Heads, you lose, by Phil Revell

19 Jan 06
Forget the current headlines about schools, one of their biggest difficulties is attracting a head teacher. Phil Revell reports on a recruitment crisis that is threatening the reforms

20 January 2006

Forget the current headlines about schools, one of their biggest difficulties is attracting a head teacher. Phil Revell reports on a recruitment crisis that is threatening the reforms

A turkey twizzler for those who can identify the biggest problem facing schools over the next 12 months – the forthcoming Education Bill, funding, healthy school meals or ministers who think it appropriate for sex offenders to teach PE?

None of these things makes the number one slot. The controversy surrounding the Bill is about perception. The white paper – leaving aside the spin – contained little that was new. But the widely held view is that the PM intends to destroy the power of local authorities and return to some form of selection in Britain's secondary schools.

What the government's proposals actually offer are a variety of options that heads and governing bodies may or may not take advantage of. 'None of these policies is forcing teachers or schools to do anything,' says Conservative education spokesman David Willetts. 'I can't see why anyone would want to stop head teachers having these options.'

Not, as a Guardian/ICM poll pointed out last week – that there is any evidence that head teachers are desperate to abandon their local authorities. Four out of ten heads reported themselves satisfied with the way their local authority uses education funding, with less than a third expressing dissatisfaction.

This comes as no surprise to Mick Brookes, general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers. 'Some local authorities enjoy a huge level of support from their schools,' he says. 'That's particularly true of small primary schools, which do not have the capacity to run their own administration.'

So what is the biggest problem facing schools over the next 12 months? The answer can be found in the classified ads section of the Times Education Supplement. TES classifieds are awash with advertisements for heads and deputies. Desperate schools are offering eye-watering sums of money to attract a leader, with £90,000 offered in a Brent primary school last year. For the first time, secondary schools outside London have been offering six-figure salaries, but the money has not guaranteed a successful outcome.

Two major studies highlight the problem. A National Audit Office report – Improving poorly performing schools in England – exposed the 1,557 schools still performing badly despite receiving almost a billion pounds of government spending.

This is around 4% of primary schools and a shocking 23% of secondaries. According to the NAO, these schools have weak leadership teams who 'generally fail to recognise their weaknesses and are unable to tackle them when they do'.

A second report on the recruitment situation for head teachers and deputies, prepared by Professor John Howson of Education Data Services, makes equally startling reading. 'Many schools failed to appoint a new head teacher after their first advertisement; the position, especially for secondary schools, has deteriorated significantly during 2005. In all sectors, the ratio of re-advertisements to advertisements exceeded 33% for the first time,' he says in his annual survey of senior education staff appointments.

In effect, head teacher recruitment is in meltdown. Howson has been analysing education recruitment for 21 years and says that 2005 had the highest level of job re-advertisements that he had ever seen. 'The levels recorded represent a labour market in a state of crisis,' he claims.

The figures are double those of ten years ago. Some schools are going into the market three or four times in the search for a head teacher. In the meantime, they make do with a temporary, who could be in place for 12 months, given the long notice periods operated in schools. The NAO reported that more than a quarter of primaries and a fifth of secondary schools lacked a permanent head.

Over the country, the regional differences are what might be expected. Worst off are the outer London boroughs, which have to cope with high living costs without the attraction of the inner London allowance. Schools in these authorities had a 55% re-advertisement rate. You have to travel a long way away from the capital before the figures become acceptable. In the Northeast, schools can reasonably expect to appoint a new head first time around, with only 16% of posts re-advertised.

The shortage of teachers coming forward to apply for headship matters because there is universal agreement about the importance of leadership to the success of a school. Good head teachers do make a difference. The NAO report described the 'vital role' played by heads, especially in turning around a poorly performing school.

Yet head teachers are reasonably well paid even before the premium salaries being offered by some desperate schools are taken into account. So why the crisis? The answer can be found in a roll call of initiatives that have crossed heads' desks over the past 12 months. Primary and secondary strategies on literacy and numeracy, healthy school meals, personalised learning, workload reform, restructuring of teachers' management allowances, enterprise education – the list goes on and on.

