Hiring a new head

Conny Brandt, SBL at Peterhouse School, takes us through the steps her school took to recruit a new headteacher

My school is fortunate to have an amazing headteacher – so when she announced her intention to retire in 2022 we realised that we couldn’t just post a vacancy on our website and hope for the best. Here are the steps we took to find and appoint our new headteacher, which might just help you to do the same in the future. 

Job description

As with any post, we started off by considering what we actually needed at this point in time. In order to support development both at school level, and in the wider education services offered by the charity that manages our school, we decided to appoint an executive headteacher. There is no legal definition of this role, so we needed to be very clear about what the it would entail in the context section of our documentation.

Person specification

I explored research by the DfE, NCSL, NGA and Education Development Trust into what makes an effective school leader. The skills and qualities repeatedly identified were:

• having strong values;
• being able to use layered strategies, according to the school context;
• using data effectively; 
• empowering and developing staff.

We decided to incorporate these during our recruitment process, and ensured that they were included in our Person Specification.

We also spent time reflecting on current and past headteachers we had known, discussing what skills and qualities they had that made them effective, and also what issues had arisen with different heads, and why. From this, we drew up a list of essential criteria, as well as identifying approaches we wanted to avoid.

Advert

A quick Google search for ‘headteacher adverts’ results in a lengthy list of schools looking for ‘inspiring headteachers’; we wanted our advert to stand out, emphasise the qualities we value most, and attract the right candidates so we decided to emphasise ‘caring’ as our core quality. We included things that would make our school attractive to candidates – for example, our location, wellbeing support and development opportunities. I consulted with other schools about their experiences and also with headteachers to gather candidates’ views of the process and what they considered had worked well (or not!)

There are several free options for advertising, including our website, social media, school and professional networks, VocateEd and Indeed. The DfE’s teacher recruitment service is free to most schools but, unfortunately, not available to us as a non-maintained special school. In addition to the free options, we spent approximately £500 on paid advertising. The adverts generated a lot of enquiries, but all the applications we received came in response to our social media channels.

In the advert we offered the option to ‘phone the school for an honest conversation with the current head about the potential challenges and opportunities of this role which helped candidates decide whether or not we were the right school for them.

Our application information pack included a letter of welcome, basic school data, quotes from staff, parents, pupils and external bodies, as well as some information about our local area.  

Interviews

There are numerous example interview questions for headteachers available online; we were conscious of the risk of candidates performing well in an interview situation, but not necessarily in post. Some example questions could easily be prepared for, allowing candidates to give a rehearsed answer while not actually exploring their attitudes or understanding. We decided to ask questions that were quite open – for example, ‘What is your approach to supporting behaviour?’ – and then followed up with further questions and examples such as ‘Give us an example when you applied this successfully’. We consulted our list of essential qualities, asked ourselves ‘What do we want?’ and then considered ‘How to we find out?’

We used some practical tasks –  a data exercise and prioritisation task – again, focusing on the skills and qualities we had chosen as priorities. We had one solid day of interviews and tasks and then short, follow-up, interviews two days later, which gave both us and the candidates the opportunity to reflect on the interview day and ask further questions on points we wanted to explore in more depth.

Outcome

We were pleased with the level of response, as well as the quality of candidates we received. We had invested a lot of time in planning our interview process and felt confident that it would help us identify the most suitable candidate. Feedback we received from candidates was positive; they felt the process had been professional, that communication was effective and the interviews thorough. We appointed a very strong candidate who we feel will be a real asset to the school.

What would I have done differently?

There is just one thing I would change; my expectations of the outcome. We had an internal candidate and started the process fully expecting to appoint internally. Over the course of our interviews it became apparent that we had an external candidate who would bring knowledge and experience to the school that we just did not have in-house, and we ended up appointing externally. This was a tough decision to make – the right one for the school, but not one we had initially wanted to make. Fortunately, our internal candidate had a very professional outlook, and was understanding and supportive of our decision. 

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank all the SBLs and headteachers who responded to my call for information, and who took time out of their busy schedules to email, ‘phone or meet on Teams – your advice was invaluable!