New job appeared, not advertised

[LaurieFairyCake]

It's a school. There are two deputy heads. One was applying for jobs in other schools in this recruitment cycle, was unsuccessful.

The school (part of a group of schools) have decided she will probably leave next year and have randomly brought in a third deputy head.

No advertising, and she hasn't left, and won't even be applying until next February/march in the next recruitment cycle.

Is this allowed? There are at least 4/5 members of staff that would have wanted the chance to apply for a new deputy head position and this blokes just been shipped in from another school.

There's no legal requirement to advertise jobs in these circumstances, sorry. Academy chain?

Wow, really and yes

In the very same week they added in a day-to-day head and an overall head.

So basically they added 3 layers of management above my dh without him and all the others being able to apply for promotion - AND they've done outside the recruitment cycle time AND outside the compulsory notice period so he can't just fuck off and get another job

I am increasingly getting the impression that MATs do what they want. I am quite perplexed by what the one local to us is getting up to.

Given the pressure on school budgets it's unlikely they've done it 'randomly'.

It is good practice to at least circulate vacancies internally, and if there are any potential internal candidates on maternity or other family leave, they need to let those individuals know of any promotion opportunities, so they could be acting unlawfully there.

There is obviously a business risk of causing resentment among existing workforce, as you describe. But from the other point of view, given it's probably a relatively small workforce, known to the HT/EHT if not to the Board itself, would it actually have been better to go through a charade of a process and get internal candidates to put together applications even though it was a waste of time?

I would expect the decision to appoint these posts to have been heavily debated, and the possibility that there might have been any appointable internal candidates to have been discussed. I am a director of a MAT and I can't think of any reason that discussion wouldn't have been had.

I would and do always emphasise that opportunities need to be circulated internally anyway, but in many cases, those making the decision to recruit are fully aware of who the internal prospective candidates might be, their skills, experience and other attributes, and can decide without a recruitment process whether they might be appointable.

There's an awful lot of box-ticking advertising of posts that goes on, when internal or sometimes external candidates have already been identified.

I think you're right, these weren't 'vacancies' - and that's how they've got round it.

I hope your MAT is well run, apparently this ones a shambles and the current head (leaving in 2 weeks) is massively critical. The new head stormed out of a meeting with her yesterday.

Ours is exceptionally well-run, yes . It takes up a lot of my time but I am very proud of it.

You're right, your husband's does sound like a complete shambles and I would hazard a guess that in such a chaotic leadership/governance environment he's far better off looking elsewhere anyway.