½¿É«µ¼º½

This blog post shares findings from an annual online survey of members of the Association of Headteachers and Deputes in Scotland (AHDS) (Dempster, 2024) regarding school leaders’ working hours, workload challenges and the (declining) desirability of headship in Scotland. If they are a headteacher (HT) we ask if they recommend the role to others. If they are in the management roles below headteacher (depute head or principal teacher), we ask them if they are keen to become a headteacher. The analysis in this blog post compares trends from surveys between 2016 and 2024, with responses from 1,473 members in 2024.

In Scotland, you can only recruit school leaders from within the teaching profession. That group of employees sees the impact of the job on the leaders around them and, as a consequence, the number of middle leaders expressing an interest in becoming a headteacher (principal) has collapsed in recent years. Telling them it is the best job in the world won’t change a thing. We need to tackle the reasons why headship has become all-consuming and increasingly less manageable and desirable.

Successive surveys show that HTs are increasingly less likely to recommend headship while depute heads (DHTs)^[1] and principal teachers (PTs) are very unlikely to say they are keen to be a headteacher. Indeed, the change in response between our first survey in 2016 and the most recent one has been as follows:

When asked to respond to the statement ‘I am keen to become a HT’:

• The proportion of DHTs who ‘strongly disagree’ with the statement increased from 18.3 per cent in 2016 to 48 per cent in 2024.
• For PTs, 25.7 per cent responded ‘strongly disagree’ in 2016, rising to 50 per cent in 2024.
• The proportion of DHTs who answered ‘agree’ or ‘strongly agree’ was 35.7 per cent in 2016 but had dropped to 14.6 per cent by 2024.
• For PTs, 38.6 per cent responded ‘agree’ or ‘strongly agree’ in 2016, dropping to 13.7 per cent by 2024.

To better understand what sits behind these statistics, we asked members to tell us why they chose the response they did. The comments from DHTs and PTs painted a picture of a staff group who saw high levels of pressure and stress for HTs, a focus on bureaucratic work rather than on learning and teaching and a lack of support and resources. Another strong disincentive was seeing the impact that working as a HT was having on the health and family life of their own HT and others in the role.

‘Investment is required at the front line of education to make the job of school leader more manageable and desirable.’

It seems then, that the undesirability of headship is focused on the unmanageability of the job itself. We asked HTs what would make their role more manageable. The results were unsurprising. Unsurprising, because they have been similar for many years and because they all relate to a mismatch between expectations and the resources available to schools. In short, if we want to have a high-performing education system, we need to make an investment which is equivalent to our aspiration.

The most highlighted example of investment is in staff and management time to better support our learners with additional needs. The level of need is rising – with the latest figures showing that 40.5 per cent of pupils had an additional support need (Scottish Government, 2024) – while HTs feel they are unable to provide the necessary support. Supporting these pupils effectively means:

• extra support staff in schools
• training for those staff
• extra places in specialist schools
• increased access to the expertise of educational psychologists
• speech and language therapists, mental health support for children and parents who need it
• investment in training for teachers and school leaders.

This sounds like a lot to ask. At the same time, the public want and society needs a well-staffed, well-led and effective education system. Investment is required at the front line of education to make the job of school leader more manageable and desirable. That investment would become a virtuous circle where investment in services supporting education would enable school leaders to focus on development and improvement. This would increase standards and attract the next generation of school leaders who would see the impact they could have in a system that valued education and the contribution they could make to improving it.

[1] Depute is the standard spelling for the role of deputy head/assistant principal in Scotland.

References

Dempster, G. (2024). AHDS Workload Survey 2016-2024.

Scottish Government. (2024). Summary statistics for schools in Scotland 2024. Ìý