Headteacher Comments

[F3ynman]

Hi,

Just wanted some opinions on new headteacher who has recently joined our school. Worried about the kind of man leading an outstanding school:

Comment 1: one to one in Head’s office talking about how to better retain teachers in the UK to stay in profession. Head: “The UK’s teacher retention is f*cking retarded.” This was not even a negative discussion just a general chat as we have lost quite a few teachers who have left the profession entirely over last 5 years or so.

Comment 2: Misogyny. Speech to entire staff last summer. “Thank you for making me feel welcome here. Firstly, I want to say thank you to X, my secretary who has moved on to a new job. I had to keep my tongue in my mouth when I arrived here.” She is an attractive lady.

Comment 3: A staff member asked me to support her in a meeting with Head. She asked me to brief head on her concerns before meeting. She was feeling undervalued (she is a good teacher) and when I expressed her concerns to him ahead of the meeting he said “If she comes into the meeting saying she is undervalued I am literally going to lose my sh*t.”

For someone not on Slt and therefore having little contact with him I am already building up quite a poor picture of him. Wondering if anyone has come across a head like this? He is also extremely childish. I tried to bring a concern to him staff had (as I am school union rep) and he always gives throw away childish lines like “Ok so what? Go on strike then.” So if he disagrees with something you can’t even enter into any remotely meaningful dialogue.

Also A-Level students in my form speak about how he boasts quite a lot in lesson (he teachers some economics) as he was a high earning banker before going into teaching. He has said things like “I had to take such a pay cut to come into teaching” (he’s on 120k currently). “Bit depressing as all my friends from banking now have yachts.” Bit sad when young adults are not even impressed with this flexing he feels he has to do. To say that in a cost of living crisis when there are pupil premium kids in that class is poor.

Our last Head had a few flaws but was morally sound and someone I trusted to run our school.

He sounds like a knob.

Agreed

He sounds like an immature teenager imho. Very unprofessional!

In all seriousness I doubt there is much you can do. My head must have a huge list of complaints to governors, at least 1 tribunal that I know of but appears to be untouchable. I remember showing a prospective parent around at an open evening a few years ago and she was very interested in staff morale. I thought it was unusual as that isn’t generally top of a parent’s list of worries. At the end she admitted that she wasn’t a prospective parent but actually worked for HR and had dealings with the head couldn’t believe what a nasty piece of work they were! I have no idea just how bad things have to get before anything happens. I know of another who was effectively stealing from the school, he was asked to leave but got another headship elsewhere straight away. I would keep a log of any incidents, have evidence of everything in the hope that they might not stay too long.

He sounds like a twat, and a poor head can easily ruin a school.

As a union rep, there are things you can do - speak to your branch for more guidance, especially as he is not willing to listen to concerns.

It helps if there is a specific issue or policy you want to challenge though, rather than just his general attitude.

Are you part of a MAT? If so, I would ask for a meeting with your CEO about the concerns the head has dismissed.

Personally, I would escalate this further. He is clearly not suitable at all to be in the teaching profession let alone a Headteacher. From what you have said, it crosses all barriers of unprofessionalism.
I’m surprised the CoG hasn’t investigated this further given the complaints made about him. If they aren’t aware then I would make it in your best interest to do so. The allegations you state all constitute for gross misconduct but I would gather any evidence you and your colleagues have first.

Thanks. I’m glad you think so as this is what I think I should be doing. Even more so when there are incidents that are far worse than this that I haven’t witnessed myself but I know have happened due to them being official. Interested to see how people view this:

Very competent teacher goes for promotion. After interviews she was in the staff room when another staff member who went for the job was hugging a close colleague who was congratulating them on getting the promotion. So first time she found out she didn’t get it was watching the successful candidate celebrating him getting it.

This isn’t the worse part. The said teacher goes in to challenge Head for releasing result to successful candidate before he told her she was successful. Head felt so bad that instead of apologising he shouted at her instead. She resigned that day. Lost a very good member of
staff purely from sheer unprofessionalism as she wasn’t going to leave on not getting the promotion.

This is one of several big incidents I’m aware of. All of which are this bad (one arguably worse).

He sounds like the headteacher from Bad Education. Does he ride round school on a Segway and sit on a gym ball at his office desk?