The record for the UK’s longest-serving headteacher stands at 57 years. I had no desire to challenge this staggering feat of longevity, but I had always intended to remain in post until I reached the age of retirement. But after 14 years, and some way off retirement, I changed my mind.
I came across an old newspaper article written about my appointment in 2007 as headteacher of a state secondary school. The person staring out of the page looked ridiculously young and optimistic. But looking at myself in the mirror, I was unrecognisable, with sunken eyes and a haunted look about me. I required trousers with an elasticated waistband, shoes with cushioned soles, unfeasibly high levels of caffeine and a 5.15am wakeup call just to get me through the average schoolday.
The contrast between the two images was so stark that I realised the many joys of leading a school community had now been outweighed by the pressures of the job and I had reached my tipping point, albeit prematurely.
My experience is not unique. Nearly half of school leaders polled by the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) in 2020 indicated that, just like me, they were intending to leave their jobs prematurely, once they had steered their schools through the Covid crisis.
This was more than a kneejerk reaction to the not insignificant challenges of leading a school through the mayhem of a pandemic. Many had become disillusioned with headship well before Covid-19 arrived, but it was the intense pressure placed on headteachers during this period that triggered the soul-searching that led to this exodus.
Rather worryingly, not only are more heads retiring prematurely but a recent report revealed that one in three are leaving the profession within five years of their appointment. In the rapidly changing environment of education, this is not a good thing. It means that schools are losing the stability and continuity that long-serving heads can provide. Building relationships with the local community, winning the trust of parents and improving student outcomes can take many years.
The causes of this headteacher churn are well documented: high-stakes inspections, crushing workloads, long hours, inadequate school funding, lack of autonomy, difficulties in recruiting staff, along with a real-terms pay cut of 15% over the past decade. However, in my experience, it is the increasingly impossible expectations placed on schools that heads have found particularly attritional.
As well as getting students to learn how to read, write and do their sums, we are now also responsible for the rest of society’s ills, from preventing terrorism to stopping children from getting bitten by dogs; from reducing body mass indices to ensuring students can fill in a tax return. We are asking more of schools, and their leaders, than ever before.
Over the past 14 years, I have been held responsible for many things way beyond my control: the delayed return of a trip to London because of the discovery of a second world war bomb; our canteen running out of gluten-free options one lunchtime; having to call a snow day because, of all things, it had been snowing heavily. Whenever freak accidents, natural disasters, the weather or acts of God occur, I have been found to be failing in my duty of care, with parents too often promising that I’ll be “reported to Ofsted”.
Parental complaints have risen exponentially since I started teaching, and nothing is immune to criticism. From complaints about the percentage of polyester to cotton mix in our uniform, the temperature in the art block and the incorrect use of an apostrophe in a revision website we recommended, through to much more serious (and thankfully false) allegations regarding safeguarding, discrimination and general incompetence. Such allegations rightly require full investigation, but this takes precious time away from improving teaching and learning. The corresponding rise in the number of threats to take me to court (once by three different members of the same family) led to a feeling of dread every time I opened my emails that lasted for months.
But even passing on the baton to someone new isn’t easy. At my school, we struggled to find suitable candidates and had to advertise three times for my replacement. The 2020 NAHT report found that more than 53% of assistant and deputy headteachers now say they don’t aspire to headship, and who can blame them – who would want to be a headteacher in the current climate?
If the Department for Education wants “strong schools with excellent leaders” to deliver for the next generation, urgent action is required to make headship an attractive and sustainable career. Salaries, trust and autonomy need restoring, and inspection and accountability need reforming.
If we want to “make sure every child has access to an education that they deserve”, it is vital to entice the very best into school leadership, and to prevent those already in post from heading for the hills.
Nick Smith is a former headteacher. He is the author of Head Trauma: The Bruising Diary of a Headteacher
