A piece on today’s Sky News Sunrise highlighted that there are around 2,400 vacancies for head teachers, which I presume means in England and Wales, since Scotland is always treated differently. Whilst being a head teacher is seen as the peak of a teaching career, its relatively low wage compared to senior teachers (certainly in the public sector) and to equivalent positions in industry and business is seen as a major hurdle. In addition, it is considered to be a stressful job with long hours.

I’ll admit I know nothing about the specifics of being a head teacher, although this advisory PDF document National Standards for Headteachers outlines clearly the responsibilities, skills and actions necessary. Aside from the domain-specific needs, this reads like a typical job spec for someone in middle or upper management in business.

However, there appears to be a philosophy inherent in education that only teachers become deputy and head teachers. Furthermore, there’s no broad advertising in employment pages of newspapers for such positions. One has to go to something like the Times Educational Supplement for jobs. I looked here today, and found 198 head teacher positions. Hmm.. not exactly 2,400.

So how do you attract more applications? Here are some ideas:

• Promote head teacher positions to industry and business
• Advertise more broadly for such positions, don’t hide them away in specialist publications
• Explain (or reference) the responsibilities, requirements and benefits – not everyone understands what a salary of ‘Group 6, Salary Range L29 – L35 means’
• Recruit staff from industry and business and provide appropriate re-training
• Don’t shut everyone else out. The NAHT (National Association of Head Teachers) job site requires registration before you can find jobs! This is stupid.
• Provide teachers with appropriate management and organisational skills so that they feel confident and able to progress to higher positions.
• Don’t expect or require head teachers to teach.