What does headteachers job entail?

[Bloodyknowitall]

This isn’t meant to be rude, I’m just genuinely curious. We have a lovely headteacher at my children's school, she is warm, friendly and is always there to greet parents and teachers in the morning. We’ve had a few meetings with her about how our children are doing in her lovely, flower filled office (!!) I’ve seen her chair meetings and give talks etc. she doesn’t teach, but I’m just genuinely curious about what the job entails for the most part? Her life seems lovely and I’m quite impressed by her, but I’m sure it’s extremely stressful job and she’s very good at PR! What is the nitty gritty, day to day job of a head?

Staff development/management/appraisal
Recruitment
Dealing with parents/staff issues/behaviour/governors/initiatives
Operational issues
Procurement
Curriculum alignment, assessment data interrogation, reporting data
Day to day crises
PR
It's never ending but I love it

If you’re a secondary Head, you ultimately carry the can for progress, attainment and safeguarding for a population which could easily be 1200+ children and 150+ staff. Plus managing a shrinking budget and trying not to go into deficit, knowing you’re only ever as good as your last set of results and knowing that a Good or RI inspection can all too easily be based on the personality of the inspectors you get on the day. I can’t think of many jobs in the public sector with that level of autonomy and accountability really. I was a Deputy Head before changing career but I wouldn’t want the ultimate level of responsibility which comes with Headship.

Yeah, such a lovely life 🙄
Wonder why there's a recruitment crisis in headteachers...

They are accountable for everything. Its really lonely i think. Although, thats from a small school perspective so there isnt a team of deputies and assistants. I have worked in lots of organisations before I started school admin. Ive never worked anywhere where everything kept coming back to one individual like that.

Ours does a great deal of safeguarding work. She has to manage parents and staff and budgets. She is accountable for the progress and safety of 200 children in a small primary. She manages to be on the gate at open and close, have one to ones for children and parents who need help right at that moment, serve the lunches when someone rings in sick and teach if a staff member is suddenly off. I wouldn't want her job for any money.

I would echo the loneliness aspect of this. I think the last few years have been particularly difficult and, with the ineffectiveness of government and the DfE, headteachers really have felt as if they are out there on their own. So much has fallen on their heads with very little available in the way of support. Headteacher recruitment has become more and more difficult over the last decade and I can absolutely see why.

It's both an amazing opportunity to affect real change for children and a terrible burden to be and cultivate an impossibly high standard to benefit them. As head, you set the tone. The right headteacher can transform the school into a phenomenal place to work or study, one where staff and children are nurtured and developed. The wrong headteacher creates a workplace culture that is simply hellish where micro-management, gossip, suspicion and intimidation are rife.

Dont forget the finances as well - making sure the school can afford toilet paper, library books, staff and building repairs.
HT also has to manage the Governors, who can be a help or hindrance.
In this area Primary school heads are expected to help and advise re getting pupils into their chosen (ie best) secondary schools.

Plus, who do you think gets fired if Ofsted aren't happy?

We have a wonderful head who I have a lot of time for. She does an amazing job.

Constant public scrutiny, much worse now due to social media. Our head’s clothes, facial expression and tone of voice is commented on multiple times a day.
Everyone has an opinion, but rarely sees the whole picture that the head sees and carries.

I’m glad OP’s HT has a nice office.

@GiantCheeseMonster spot on about headship ! Out of interest when you left your DHT position what career did you move into?

I can't imagine having such scrutity every single day, it must be exhausting.

Also, the fact they can never get it right.

The school has too many trips / dress up days - Complain to the headteacher

The school doesn't have enough trips / dress up days - Complain to the headteacher

The class teacher gave my child too much homework - Complain to the headteacher

The class teacher didn't give my child enough homework - Complain to the headteacher

And so on. No wonder there's a recruitment problem.

From a teacher's perspective, heads are responsible for:

-Managing the budget
-Recruiting staff
-Retaining existing staff
-Ensuring school policies are fit for purpose and leading drives to update them if needed.
-Ultimately responsible for staff CPD, although someone else may do the organising of this.
-Responsible for the school calendar (e.g. when are open evenings, parents evenings, meetings, when do reports come out etc)- this needs to be managed carefully to avoid ridiculous crunch times for staff and students.
-Dealing with the most serious behaviour incidents (depending on school this can take up a lot of time).
-Dealing with the most serious safeguarding incidents (or all safeguarding in a smaller school)
-Maintaining health and safety on the school site (again they may delegate parts of this but it's their ultimate responsibility).
-Line managing senior staff.
-Dealing with disciplinary/serious performance issues for all staff
-PR for the school (quite important if you want to have any students/staff)
-Sharing information with staff (e.g. running a staff briefing)
-Dealing with any emergencies that arise- in the last few years this could be anything from a staff shortage due to covid, extreme weather, extreme behaviour from a child, extreme behaviour from a parent, extreme illness in a child, safeguarding emergencies e.g. during lockdown, power cuts at the school site, having to organise home learning with minimal notice etc.
-Overall shaping of the direction and ethos of the school.
-Keeping a relationship with governors/trustees (and the CEO if in a MAT).
-Ultimate authorisation of trips/visits.
-Liaising with parents.
-Being visible to students and ideally getting involved with positives for them, as well as negatives.

