Government to blame for head teacher shortage crisis says NUT
Bureaucracy, external interference, excessive regulation and lack of work /life balance are the root causes of head teacher frustration with their roles made worse for primary heads by inadequate salaries compared with their responsibilities, says an independent research report published today (Thursday 18 January) by the National Union of Teachers.
The vast majority of head teachers resisted the idea that school leaders should be chief executives without teaching experience, says the report by Professor Alan Smithers and Dr Pamela Robinson of the Centre for Education and Employment Research at the University of Buckingham.
There was virtual unanimity that head teachers must be drawn from those with classroom experience since the special features of schools far outweighed any similarity with other organisations.
The head teachers believe the term ‘head teacher’ should remain and that heads should continue to be at the centre of teaching and learning.
Head teachers did not want the role to change into ‘Tesco managers going from branch to branch’, rather they believe the Government must end its unreasonable demands on them.
The report concludes that the crisis in head teacher recruitment has been caused by the excessive demands of government not by anything intrinsic to the job itself.
It says: “The government should look to itself and ask whether its reforming zeal and policy of pressure from the centre is in the best interests of our schools. The crisis, if there be one, seems to us to be government made.”
Vulnerability to sacking and excessive accountability are the reasons making head teachers recruitment more difficult, the study found.
The most enjoyable aspects of their positions remain teaching and learning and leading and developing staff, according to research carried out for the NUT by Professor Alan Smithers and Dr Pamela Robinson of the Centre for Education and Employment Research at the University of Buckingham.
The head teachers interviewed for the report said that while many of their teaching staff were good head teacher material, the pressures of being head made many of them reluctant to consider applying for such posts. Such a situation led to an impending crisis in the recruitment of new school leaders.
Commenting on the report, Steve Sinnott, NUT General Secretary, said: “This research underlines the importance existing heads place on their role as leaders of a team of professionals. Yet the range of activities they have to carry out – requiring 30 different headings to categorise them – and the constant imposition of new initiatives makes their task unending.
“Recruiting from outside the profession is not the answer. Moves to divorce the leadership of schools from teaching and learning and replacing heads with chief executives will make things worse.
“If we are to avoid a severe crisis in recruiting new heads, the Government must recognize its responsibility for creating the head teacher recruitment crisis. Interference, constant imposition of initiatives and ever growing bureaucratic demands must be ended. The Government must also look at ensuring proper salary levels for primary heads and improving the work-life balance of all rather than just paying lip service to the idea.”
Current Role and Responsibilities
Asked to describe what they did in a typical week the head teachers came up with a range of activities that took 30 categories to classify. Both primary and secondary heads said that it was the people aspects of the job - teaching and learning, and leading and developing the staff - they most enjoyed and it was the bureaucracy, external interference and excessive regulation that they found irksome. Both secondary and primary heads identified work/life balance as a concern and attributed this mainly to the external impositions on them. Finances were more of a concern in primary schools, probably because of less flexibility in their smaller budgets.
Changing Role and Responsibilities
When asked how their role had changed during their time in post the head teachers responded with 58 types of externally-imposed initiatives, but were hard put to think of any tasks that had been taken away from them other than those they had delegated. Their length of service ranged from two terms to twenty-two years. The major changes identified by the longer-serving head teachers were financial delegation and the national curriculum and these were generally welcomed, but even those in post for only a year could list initiatives that they had to take on board. The changes most welcomed by the head teachers were the greater autonomy and the new inspection framework. Both primary and secondary head teachers regretted the extent and pace of change which to them didn’t seem to have been fully thought through or backed up.
Too Big for One Person?
Secondary heads were mainly dismissive of the notion that the job had become too big for one person. Extra tasks were coped with by appropriate organisation. Specialist help from finance officers and premises managers should be in support roles. Primary heads, however, were more likely to say the demands had become too great, probably not unconnected with school size and fewer opportunities to delegate. Whereas secondary schools tended to have extensive leadership teams, in a small primary school the head could be both the leadership team and a classroom teacher. There was near unanimity that head teachers should be drawn from among those with classroom experience. Schools were like other organisations but the similarities were outweighed by their special features. Most of the head teachers wanted the name to remain on the grounds that it was well known to the public and it emphasized the centrality of teaching and learning. A minority wanted titles such as chief executive, principal, school leader, or head of teaching and learning, either because the role had broadened or because they felt they could no longer lay claim to be the best teacher.
Alternative Models of Leadership
A variety of new ways of leading schools has emerged driven by pressures and ambitions. Among those considered are the business model, a hard federation under a chief executive, a soft federation of collaborating schools, co-headships and changes associated with the Private Finance Initiative. The National College for School Leadership and the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust are encouraging the development of federations, and the government hopes that the opportunity to achieve Trust Status, enabled in the latest Education and Inspections Act, will pave the way for the establishment of independent foundations. The great majority of the head teachers in our sample remained sceptical. “At the end of the day who really is in charge - is it the person who is overseeing the federation or is it the person who is actually looking after the school itself?”
