New head teacher to job share, can parents oppose the choice?

[Loolah]

The head teacher of a nearby school to my children's has been to look around with potential to become head teacher as well as carry on with their own school (part time between the 2) several ( more than 10 ) children were moved from this head teachers school as he was eccentric (weird). The parents want to request a meeting / oppose this new move, can they do that?

Probably the best course of action is to write a letter to the school governors, stating your concerns.

there are parent governors - I would approach one of them.

You can do is raise your concerns informally with the parent governors. You could write formally to the Chair of governors, and LA if it as LA school, raising concerns and asking for a parents meeting. Grounds would need to be more substantial than 'he is a bit weird' and there is no obligation on the governors to have one.

Schools find it hard to recruit Heads and this may be a temporary arrangement in any case or there may be several candidates in the frame.

What you can do... (damn phone)

This happens quite a lot in our LA - large rural county with lots of small rural schools. It saves money and seems to work quite well although I wouldn't like to be the head teacher running between schools! It happens most often when the leaving head teacher has a teaching responsibility. They get another teacher to do that and the heads position becomes part time. Increasingly it is also happening because it is hard to fill headship positions.

No, parents have no say in HT appointment but as others have suggested you may want to give views to Governors. Governors appoint the HT. Governors have no obligation to include parent views when recruiting but would be wise to consider the ramifications.

Do you object because of the job share or the alleged eccentricity?

I'm not sure from your OP if the HT has been appointed yet but either way parents don't get a say in the process. Are you objecting to the job share or the fact that you've heard the HT is weird?

I think job shares can be a very good use of finite resources for schools with teaching heads. If you have 2 heads who teach half time they can devote their full time to being head and between them the schools can share a teacher who'll be cheaper but could well actually be a better teacher

Is this a job share or school share? Our head is head of 3 different schools. Part time here and there between them. He's one of these super heads. Is that what you mean?

This happens loads in our area; they are called executive heads rather than job-shares.

I very much doubt you complaining will have an impact-many heads are rather eccentric!

What is it you are unhappy about?

The LA was trying to sell the idea to me by setting up a meeting with a federation head who did the equivalent to 2.5 days in each school about 15 minutes drive apart. How she actually split the time wasn't strict and she had a timetable of when she would be in which school's office. It can go as far as sharing the teachers, especially those with certain areas of expertise, between the schools and having a single governing body and she said this was a huge bonus.
What she did say that made me laugh was that sods law meant she could always guarantee to be at school A when school B had a crisis and vice versa. But luckily she had an amazing senior teacher at each school who dealt with these crises so she often didn't have to!
Didn't convince me to apply though!

You have to get the governors onside, we protested for exactly the same reason (we had pupils who had moved from the proposed partner school, because they hated the head).

We were having trouble recruiting a HT and didn't want them.

It all fell through and one of our own teachers was promoted to acting HT instead.

It's not me personally who is unhappy, I have only met the proposed ( not yet appointed) head teacher ( currently head of a small local school) very briefly. Children who attend my DC's school their parents moved them from this head teacher's school for various reasons but mainly because of this HT. I was just thinking about where they stand if they wanted to protest about the proposal

Do parents have the right to know who has applied for the post? Actually I know the answer to that, just wondered what people thought. If the LA are looking to set up a federation as a solution to a particular problem (school too small to warrant a full-time head or struggling to recruit) it is a decision at governor and LA level. I'm curious how you know this head was looking round with a view to becoming the head?

I don't know the answer NewName but wouldn't it be common knowledge that a HT was being recruited and obviously candidates will look round the school which is bound to be known to everyman and his dog before the end of the day of the visit (or at least it would be in schools of my experience }

We had about 20 candidates looking round my school recently for the HT post. As lots of adults (prospective parents) look round the school no one was any the wiser, and even a couple from nearby schools did not raise queries as we have lots of collaboration between local schools, shared lesson observations, headteachers have meetings and show their colleagues round, etc. But I suppose if the child already knew that person as a head from their old school they might recognise them and parents put 2 + 2 together when told by their child. (but they still could be barking up the wrong tree and make 5 when the head was just there to discuss other issues).

The answer is no one has a right to know who has applied except governors who are actually part of the recruitment panel and the LA representatives. None of the staff or other governors could be told who had applied or who had been short-listed for interview. We didn't know until we saw people on the day of interview. And after all that they didn't appoint!

There's a national shortage of effective HTs. Putting schools into federation with each other (if this is what this is) so they share a good head is getting quite common now.

At ours, there is an Executive Head who is the main and biggest cheese and who heads up two schools and then a Head of School whose role is exclusively in ours. The Head of School role is effectively a trainee role for headship as they work really closely.

It has worked really well imo. There is more sharing of effective practice between the two schools and teachers have been swapped over through the years so they get experience of different institutions but are retained longer between the schools.