What's an executive headteacher?!

[Pandadream]

Does anyone know or experience a school that has Executive headteacher and a head of school, no deputy. It seems like a pretty new thing that local authroity are doing to reduce cost.

If anyone has any knowledge or any experience of that, could you share? it has just happen at my child's school and the parents are at lost what that entails. Will this executive head spend any time physically at the school at all or split his time equally across different schoold, has any very sucessful stories?

This will normally be the case when a head teacher is executive head across several schools in an academy trust, or two or more local authority schools.

In practice it usually means you see less of the executive head, and more of the head of that particular school, but they both work quite closely together.

The Executive Headteacher will be one that deals with the "business" of the school such as running budgets and strategy and compliance/governance issues whilst the Head of School is likely to carry out those front of house duties you might associate with a traditional Head such as discipline, running assemblies, dealing with parents and teachers etc.

thanks @nyancatdays @Spirallingdownwards for the comments, won't the head of school in a way have a very hard job as they won't have much of autonomy in deciding how to do things as it will be decided by the executive head. are there any sucessful stories around with this model works well?

Yes. The school my kids go to. Has worked very well. Lots of confidence in the teachers in both roles.

I came across one in the context of an indie school which had a nursery, pre-prep, prep and senior school so the Exec Head was the overall head of all 4 settings with each having their own Head of School.

Was the school improved / good with that model?

Executive heads generally float about across a few schools, wear suits and shiny shoes, earn £100-250k, work from home a lot and tell teachers that they should be working harder.

Head of schools do the day to day running of the school but have little autonomy about big decisions and get blamed if anything goes wrong. They get paid less than a head teacher.

Nothing to do with the local authority. Interesting that your assumption was the LA saving costs.

It's most likely the head of a Multi Academy Trust where the individual schools in the mat still have heads below them.

That's exactly my concern. How would such a hierachy motivate a good head of school. If one is good, then I'd imgaine they'd want to move onto another school to be a headteacher?

They are the most senior person in the school, common if schools are in split locations. The buck stops with them

it is cost driven, not quite LA's deicision but a model that LA promotes. it was in the letter from the school to us.

Yes mostly — but in my area there’s a couple of LEA federations that also use this model.

OP, my DD’s state primary was in a small MAT that had both roles. It was very effective while the MAT remained small, and the Exec Head was still very involved and hands-on. I was a trustee and it was very a good way of making sure there was shared expertise and best practice across the MAT and shared governance, oversight etc., and it freed up the individual heads of school to do more of the pupil-focused work.

The small MAT eventually got merged with a big MAT, and we hardly saw the Exec Head again, so at that point the effect became more like @howshouldibehave says!

Quite. I have nothing positive to say about the model. Schools aren't businesses whatever some might try to assert, and they shouldn't be run as one.

Thank you. It's great to learn some success storeis. Our one should be small as we are not even in a MAT! it's literally having another local primary school's headteacher to become our executive head...

That's exactly my concern. How would such a hierachy motivate a good head of school. If one is good, then I'd imgaine they'd want to move onto another school to be a headteacher?

Yep-that is very much the case in my experience.

I don't recognise that description at all. The Exec Heads I know work really hard, are always on site in one school, and earn FAR less that quoted!
I have only had D positive experiences with this model op, it can really work well.

schoolsweek.co.uk/revealed-the-academy-ceo-pay-premium/

There are some whopping CEO salaries whereas 'heads of school' are paid less than a head teacher would have been.

I would be interested to know which LA promoted it. Most LAs were against MATs and prefer to keep schools under the LA.

My son’s school has a deputy head, ,a head, an exec deputy head and exec head. Probably 300k of salaries and yet the school can only afford TA’s for three hours a day.

They don’t get run as businesses - they’re run as nonprofit educational foundations (both state schools and academies are technically charities, though regulated by the DfE rather than the Charity Commission). There’s a very explicit governance model for schools, whether LEA schools or academies, and the LEA is also involved with MATs as well.

The one I was a trustee of was much better run than the LEA primary where I was also a governor - the MAT had two levels of governance oversight and generally was run much more effectively and professionally, whereas the LEA school was often at the whims of individual SLT members’ management styles.

This is a common problem sadly.

Perfect answer. Especially in secondary schools there is plenty of scope for executive heads to spend very little time in the school, claiming they are at their other site/in a meeting/gone to be Very Important at some professional event, to claim travel expenses between schools. The head of school is run ragged trying to do the day to day running but with their hands tied on a lot of things because of excessive bureauracy especially if the executive head is a control freak (maybe due to shady dealings). Lots of "all orders must be signed off by me personally" yet they are hardly ever there to sign stuff.

in addition, usually the deputy head role can often be removed or downgraded, putting pressure on those further down to assist the head of school with what the deputy previously would have done. There was probably a good team before consisting of a Head who did all the strategic management and held overall accountability, working very closely - daily - with deputy head, with decisions made very efficiently.

In short, you change efficient systems and structures to completely inefficient systems and structures, with the poor staff doing their best to absorb the resulting stress while trying to present things as great to the students and their parents.

Executive head will most probably convince governors of the need to restructure and then bring in their cronies in newly created senior positions. Some of whom will be brought in to make the lives of those they want to get rid of a misery because they are too expensive or "a trouble maker" (ie. they are assertive, want the best for the kids, and are not afraid to speak up when they see unfairness)

Oh, and they are VERY good at marketing and making it appear to parents that they are doing wonderful things, saving the school, lots of online presence, media articles, snazzy new webites etc etc....

All an absolute load of bollocks.

Maybe it's time for me to retire. 😂

They can also appear when a head can’t be recruited for some reason, or where there are concerns about a school’s performance ie a middling to negative inspection report.

So true. I don't know if the people involved are just thinking of their own pockets and pensions, or if their hand has been forced by what the DfE and/or local authority want to happen. Because no-one who has many years experience of education would genuinely believe that the executive head model is the ideal and most economical way forward.

It's possibly because in some schools it's hard to recruit good head teachers. What happenns if no-one wants to take up the role of head teacher? What option is there? An executive head may be the only answer, perhaps.