LEADERSHIP BY EXAMPLE
RECRUITMENT
Hiring a new head CONNY BRANDT, SBL at Peterhouse School, takes us through the steps her school took to recruit a new headteacher
M
y 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.
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March 2022
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,