'It's just one damned thing after another,' says one head. 'My staff see me trying to cope with all this rubbish on a daily basis, who can blame them if they decide to stay in the classroom.'

'Head teachers are worked off their feet,' says Mick Brookes. 'That's having a direct effect on recruitment.'

A typical initiative is the healthy schools policy and associated new nutritional standards introduced after Jamie Oliver's drive to improve school meals. The initiative is typical because it resulted in lots of new guidance and form-filling, but virtually no new money. It addressed an issue that many heads believe should not be their responsibility at all.

Many have tried to introduce better food into their schools, often in the face of opposition by parents. One school in Shropshire brought in a 'no sweets at playtime' policy, only to find themselves on the front page of their local paper, as parents defended their children's right to eat whatever they liked. Other heads have found that their hands are tied, because they have, as a direct result of government policy, been forced to accept long-term contracts with caterers.

Then there's the workload agreement. Signed in a frenzy of optimism three years ago, this ushered in a new teachers' contract that was supposed to cut the term-time hours worked by the average teacher. There would be a legion of support staff to take over the more mundane aspects of teachers' everyday duties and everyone who worked in schools, including heads, would have a proper work/life balance.

The National Union of Teachers refused to sign the agreement from the very start, citing lack of funding and concern about unqualified support staff being asked to teach. Last year, the NAHT joined their NUT colleagues outside the tent. The primary heads who dominate the heads' association had found that extra time for their teachers often came at their expense. Almost a third reported that additional marking and preparation time for teachers had been won at the cost of an increased teaching load for themselves and their deputies.

If heads are not covering for their staff, someone else must. The other fly in the ointment of workforce reform is the use in many schools of poorly paid and virtually untrained staff to cover for absent teachers and to take classes while the regular teacher takes time out for marking or lesson preparation. Hourly rates of pay rarely reflect the new responsibilities.

'In many cases, our members are filling in for teachers for £8 an hour,' says Unison's Christina McAnea. These 'classroom assistants', mainly women, are unhappy about taking over from a teacher for that kind of money. That dissatisfaction is finding several outlets. Some are being supported by their union to take equal pay actions. Others are awaiting local authority single status agreements, which compare roles and responsibilities and usually result in a significant upgrade for school support staff.

The government has offered talks about a national pay structure. 'They have offered us a working party to report by April,' says McAnea. 'It will look at rewards, hours, employment and contract.'

However the issue is resolved, head teachers face an increase in their employee costs. And that's before they even consider their own rewards. At the end of last year, the teachers' pay review body asked ministers to consider a review of heads' pay. But, after a period of relative plenty, increases in the school salary bill are to be held at inflation or below for the next two years at least, and it will be difficult for schools to find the extra money for heads.

Even if they could, there are doubts whether it would have any effect. Some heads argue privately that the job is no longer do-able. Certainly the penalties for making mistakes are set to be more severe than ever. In cases handled by the Association of School and College Leaders (which used to be the Secondary Heads Association) over the past two years, heads and deputy heads have lost their jobs after an adverse Ofsted report, even when they have been in the school for as little as two terms. Some of these people were in their second headship, having left a successful school to take on the new challenge.

The white paper proposed formalising this draconian approach – offering employers the option of sacking entire leadership teams if schools failed their inspections.This prospect horrifies John Dunford, general secretary of the ASCL. 'A different attitude is needed towards accountability if the supply of future head teachers is not to be cut off,' he says. 'This must be based on a system that supports and develops leaders, rather than sacks them at the first opportunity.'

And there's a final twist to this story. Most heads are in their 50s. In an age of low inflation and with the prospect of the best pension scheme in the public sector to look forward to, many are already choosing to retire early.

John Howson estimates that, in the next five years, thousands will leave the profession, with retirements peaking in 2008. Unless ministers can find some way to either keep these older heads in post – or persuade more young teachers to step forward to take up the challenge – thousands more schools will face months of temporary leadership, as their governing bodies search in vain for anyone willing to do the job.

What price the standards agenda then?

PFjan2006

Did you enjoy this article?

AddToAny

Top