‘It was like a bomb had dropped on me. I was shocked, numb,” says James Wiggins, a former headteacher, recalling the day, two years ago, when his academy trust chief came in out of the blue and ordered him to clear his office. “He said the governing body had had a vote of no confidence in me – which I later found out was a lie – and that I needed to leave and couldn’t make contact with anybody.”
Wiggins was asked to discuss immediately “without prejudice” how his sacking would be managed. “I said: ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ and I went straight to my union,” he says. The same day he walked out of his school for the last time: “It felt like a public shaming.”
Wiggins, who had been in teaching for two decades, is one of the “disappeared” – a growing number of headteachers who are summarily sacked or forced to “resign”, and who cannot talk openly about the brutality of their treatment because of gagging clauses they are compelled to sign as part of their settlements. Five former heads have spoken to the Guardian on condition of anonymity: they risk their references and financial package should their identities become known.
Wiggins’ academy trust had told him the expectation was to achieve “outstanding” in his primary school’s first Ofsted. From the off, he said, “I made it clear [with the intake we had] that this wasn’t going to happen.” But within days of the Sats scores being published – with results that he’d predicted – he was out. “I’d been through Ofsted a few times before and got good and outstanding, so there wasn’t a leadership problem,” he says. “I just don’t think they liked what I said.”
These days, one Ofsted report can end a career. Even a single set of disappointing exam results – or sometimes just a levelling off after several years of fast improvement – also puts a headteacher’s job on the line. Increasingly, it seems, multi-academy trusts (Mats), competing for prominence, are ruthless in attempting to prove their worth in a competitive environment.
Chris Rolph, who specialises in school leadership and accountability at Nottingham Trent University, says: “The pressure is put on the Mats by regional schools commissioners [government officials] and by Ofsted. Both will point the finger at the leadership, so the Mat will feel the pressure.”
To the heads involved, it can be professionally destructive and personally annihilating. “For some it is utterly life changing – they are broken people,” says Geoff Barton, a former head himself and now general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders. “They won’t go out of their house, because they feel branded a failure.”
The shortage of heads makes the sackings seem all the more destructive. In Kent alone, one in 10 schools began this term without a headteacher, and the county council is so worried it is considering setting up a dedicated headhunting agency. Few teachers, it seems, want to become the head whose head could roll.
Lucy Powell MP, who sits on the education select committee, says: “Unless there is serious misconduct or systemic failure, sacking heads can be a false economy, destabilising a school and setting back school improvement.”
The unions say there has been a noticeable increase in sackings. And at the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT), the senior regional officer, Rob Kelsall, says a more aggressive approach is being adopted. Kelsall’s experience is that Mats often use employment solicitors rather than education specialists. “These big hitters are brought in to remove people from their posts in a very quick fashion,” he says.
The union has seen a tendency for a particular type of dismissal. “Over the past three years we’ve seen a rise of ‘some other substantial reason’ dismissals,” he says. This means an employer does not need to provide evidence of underperformance or a conduct issue, but can simply assert that there is a breakdown in trust and confidence.
Some heads say they fell out of favour because they had refused to behave in a way they believed unethical. Eric Warren, former head of a primary school whose results had been improving year on year, is convinced he was ousted because he wouldn’t cook the books to improve faster. “The trust wanted me to get rid of certain children who were dragging the level down, and I said I wasn’t prepared to do that. We had a high proportion of children with English as a second language,” he says.
Another, Caroline Daunt, had been brought in to turn around a failing secondary. Just 18 months into the job, an Ofsted inspection highlighted problems that she and the governors knew about. Daunt told the governors that she’d “see it out if they backed me. But they didn’t ever ring.” She doesn’t think her governors understood the school’s data. “And they never gave me the chance to discuss the report with them.”
The effect on her mental health was “brutal”, she says. “I can’t stress that enough. I was in a really bad way for three months. It was so public.”
Gemma Round had been in her job as a primary head for just a year when she says she was “pushed out” by a bullying executive head who undermined her in front of her team. “I was bitter. I was hurt,” she says. After time off to recuperate, she is back in the classroom – at half her previous salary. She can’t face going for another headship yet. Some heads never return to education, and others never get over losing their career.
Another former head, Amelie Sampson, says the worst part was having to negotiate a reference. “I’d never have worked again with the reference they gave me. It was disgusting. There was no thought of my wellbeing. There was no care, none at all. You lose your dignity. It was horrendous for my family.”
Even when heads might have a case for unfair dismissal, few will take the risk of going to tribunal. “I couldn’t go that far because I was a wreck,” says Wiggins. Sampson says that while her union would have supported her, “I think my health would have suffered if I had taken it any further.”
Attitudes to supporting heads through difficult periods appear to be hardening. Rolph explains: “If the DfE sees no signs of improvement within 18 months, the department will commission a new Mat to take over. And of course a Mat doesn’t want to lose one of its schools.”
He says: “I was walking down a corridor with the adviser to a regional schools commissioner who said: ‘You’re wasting your time trying to develop people – you need to move them on.’ It stopped me in my tracks.”
Barton’s advice to those taking on a headship is to look closely at the job and the employer. “When moving into a new trust, look at how it treats its staff and what your rights are.”
The NAHT believes the Department for Education must do a “root and branch review of the risks” of senior leadership and remove some of the dangers, says Kelsall. “The risk associated with running schools now is that we’re seeing some really talented leaders being put on the scrapheap,” he says.
Out of our five headteachers, one has taken on another headship, two are looking for work. One is teaching, and one retired early. None has recovered from the sense of injustice, or the damage done.
“Some people’s relentless drive to be what they see as the best means that the ethics and morals of the profession are left by the wayside,” says Round. “Children are valued as percentages in league tables rather than as individuals, and that’s dangerous.”
“With a Mat, I don’t feel there’s a culture of supportiveness and understanding, it’s about brand, about a name, it’s not about the children,” says Wiggins. “I’d never step back into a Mat again.”
Headteachers’ names have been changed
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