In a tiny primary school how many days should a headteacher teach?

[Swift1234]

My children's primary school now only has 50 children. Was 75+ when my eldest started but due to low birth rate and the head teacher upsetting lots of families it has gone down over the last 4 years after she started. She only teaches for 1.5 days a week. When I was a child in a school larger than this my headteacher had her own class. I'm trying to find out how many days headteachers teach in your children's small schools? There is talk of the school reducing to 2 classes to save money but if she was teaching more instead of getting other teachers in to cover etc the school would save lots! Id be really grateful if you could let me know how many kids at the school? How many days the head teaches? And if possible the name of the primary school. Thankyou!!

£60k is a pretty low salary for the level of responsibility of headship.

By federate, do you mean join a MAT? Have you seen the CEO and rediculous 'head office' salaries??????

Most of the small schools I have had involvement with tend to either share a headteacher or sometimes the head will do last minute cover if a teacher is sick. I think they sometimes do music/ French etc which I presume is covering the class teachers PPA time. I don’t know any small schools that don’t have mixed year group classes - surely it wouldn’t be financially viable otherwise?

A lot of the things you have to do for a school have to be done regardless of size. There is a lot more admin than there used to be. I think any amount of teaching is probably making the job pretty hard. I definitely wouldn’t expect them to do more.

It's wasn't my comment but no federated doesn't mean a MAT. It's very common in small schools in my area. Rather than a teaching head or part time head the head and board of governors is shared between two or three small schools. There's none of the levels of bureaucracy that you get in MATs. Two class schools are far from ideal for KS2 and often not popular with teachers; a shared head to save costs for three classes is often a good solution.

@purpleheartsandrosesNo. That’s not federation. Federation is when two schools join (merge) and have one head. I’ve seen it work well with village schools that are near to each other. So if you have 2 x 60 place primaries, you federate into one school. The ones I know have separated out into infant and junior. The CofE often aren’t interested but community schools should look at it. A mat is a Trust, usually for numerous schools. They might use an executive head as an overarching head but they don’t save any money.

The salary I mentioned is the lowest rung of heads pay. Most get more but it’s based on size of school.

CofE schools near me are federated.

The other issue in tiny schools is that Heads get paid very little for the amount of responsibility, because their pay is linked to pupil numbers but their workload really isn't. In one v small school I worked at (about 7 years ago), the new Head was in her first headship, and when she moved from experienced teacher to first headship, her salary only went up a couple of grand. She was on well under 50 grand, but the workload, responsibility and stress were massive.

I do have an idea because my DC attended the school! Budget, salaries, buildings, maintenance, utilities, resources, governance etc is all handled by the diocese for small village schools. Leaving teachers to teach, which is as it should be.

My school was a diocese school. The diocese handled none of this.

I work in a tiny rural school and our head teaches two days a week. She taught full time for a term to cover sickness and it was so hard for her. We have no deputy or SLT so it’s all down to her.

Maybe ours takes its responsibilities more seriously.

No, it will be to do with formal structure. There are different types of diocese school structure, and some carry more management responsibility for the diocese than others. It's got nothing to do with the 'quality' of the diocese. They can't just choose which things they manage.

About 100 at ours and the headteacher is also the y6 class teacher. I believe some of his teaching time is covered by other members of staff (TAs, Senco), but he is definitely their primary teacher.

Same.

Same. The head also cleaned the toilets when the caretaker was off, and everything else that needs doing! We did have a head that taught 1.5 days a week but the governors could see that she was on the verge of a breakdown because of the demands of the role, the replacement didnt teach on a timetabled basis ( what do you do if you’re timetabled to teach and there’s an urgent safeguarding matter that has to be dealt with or a trust/local authority meeting that has to be attended?) but would take small groups/boosters. She was also the safeguarding lead, SENDCO, curriculum lead, finance, RE lead and a whole host of other roles.

You need about 25 (ish) children to cover the cost of a class teacher.

when the school numbers are below 50, and the school is not sharing a head with another small school, it’s incredibly hard to make the budget work without the head teaching.

when they get down to 20-30 it’s almost impossible. Federating helps, but is t always the solution.

Previous head teacher of a rural school- I taught 2.5days a week and it was a complete nightmare to be honest. Especially when there were child planning meetings, child protection, staff off unwell. just because the role is smaller there is the same expectation around certain things like improvement plans etc but only you to do it.
Then my school had a major incident with the building which meant we had to be off site across 3 different places about 3 miles apart for a year- and that was also horrendous.
I was also a head teacher across 2 rural schools in another job, which was challenging as it had 2 pta groups, 2 different cultures, contexts and facilities etc. it was like doing twice the work really.
I wouldn’t ever be a head teacher in a small school again.

What are you going to do with this information? Barge your way into the HTs office and order her to start teaching ? I just find your audacity quite breath taking. Who'd want to be a teacher with crap like this to put up with?!?

@SloupesFair enough. Not keen in this diocese. In my view, there should be a presumption there is engagement in this.

@ILoveLeopard245 If schools federate, they have one set of governors and one pta. They don’t stay separate. It’s interesting other schools could accommodate your pupils. Obviously too many schools for dc needing them. We do love spending vast sums of money doing this in the uk and then complain about lack of funds.

@MeetMeOnTheCorner we are in rural Scotland so doesn’t work that way here. Also we were accommodated on village halls and a library.

@ILoveLeopard245 Well there’s rural and ultra rural! I’m the uk far too many schools, close to the neighbouring village school, are kept going. The CofE mats have wanted this, although I hear that isn’t the case everywhere. There’s no intention of cutting costs on SLT staffing so dc get more money spent directly on them. The mats pay huge salaries but I’m not seeing improvements for dc.

what do you do if you’re timetabled to teach and there’s an urgent safeguarding matter that has to be dealt with or a trust/local authority meeting that has to be attended?

Exactly. And because it's such a small school, there's no-one spare to take the class while the head is dealing with the situation.

Yes. There are other staff. You won’t find a school without a TA for example. In an emergency the TA takes over, like anywhere else! It’s extraordinarily rare for this to happen though so is it money well spent having excess staff for this? Dc can also be sent home in a true emergency.

Where I am, there are definitely times where there isn’t a pupil support assistant available- particularly in small schools. Break and lunch is covered and times where there would be an entirely lone working situation, such as in 1 teacher schools- but if they are off, there’s unlikely to be cover. (PSA is a TA equivalent I think, we don’t have them in Scotland and they’d have a different remit. They can’t be responsible for covering classes for example, as anyone teaching a class has to be a teacher, registered with GTCS).
And you could find you don’t have someone in the office either. We had to answer the phone in the classroom 3 afternoons a week (kids loved that to be honest, but it was a total pain when you were doing a teaching input and having to answer the phone). I had a janitor come out once a week for an hour. A small school has some very unique challenges but also lots of positive aspects too.
I still wouldn’t go back to being a head teacher of a small school though. Even for double the money.