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Keeping your head

Take part in our national online discussion about strategies to retain headteachers and other senior leaders.

Toolkit for governors

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Models and partnerships

Models of leadership for governors

The educational environment doesn't stand still and the role of headteachers constantly develops to respond to this. As you develop your plans for the succession of the current headteacher, you should consider reviewing the leadership structure for your school.

This may include a focus on arrangements within a single school, for example through appointing a school business manager, developing more distributed leadership or creating a jobshare arrangement for the headteacher. Other options include partnerships and collaborations between schools and between school and other agencies, for example through federations and trusts. You may find you can solve some of your greatest challenges by collaborating with other schools, perhaps starting with one particular issue such as pupils’ transition from primary to secondary phase.

Of course, no two schools are the same. The complexity of the environments in which schools operate means that different schools will need to apply different leadership styles and models to meet their needs. It follows that the traditional model of one headteacher for each school may no longer be the most appropriate way of meeting your leadership needs.

Examples of leadership models

We have included three examples of different leadership structures you could consider for your school. Many other types of models exist, and these are explored in more detail in our models and partnerships area of the website.

Executive headship

Federations (see the next section) are normally led by an executive headteacher, who takes overall responsibility for all the schools. Each school within the federation may have a head of teaching and learning or head of school, who reports to the executive head. In some cases, a headteacher who is already leading a successful school adds the leadership of another to their remit. Executive heads in this definition may be deployed in schools where leadership needs to be strongly supported because the school is not performing well. This may be for a fixed term where the partner school is facing difficulties for some reason.

What are the benefits?

  • Development opportunity for a good headteacher to extend his or her impact and legacy through taking on the overall leadership of more than one school.
  • Opportunities for potential school leaders to take greater responsibility within the executive head’s own school while he or she works with another school. This is distributed leadership in action.

Federations

A federation is a group of two or more schools and partners that formally agree to work together to raise standards and has a single governing body. One headteacher may oversee more than one school within the federation, hence challenging the tradition of every school having its own dedicated head.

What are the benefits?

  • Smaller schools in particular may benefit from a wider leadership team giving greater support to the head.
  • Development opportunity for a good headteacher to extend his or her impact and legacy through taking on the overall leadership of more than one school.
  • Opportunities for potential school leaders to take a wider range of leadership roles within the line management structure of the group of schools.

Find out more about federations and other models by listening to two of our expert associates talking about their experience of school governance in schools developing new models.

Headship jobshare

The role is shared between more than one person. Where two people share the role, they might both work full time, each with contracts for 0.5 headteacher and 0.5 deputy; or they might both work part-time, and together make up 1.0 headteacher role. In a step-up step-down co-headship, an experienced headteacher approaching retirement may stay on to support and mentor a new, less experienced, head into the role.

Working arrangements are tailored to meet the needs of the schools and the headteachers.

What are the benefits?

  • The combined skills, experience and capacity of two talented people leading the school.
  • Can be attractive to leaders looking for a better work-life balance.
  • Opportunities to retain the skills and experience of a headteacher nearing retirement during the induction period of a new leader.

Action checklist for your school's leadership structure

We have developed a checklist to help you identify short and longer-term actions. Questions to consider include: "Do we know how one of these models could help us find, develop and keep good headteachers?" and "Have we considered collaborating with other schools to help us build on our strengths and tackle shared challenges?"

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