Recruitment
There is evidence of an impending shortfall in the recruitment of head teachers in the maintained sector. On the face of it, this is surprising since in secondary schools the ratio of teachers to head teachers is 53:1. It is perhaps more understandable in primary schools where the ratio of is only 8:1. Three quarters of the schools reported having teachers with the qualities to become a head teacher but who did not want to move up. Nearly two-thirds of the primary heads thought that this was because the pay differential was not a sufficient incentive. The heads of small schools complained that at the top of their scale they would be receiving less than a deputy of a larger school or the second in a department in a secondary school. Overall, workload was the main reason the heads thought there were recruitment difficulties, with accountability a close second, particularly the vulnerability of the heads to sacking in the light of a bad Ofsted report. Why should a comfortably placed teacher want to put his/her head above the parapet? They recognised that head teachers were not necessarily representative in terms of gender or ethnic background though the balance is improving. They were strongly opposed to positive discrimination.
Succession
The heads reported considerable efforts to secure succession through identifying those with leadership potential and encouraging them, giving them extra responsibilities, supporting them to take national qualifications, mentoring and providing opportunities to widen their experience.
Training
The heads were generally supportive of a national qualification for head teachers, but ambivalent about the NPQH on the grounds that it was paper-based rather than practical. They had various suggestions for supplementing or replacing the NPQH including shadowing successful head teachers, accepting MBAs and other qualifications as an alternative, residential courses and systematic mentoring.
Remuneration
The head teachers recognised that there was a degree of flexibility in their salaries, but governors were not always able within the budget or willing to exercise that flexibility. There was also a feeling that higher salaries for staying in the classroom were making it more difficult to recruit people to their ranks. There was no great pressure for other incentives. They were mainly interested in changes that would enable them to do their jobs better such as secondments and sabbaticals, and mentoring and support. One novel suggestion was that head teachers and senior staff should have more flexibility over when they took their holidays.
Support
Four means of support were considered: SIPs, LEAs, other heads, and professional associations. With SIPs the general reaction was that these are early days and the role needs clarifying: are they there primarily to help or report? Concerns were expressed as to whether it would be possible to recruit sufficient active head teachers to serve as SIPs. About two-thirds of the heads thought that the role of the LEA is diminishing. For primary schools this was almost always a matter of regret, whereas the more common response from secondary schools was to welcome it. Another difference between primary and secondary heads was the extent to which they relied on the informal help of other heads in the area. Most primary heads readily turned to their colleagues for advice and support.
But their secondary counterparts were much more conscious of the competition between them. “Dog eats dog”, as one of them put it. As support from LEAs has weakened the head teachers have been turning more to their professional associations. These provide valuable legal advice and support, update the heads on recent developments and convene local meetings where they can get together in more relaxed circumstances.
Independent Schools
Independent schools are of interest to us in this context because they are at heart businesses. They have to draw in income to survive. That income, however, depends crucially on the quality of teaching and learning as perceived by parents and universities. It is this that underpins the power of the head teacher. In some schools the bursar operates in parallel with the head teacher as clerk to the governors and that is a crucial relationship which can be difficult. Unlike the state sector most independent schools did not seem to be experiencing difficulty in filling head teacher posts though there was some suggestion of this in girls’ schools.
The heads in our sample said that the heads had to have classroom experience and come up through schools to have credibility with parents, teachers and pupils. One of our heads had been appointed from a university, but was teaching in his school. Our heads could not readily call to mind any examples of successful heads being appointed to independent schools from outside the world of education. The heads blamed the lack of classroom experience and understanding of schools among politicians and civil servants for the poor decisions affecting their state-school colleagues.
The heads were not generally in favour of a change of title because the current one emphasised teaching and learning as the number one priority. Heads saw it as part of their role to nurture future head teachers among their staff through experience and training on the job. A common view was that the NPQH is symptomatic of the top-down culture in the state sector and was a box-ticking exercise. The heads of independent schools thought that any difficulty in recruiting head teachers in the maintained sector was due to the directive stance adopted by central government. It was described as “independence with a big thick collar and chain.” Rather than changing the nature of headship by splitting the role or having “a Tesco general manager, as it were, going from branch to branch”, their advice to government was that “the things that need doing would be matters of undoing.” In other words, it is for the style of government rather than the nature headship to change.
Conclusion
The key question facing policy makers would seem to be: do the present difficulties in recruiting head teachers for maintained schools entail radical changes such as recruiting from outside the profession, federating schools and new forms of leadership, or is it mainly a matter of addressing what is currently putting off potential head teachers from applying? What is it that is putting them off? In the case of primary teachers it appears to be an insufficient salary differential commensurate with the demands of the post. In the case of secondary teachers it was increased workload from too many initiatives and vulnerability to sacking for bad Ofsted reports.
Given that in maintained secondary schools there are over fifty teachers for every head teacher post there should be no difficulty in recruiting sufficient good heads from within the profession. This is important because the necessary experience to lead the core function of learning and teaching is best obtained in the classroom. Recruitment to headships in the independent sector is still healthy and this is attributed to much less interference from government. In maintained primary schools there are eight teachers for every head teacher. The schools are much smaller than secondary schools and, therefore, have lower income and smaller leadership teams, but the responsibilities borne by the head teacher are almost as wide-ranging. There is a case for looking at new forms of organisation in the primary phase though this needs to be tackled with sensitivity and understanding.
Our evidence suggests that any current difficulty in recruiting head teachers for maintained schools does not demand a massive change in the nature of headship. The government should look to itself and ask whether its reforming zeal and policy of pressure from the centre is in the best interests of our schools. The crisis, if there be one, seems to us to be government made.
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