Ed Vainker<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nA number of options are on the table for how the scheme will be funded.<\/p>\n
It would be \u201cgreat to see government innovating\u201d, Toop said, but Teach First was also keen to look at apprenticeship funding routes, philanthropy and corporate funding.<\/p>\n
Challenges ahead<\/h2>\n Any organisation seeking to boost headteacher recruitment has its work cut out.<\/p>\n
Last year, a poll by the NAHT school leaders\u2019 union found the proportion of senior leaders aspiring to headship had dropped to 20 per cent, the lowest since it began surveys in 2016.<\/p>\n
The reasons for the decline are many and varied. Serving leaders cite workload pressures, the weight of accountability and increasing demands outside the school gate.<\/p>\n
Vainker said the creation of multi-academy trusts had also made headship \u201ca less attractive job\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was always a high accountability, but also quite a high autonomy role. So you had a lot of accountability, but you had a lot of space to play. And over the last 15, 20 years\u2026headship has been devalued, I think, by the growth of trusts and the fact that there are so many more layers.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd actually reframing school leadership, talking about imagining, talking about learning, about connecting, it becomes a bit more of a kind of creative endeavour. A bit more agency, a bit less \u2018you just need to do these things\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
Reach already runs several local leadership development programmes for aspiring heads, dubbed x100 initiatives.<\/p>\n
The schemes aim to prepare an extra 100 people to lead schools and are \u201cdirected towards embracing local assets and addressing regional challenges\u201d. They run in areas such as the south west, the east of England and Manchester.<\/p>\n
The programmes are commissioned by trusts and councils, with a third of funding coming from philanthropy, a third from the commissioning body and a third from the school.<\/p>\n
A tap on the shoulder<\/h2>\n Andrea Daubney, the assistant director of education at Manchester City Council, said the schemes enabled school leaders \u201cto see themselves as leaders in their community, and that they are part of a bigger network.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can become very isolated as a school leader\u00a0 \u2026 and the problems in school or challenges in school sometimes need to be solved by using resource that doesn’t sit within your four walls.”<\/p>\n
But funding and flexibility were needed. Daubney said Manchester was \u201cquite fortunate\u201d to still have the capacity to do this, \u201cbut in other local authorities, I know they’ve got so much less capacity.”<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know our schools really well, and that supports this. My team is able to say, \u2018there’s a great deputy at this school, but they don’t necessarily feel they are ready for headship’, so we’ve ‘tapped them on the shoulder’ for the x100 and that’s been really successful.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said some people were put off leadership because schools were sometimes expected to be \u201call things to all people, more so since the pandemic. This level of accountability can be seen by some potential headteachers as a real blocker.\u201d<\/p>\n
The government\u2019s schools white paper, published in February, set out a targeted package of interventions for \u201cexcellence in leadership\u201d.<\/p>\n
It pledged an extra \u00a3500,000 a year for improved early headship coaching, which the government said would reach about 500 more heads, particularly from disadvantaged areas.<\/p>\n
Newly appointed headteachers will also be offered retention payments of up to \u00a315,000 to work in certain areas. A planned pilot that begins next year will aim to help heads \u201cstay in the areas that need them most\u201d.<\/p>\n
Toop said the pledge \u201cacknowledges a little bit of the problem, but is a small solution in what needs to be a much more holistic, systemic solution to leadership development and tackling the leadership pipeline challenge\u201d.<\/p>\n
Daubney said that \u201csome of the white paper reforms and the links between best start in life strategy, families-first agenda in social care, potentially are there to support schools.<\/p>\n
\u201cHowever, if schools are not involved in the planning of it right from the beginning, it will just become a bolt-on.\u201d<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t codify headship too much<\/h2>\n Key to Teach First and Reach\u2019s plans is place \u2013 the role schools play in their communities, and equipping leaders to face the differing challenges that different areas pose.<\/p>\n
Orion Education, which runs eight schools in south east London and Kent, has been thinking a lot about leadership development.<\/p>\n
Fiona Kelly, the director of primary at the trust, said: \u201cThere is an awful lot of CPD out there now, and there is an awful lot of knowledge around cognitive load and things like that.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut what has been missing, we felt, is the wider development of the person in the leader.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kelly said schools had a \u201cpivotal role in a community\u2026so we’ve done a lot of work with the Reach Foundation about how we connect those two things, academic rigour, but also wellbeing, and wider than that, the issues that our communities are facing.\u201d<\/p>\n
She noted that some of the communities the trust served in London had \u201cvirtually no agency, they have no voice\u2026but the school does”.<\/p>\n
\u201c[It\u2019s about] getting leaders excited about that \u2026 that’s why you come into teaching. It isn’t just to get your maths and your English grades. It’s to make a difference.<\/p>\n
\u201cHeadteacher jobs are really tricky, but they’re very exciting. If we codify them too much, they’re not going to be as exciting.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u2018Ongoing\u2019 support planned as research shows falling numbers aspire to headship<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":70,"featured_media":245371,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[3797,378,840],"post-theme":[2385],"class_list":["post-245351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-leaders","tag-teach-first","tag-training","post-theme-leadership-and-governance"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t
![\"James](\"https:\/\/schoolsweek.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/James-Toop-feat-670x352.jpg\")
![\"A](\"https:\/\/schoolsweek.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Ed-Vainker-feat-670x352.jpg\")