Probably other things that I've forgotten, and the smaller the school, the more hats they will wear and the more direct responsibility they will take!

It's a really involved job, and it's also the sort of job where you can have several things you need to do at the start of the day, and end up getting none of them done, because of a serious behaviour incident or some other emergency in the morning.

Being a good head is really really difficult, and it's not an easy job at all! (Dare I say, the more you push onto the people below you, the easier it is, but then you'll likely struggle to retain staff).

Virtual School Head at the LA. I love it, although many of the challenges are similar to working in school at a strategic level.

I imagine a lot of their time is taken up updating policies which the DfE spit out like fireworks hither and tither.
They're always making small changes and seem to think it takes just a click of the mouse for heads to implement those changes in not only writing but more importantly practice.

Bless you, OP, you are one of the many parents who sees the outward appearances that “lovely little schools” portray and believe that this somehow demonstrates the nice calm life that teachers and heads must have. I work in a school office and the amount of times I’ve had a parent ring up at 4.30 and ask if a particular teacher is still there or gone home, or express surprise that I’ve answered the phone at 5.15 (I’m supposed to finish at 4:30 anyway). They always say to me “oh!! I thought you’d go home soon after the kids go home!”

they are genuinely surprised to hear that teachers are there till they get thrown out by the caretaker at 5.30, prepping or in a meeting or phoning parents or organising trips etc and often if the head locks up because they have urgent deadlines the teachers will stay late with them. I always make sure that parents realise that the teachers go home to eat dinner and then start back on their work at home.

I’m ashamed to say that until I’d worked in schools I used to be one of those naiive parents too. I had no idea the amount of work that goes on in school to make it run smoothly and to give children the quality of education they have. As for head teachers, my office is next to hers and it has been a total eye opener. Yes, her office is lovely and calm, and that’s what parents see when they visit, but they don’t see the crises that happen in there. They don’t see the phone calls to police, social workers and other care agencies that goes on each day, the constant safeguarding stuff that is batted back to schools all the time because other agencies don’t seem to have the manpower to deal with it.

Parents just think they are there on the yard supervising every morning, then they go in and do assembly, make a few phone calls to parents, sign a few letters and cheques, visit a few classrooms to observe, hand out stickers and certificates to children sent to her office, write a few policies, have a meeting with staff after the children go home, and not much else. If ONLY that’s all they were doing. I do think their role has changed a lot since I was at school in the 80s. Much expanded.

i wouldn’t be a head for all the tea in China and don’t blame any of them for leaving. My own has just resigned after giving her life over to the school. She wants to see her family more. When they get to a certain age and have aging parents and grandchildren then who can blame them?

@GiantCheeseMonster thanks for that- I’ll be following your example 😊

Fantastic, DM me if you want to talk shop!

I can’t speak on primary schools, but it’s a gruelling job for secondary Heads. You’re under fire from all sides constantly and you have to be an incredibly emotionally resilient person with physical stamina.

You need a strong, competent, supportive SLT to support you. That’s key.

I am a senior leader in education and I wouldn’t want to be a Head. I take my hat off to those who do it. It’s easy to sit on the sidelines and criticise but try getting in the arena and doing it …and on a shoestring budget!

My kids headteacher always seems to have a smile on her face. If you need to chat then she will always listen.

However, I wouldn’t want her job or any job in a school. I can only imagine how stressful the last few years have been for her, and all school staff.

Part of the job of HT is putting on a front to parents to make them think that everything is ok when it patently isn't.

That head will be in their (flower-filled) office looking at the energy bill and staffing budget with increasing panic.

The NAHT (mainly primary heads) are currently balloting for unprecedented strike action.

Going to child protection meetings and doing lots of prep for these.

Lots of semi- social work.

Staff discipline

Sending stats to the council

Dealing with complaints

Admissions

Transfers to other schools

Fundraising

Budgeting

Class allocation

CPD and supervision of staff

Meetings with Ed psyche/ sencos

Arranging parents evenings

Adhering to legal rules

Monitoring pupil progress

Dealing with bullying, absence inc reports and pupil misbehaviour (violence/ drugs) potentially suspension/ exclusion and appeals to these.

It's absolutely tons of admin and stress!

I'm a secondary school governor. The Head, and the rest of the senior leadership teams, are the proverbial swans, gliding serenely from task to task above the surface, making the hard work look easy. Our head sometimes goes a whole day without eating or visiting the loo, and barely has time to breathe between meetings. He works late into the evening and often at weekends. Many of the SLT members at our school seem to be former elite athletes, and I think that is the level of stamina needed for the job.