dale lane

When I first became a School Governor, one of the first jobs that I got involved with was helping to produce the ‘Annual Report’. I remembered them from when I was at school – every year we would be given a fairly dull but important looking booklet to take home to our parents. It perhaps shouldn’t have been a surprise that compiling these things was the only thing more painful than trying to read one.

But things are different now. Changes made in the Education Act 2005 means that the Governors’ Annual Report is no more, and has been replaced with the School Profile.

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I’ve been wanting to write this post for a few months now, but we’ve had to keep this confidential until we worked out some of the details.

Our school has been looking for a new headteacher since the previous head left 18 months ago. We’ve been through the recruitment process – the advertising, shortlisting and interviewing – five times now. And still, we have not been able to find a head.

We’re not an isolated case – you don’t have to go far to hear stories of headteacher shortages:

• Headteacher crisis: the numbers tell the story
• Primary schools hit by shortage of heads
• Government ‘in denial’ of headteacher shortage
• Head teacher shortage growing
• Headteacher vacancies expose schools crisis
• Where are all the heads going?
• Lib Dems call for action on headteacher shortage
• Schools face headteacher shortage as stress grows
• Pitfalls in staff recruitment
• Workload concerns fuel head shortage
• Parents warned of ‘superhead’ pitfalls

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