School becoming a part of partnership - with shared head. Advice needed

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We need your help. Our head is leaving, and the headship has never been advertised. We had a letter this week saying that the Governers are thinking, that instead of appointing a new head, that our school should become part of a partnership with a head a shared with another school, eventually going into a federation.

Does anyone know what this means? Are there benefits? Is there any way we can fight it? It seems the decision will be made early next week - we only got the letter this week.

Thanks in advance

Pud2, I'm afraid that's not correct.

If there is a more senior person above the 'Associate Head' or 'Head of School' then the Head of School/Associate Head is contractually the deputy head - there is no contractual post of Head of School or Associate Head. The School Teacher's Pay and Conditions document states quite clearly that there can only be one Head Teacher of a school and this is the person who is named on the Ofsted Report. That person can only delegate their head teacher powers to a 'deputy head' or an 'assistant head'.

There is no mention of Head of School or Associate Head in the Pay and Conditions document, but the school is perfectly entitled to call that person whatever they wish on a day-to-day basis. It may be that the deputy is moved up to a higher pay scale to reflect their increased responsibilities, and equally someone else may be appointed, but nevertheless, contractually it is a deputy head post.

I totally agree with the previous poster that the post holds many more responsibilities than a deputy head, hence the need to increase pay in recognition of this. The NAHT are concerned that in federations deputy heads and assistant heads are fulfilling the roles and responsibilities of a head teacher without the appropriate recognition in their pay. But I'm afraid the fact remains that contractually they are deputy heads.

Schools use all kids of titles that have no standing in law but exist nevertheless.

Often the overall head of a federation is called the executive head www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/340000/executive-heads-summary.pdf while the heads of individual schools are referred to as head/associate head/head of school or any title the school chooses.

Re partnership/federation - the reason will almost certainly be due to a lack of candidates for the headship. It is a huge and growing problem. It's the main reason our governing body voted for a partnership. We felt it was better to provide the current staff with opportunities to develop and give the children stability than to face an uncertain and unstable future.

In the event, what actually happened was that our deputy head became Head of School and has proven to be more than up to the job. Other staff were promoted to Senior Leadership Team. The children are happy, the staff are happy, academic standards have been maintained or raised. We've retained and developed excellent staff who may well have left with the advent of a new headteacher, or with the uncertainty of a protracted recruitment process. We wouldn't have been able to appoint the deputy (a very new deputy) as acting head without any senior support for an open-ended period and the school wouldn't have presented enough of a challenge to be sure of attracting candidates, let alone good ones, for a headship.

Sometimes decisions just are't as simple as they appear.

If we want to turn the partnership into a hard federation, we will have to go through a consultation process. I imagine that your school has announced the partnership to give everyone certainty in the short term and to prevent a flurry of staff resignations at the beginning of the summer term. The parents would then be consulted if hard federation was a possibility.

We have two village schools near me that "combined" or federated to make one the infant school and one the junior school. Both were formerly infant schools only. They have one Head and one Deputy for both schools and 180 pupils on roll across both sites about 1.5 miles away from each other. I remember lots of angry parents going to the presss at the time, but this school has doubled in size and is now very successful.

Many schools are struggling to recruit suitable headteachers. It could be that merging or federating appeals in this situation but I would have expected parents to have been consulted and a meeting organised to discuss what was happening. They now only have 1 month to recruit a head so this could be a temporary step or a permanent one. Governing bodies can be useless at giving out information and yours seems very poor. Gossip amongst wrorried parents does no-one any favours.

They haven't tried to advertise for the headship yet. It seems a strange thing to me to be thinking about at this stage. I could understand if they'd advertised and they'd had no applicants. But no, straight in there with the partnership.

Is your school an infant school or a through primary school? Does it have a deficit budget and does it need to make savings? There must be an explanation for the suggested partnership?

The school is from recption through to year 6. I don't know about the budget. It might need to make savings - everywhere else seems to have to. I think the thinking is that it will be hard to recruit a head, so partnership is the way forward. The area will be being developed, so potentially there will be more potential pupils. The local authority seems unwilling to let the school expand. Almost as if they are trying to engineer things to be the way they want them to be.

