the heads they've got. They can respect their professionalism without constantly interfering or launching new initiatives to trial.

‘As for the imminent shortage, there are several solutions under consideration. These include appointing heads from outside the profession, an unpopular concept with most of us, and one that certainly has had a less than happy history in the Health Service. The danger is that heads would be perceived purely as administrators and would find it difficult to win the hearts and minds of staff, or indeed the parent body, without having had hands-on experience at the chalkface.

‘Another solution being considered by the Government is to appoint one head to serve several schools. How would such a head know the pupils by name, or feel a sense of belonging and personal pride when she roves between schools like some regional manager of a supermarket chain with a mobile office in the car?

‘A unique selling point of independent schools within 10-20 years may be that we still have one head for one school, that we retain the personal touch. In that case, there is an even greater need to secure our successors.'

Notes for Editors

The GSA conference takes place at Macdonald Holland House Hotel in Cardiff, 13-15 November. Dr Brenda Despontin, GSA President, will deliver her speech at 2 pm on Monday 13 November. Copies of the full text of her speech are available from Sheila Thompson or Samantha Williams at Brown Lloyd James on 020 7 591 9610 (sheilat@blj.co.uk) or samanthaw@blj.co.uk

The Girls' Schools Association is one of the five professional associations in the Independent Schools Council. Its 205 members are all single-sex schools, educating over 107,000 girls in England, Scotland and Wales. Year on year, GSA schools dominate the academic league tables.