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?

I work in education and do not agree at all with many of the opinions voiced in this thread!
Exec heads can work really well, and be a good solution to school leadership issues, especially in smaller schools.
I am also a big fan of MATs and can see how much they often benefit the schools that join them.
I genuinely don't know anyone at all I'm education who is in it for the money!

A few small (half-form entry) local schools have this model where the head of a bigger local school is their exec head, and it seems to work. The head of school is often earlier in their career and so the exec head provides mentorship to them, and practically it gives access to things through a partnership with the bigger school than the small school could otherwise access themselves.

Heads of school are usually paid on lower salaries than a headteacher because they don’t have as much power/autonomy. They might not be able to permanently exclude a child for example without consultation from the executive head. Executive heads are often (but not always) spread across several schools in a trust.

I've seen that situation work, yes. Regarding the mentorship for inexperienced heads, that is. Out of interest, what things did the partnerhip give acess to?

Therein lies the problem. The head of school is the person on the ground witnessing every day what mayhem and damage a particular child is causing and knows that permanent excusion is the best thing for the school and its pupils and staff (as well as being a chance of a fresh start at a new school for the pupil concerned). And an executive head may come in and refuse the exclusion or try to minimise how bad it is, for their own reasons. Maybe they genuinely just AREN'T aware of how bad things are because they're not there enough. If they are willing to listen to their head of school then maybe that works.

I am also a big fan of MATs and can see how much they often benefit the schools that join them.

Hmmm, I am not. I work in a role where I work closely with lots of different schools across our county and the staff who are most unhappy are those in MATs. Luckily we still have a fair number of LA schools!

100%. I’ve only worked in one school with an exec head but she (appeared) to just come in and waft about every now and then for £150 grand a year whilst the head of school was dealing with all and sundry for a very, very, very significant fraction of that!

That's really interesting, I'd say that my experience has broadly been the opposite.
I suppose it totally depends - where LAs are functioning well the schools seem content to stay, where they aren't the schools are very keen to academise and very happy to be in a trust.

Yes as it freed up the Head of School to deal with the education rather than who was doing the grass cutting, which roof might need repair and how many new students they needed to attract and where from etc.

Not in my experience.

Where we are, they work across 2 schools, are paid according to the leadership formula on the leadership spine of tge Teachers' pay and conditions and spend half of each week in each school.

The benefits include mentoring of new senior leadership, development of senior leaders with the back up of support from the Exec Head, shared expertise from middle leadership across 2 schools, team planning, where appropriate across 2 schools, moderation of assessment, and in our cases, shared governors, meaning that senior staff go to fewer evening meetings.

Often the schools develop close sporting relationships too.

i work in a secondary MAT in a school that had an executive head. She was excellent, quite hands off in that the head of school had a lot of autonomy. She was warm, interested in everyone, bought huge amounts of support and experience to the table. When she retired, the HoS became the headteacher. I think it supported her in her first years. It can work very well.

I also received a letter that my DS schools head is to become an exec head of another local school. Wonder if it’s the same schools? I have no idea what this will look like or if my sons school will loose out as the current head ( to be exec head) has being brilliant.

Many local rural schools have Executive heads across a group of schools. Many of the schools have fewer than 100 pupils. Heads of schools will have some teaching responsibility.

Both falling rolls due to declining birth rate and funding crisis smaller schools can’t afford full time head. This is one way of keeping more schools open

I think you're just looking from the wrong angle here. It's not about academising; the schools remain LA schools. Small, rural schools often now share an exec head (across 2 or 3 schools) where previously you'd have had teaching heads. Teaching headships are, I believe, hard to recruit for because it is such a difficult role (e.g. teaching say 3 days, head teacher work on 2 days). At least an exec head can flex their schedule if something arises at one of their schools on a particular day, whereas that's much harder if you're meant to be teaching 30 children in the infant class or whatever.

I suppose it’s to do with the LA to the extent that they push the academy conversions and don’t want to retain any schools.

In the specific cases I’m thinking of, one smaller school didn’t have their own sports field so used the bigger schools field for their sports day. They’d also be able to occasionally borrow physical equipment such as coding robots or offer overtime to a HLTA from the bigger school which was cheaper than getting a substitute from an agency.

This . I work in a Federation of small rural schools and EHT model works brilliantly and keeps the schools open for the moment. She’s paid around £65k.

My DC's (single form entry) school has an Exec Head. I'm on the governing body and there was a lot of scepticism at first, but it's working out well. She's Exec Head across three schools within the same MAT, one of which is within walking distance of ours and there is lots of sharing of practice across staff from the different schools. I can see lots of benefits for staff in terms of professional development, that weren't there when the school was solo.

Nottinghamshire County Council have been promoting it as a structure since 2012.

This is absolutely the opposite of my experience. The LA I work for didn't encourage academisation at all and definitely didn't want to get rid of any schools. I've never heard anyone say what you have said before.

The schools I work with that are now in MATs are a mixed bunch. A good number have had a very poor experience. I know a few small schools who have paired up to form a federation but that feels very different.

I was part of (and played a crucial role) in the Academisation process in another LA - their goal was not to have any maintained school save for SEN and special units. Interesting that’s not how other LA’s operate.

Yes it is.

Yes, this type of thing is often touted as reason for bringing in the executive head function. But there is no reason why schools can't create partnerships without the need for a whole SLT restructure and rebranding and the increased costs of that. I just feel that so many of the so-called advantages are massively overstated to get it all pushed through with support from parents (and it has to be said, governors) who are often not aware of what's actually happening on the ground because they are easily persuaded by things being cleverly presented to them as in the best interests of the children and staff.

What about travelling time between schools? It's a very important factor which no-one seems to consider. You have an EH who works across 3 schools and often travels between them during a single days' work to solve whatever day to day crisis has arisen. From one office to another in the other school it could be a half hour journey. Perhaps they need to return again on the same day. That alone could be a whole hour spent simply travelling between schools. Not a very good use of their (often well-paid) time, even without factoring in those occasional bad eggs who will take the piss and use this to their advantage, making that travelling time last as long as possible while the head of school is trying to deal with things on the ground.

I don't know, it's just like all common sense has gone out the window - we are ignoring the gut feelings which scream at us that it is not the best or most efficient way to run a school for the pupils. If the real reason for implementing executive head (and similar) models is because right at the top the DfE demands it because they are just not prepared to fund schools properly, or because teaching recruitment and retention has become dire and difficult and schools simply can't recruit decent heads then at least own it. Why can't schools be honest with parents, staff (and to some extent governors)?

There is so much masking in education and pretending everything is ok and a great idea. A school I once worked at had a head teacher who was refreshingly honest with his staff and would basically tell us when he felt his hand was being forced and he was having to take decisions he didn't agree which he knew would have a bad effect on the offering to children, and affect staff morale. He was genuine, and his staff respected that. He retired a good few years back now and education has changed a hell of a lot since then, and not for the better, sadly.

@CurlyhairedAssassin shared SLT should reduce costs.