I am a governor of a Federation of 2 primary schools.
We have 1 governing body and 1 executive head plus assistant heads for each school.
I think it's a good model.
The main positive is that we can share resources across the 2 schools like SENCO, EAL and specialist teachers eg art, PE and Languages. I think this is good for the children at both schools.
We can also juggle things around to cover maternity and illness and have less supply.
I think it attracts and retains good candidates for teachers and SLT as well as they seem pleased with having more opportunities for development. We also share physical resources like the swimming pool at one school and astro turf at the other and we put on joint special events. The PTA is joint too.

It is the way things are going overall. There are more and more Federations and academies and this is government policy. We felt it was better to federate voluntarily than be forced to join some academy chain. We are stronger together I think.

Our head also has an office in both schools and spends half the week in each. I guess she us slightly less available than if she was only head of one but equally we might have lost her to a bigger school I suspect.

The school my children are at federated last year.

It's still run as it's "own" school but the ethos has changed and not for the better IMO. Class teachers are constant but support staff move between the schools dependent on need (sickness etc) which I think, especially in KS1 is not ideal.

It might be better in terms of budgets and governors but I don't see any improvement on the ground.

We found out today, despite asking them to delay making their decision until they'd given parents a proper chance to hear the plans (they arranged a meeting but few parents turned out because of the short notice and they didn't realise how quickly the decision was going to be made) and all the positives they tell us it will bring, that they went ahead and agreed to pursue the partnership route. I realise as parents that we have no real day in this, and maybe the school doesn't really have much choice in the long run, but it really does feel like this handful of people are gambling with the education of our children. I know that the ethos of any school can change with a new head, but now I feel like we're going to have half a head.

Also, the Governers said that they have no school in mind at this stage, but another parent who is friendly with several of the Governers seems to have heard a rumour about a potential partnership school. It's things like this that makes me feel that Governers are not being entirely honest about everything.

We are part of a soft federation. There was months of planning and meetings and weighing up the options before we, as a governing body, made a desicion. Once decided we sent out a letter explaining the situation to the parents and invited them to an informal meeting to ask questions. Three parents turned up. Most parents didn't notice a change. I expect there are still parents two years in that havent realised. This means we did our job well.

Where I live, there is a large federation of special schools but few primaries have done it, apart from the two small infant schools I mentioned earlier. The situation of the OP's school seems odd. The schools I know were very small schools in adjacent villages with falling rolls. They knew working together was the way forward and would mean the ks2 children could stay and be educated locally. They have now pulled in children from other locations and have grown. I cannot see why a school would assume they cannot recruit a head and not say which school might be the partnership school. I would expect the governors to put parents' minds at rest fairly quickly now and also ask what the arrangements will be for September. Is a Head coming in for a few days from another school? Are you having the Deputy acting up or a Head seconded from another school. It is such a shame to allow this uncertainty and there is a lot of discussion to be had before anything happens.

I've joined this as from September my daughters school will be part of a federation. There are 2 infants and 2 junior schools. One pair of infant/junior already had an executive head. The other infant and junior wasn't linked.

There will now be a CEO, an Executive head and then heads of schools.

I dont particularly like it. I dont think as a member of staff I'd want to be moved aorund to the other school. AS a PTA we're very distinct from the other infant/junior pairing and our ethos is quite different.

I don't like the idea of them all merging.... I like the independence.

I'd like to read about the positives though!

Gosh, teacups, that sounds like a very expensive SLT. Are there Deputies too? I rather agree that four schools is too many.

When my children were younger, their infant school was brilliant but the junior school was only just average. There were many good reasons to join the two because they were on the same campus with adjoining grounds. The advantages are that you get continuity of ethos (the good can carry on), there is less difficulty at transition time, reading schemes, writing and maths strategies stay the same and assessment is continuous and trusted. The negative is loss of identity and individuality. A good head can make all the difference though and I would look for people with first class credentials. I do hope it works for you.

It made sense with one infant/juior as they had ajoining grounds.

We are the otehr end of the area and I dont want their reading scheme, I liek ours. I like the maths schemes our infant school has developed, assesment etc. I chose "our" infant school as I didn't want the other one. Its almost like the other infant/junior is swallowing up ours as its their executive head that will be ours..... I may just be looking for the worst in it all. The governers must have approved it!

We are a soft federation with a nursery school that is not close in distance. We do not share sites or staff however we share resources and expertise. Could this be the case?