Head of year (non teaching)

[Pigletthedog]

I have seen a job advertised which I am considering applying for. I do not currently wok in education but in a profession which works closely with various agencies including education, health and social care.

The role seems to be focussed on pastoral care. Does anyone have any thoughts on a non-teacher taking on a head of year role and what it might be like?

Thanks in advance

I think it would be a very difficult job to do well at least initially with no classroom experience.

Non-teaching pastoral roles can be done by people with no classroom experience and frequently are. Off the top of my head I can think of five schools I go into where this is the case. If they want a teacher it will say in the essential criteria.

my son's school have non teaching heads of year. The good ones are fabulous, the know the kids really well, they have a good idea of the dynamci of friendship groups etc
I have a very very soft spot for my eldest son's former head of year-she was with them from year 7 to 11 and was just fantastic in every way.
My younger son's head of year-not so good.

Thanks for the replies

@noblegiraffe I'm not trying to be obtuse, can you tell me why you think it would be difficult with no previous classroom experience?

In my school there and non teaching heads of year. They tend to come from backgrounds such as youth work/ social work/ police

I’d look very carefully at the culture of the school. Do non teaching heads of year receive the same respect as senior teachers do? (From children/staff/parents).

If the answer to that is no it would be extremely difficult to do the job well.

I would assume it is a way of the school getting the work done without paying teachers wages. I’d be wary of being the living embodiment of the cost cutting.

I think noble is alluding to the fact that in order to do the job well you need a very thorough understanding of classroom dicipline and the way that schools work. It’s difficult to pick this up if you haven’t been at the chalkface and might lead you to making decisions that don’t work well in practice.

Because you don’t know how schools work from the inside and Head of Year is usually quite a senior position. I would expect (hope) that people applying for that job would have worked as at least teaching assistants/less senior pastoral support.

You say that your profession works closely with various agencies - does it work closely with children?

Obviously I don’t know what the job description for this particular role says, but doesn’t it at least require some direct experience of working in education?

I'm a teacher and head of year. I expect the role being described is quite different to mine.

If the job description doesn't state that they are looking for a teacher then there is no reason not to apply, OP.

@AppleKatie you have identified my main concerns - that were I to be successful in my application I would be seen as somehow inferior to 'proper' staff by both staff, pupils and parents; and that the wage is significantly lower than similar roles where being a teacher is required** so my immediate thought was its a way of cutting costs.

@noblegiraffe yes I'm currently a child protection police officer so definitely direct work with children

Bold fail

I’d be amazed if it wasn’t a sizeable pay cut for you then- why do you want the job?

Does the role have anything to do with education? E.g. identifying and supporting underperforming pupils from assessment data?

It is a massive paycut for me.

Without being overly negative (!) about my current role, I'm sick of it. I'm sick of the general misery and broken lives. I've been doing it for a very long time and the relentless cuts have taken all the positivity out of it. Written down it sounds awful, and I'm aware that jumping from one public sector employer to another is a bit frying pan/fire but I have to go with the type of work that I know and enjoy - people, young people, safeguarding, social care type stuff.

The pay difference is the other thing holding me back from applying but then that's balanced by the working hours and holidays as I have a young family.

This is the job description

I can't see the whole job description but the first two bullet points describe things that I do as a HoY. On the academic side I need to analyse progress and advise on intervention strategies, help students with study skills, liaise with SEN support, speak regularly to HoDs and subject teachers about progress. It sounds like this job involves those sorts of things too.

That's literally it, it's a very brief description!

It sounds like you’d be fab at the pastoral support, it’s the academic support I’d be concerned about - not that you wouldn’t be able to learn to do it, but that you’d be expected to do it from day one and you have no experience of what that means.

Do you know which year group you’d be head of?

We have non-teaching heads of year. They are great and very well respected by staff, students and parents. They are expensive compared to teaching heads of year too but well worth it. Their wages may be cheaper than a teacher’s salary + TLR but they don’t teach at all whereas in schools that have teaching heads of year they usually still do a significant amount of time in the classroom. The cost of a teaching head of year isn’t their full salary, it’s the cost of a TLR and a few extra frees per week which is significantly less than the salary of one of our non-teaching HOYs. They aren’t in most cases there due to cost-cutting.

It's been normal for years here. I think you'd be great with your background! At ours they run assemblies, deal with attendance, behaviour, maybe a bit of mentoring the more difficult pupils. Also safeguarding.

Thanks everyone for your replies

We would bite your hand off
We have had non teaching hoy for about 5 years or so, it saves a fortune but also means that the hoy are always available if a problem arises, whereas in the past they may have had a couple of classes back to back. Sometimes we may may moan they are too aoft with the kids, but that is no different to when they were teaching staff.
No difference in our school in terms of respect.

Thank you @Rosieposy4 😊

I think you’d be an excellent candidate but I would caution you to consider your longer-term aspirations. The scope for career progression or promotion from the role within schools is pretty much nil, because any senior leadership role is going to require QTS.

Another good point @StruggsToFunc and something else to consider

I'm a pastoral manager, working alongside a teaching HoY. Each year has this pair, the HoY leads and makes strategic decisions (and teaches almost a full timetable) and the pastoral manager manages the day to day events. There's no issue around respect and being seen as a valuable member of the school (and I love my job immensely) but Struggs is totally correct about the lack of progression. It's the only thing that may eventually cause me to leave.