Alarm as numbers applying for school head jobs plunges
APPLICATIONS for head and deputy head teacher jobs in Wales have fallen by three times per post, new figures show.
There were just 5.6 applications per vacancy advertised in Wales this year compared with 9.6 in 2015 and 18.5 in 2014.
Issues affecting recruitment and retention must be addressed or there could be “real difficulties”, the body charged with promoting careers in the education workforce said.
The Education Workforce Wales said some school leaders were put off applying for headship posts by what they described as a “premier league football manager mentality” in that they were taken on and then dropped if they don’t get results.
Releasing data giving a snapshot of school leaders’ profiles across Wales the EWC – the independent regulator for teachers – said the situation must be monitored, but insisted there was no crisis.
Speaking to heads meeting in Cardiff to discuss the situation, EWC deputy chief executive Elizabeth Brimble said: “We are not in a crisis situation at the moment but there are issues that unless we tackle could cause real difficulties.
“There are difficulties emerging which we need to address.”
Ageing head teachers in some local education authorities was a concern, but not as much as expected, the EWC said.
Across Wales 21% of head teachers were aged 55 or over at March 2017 – 31.5% of which were in secondary and 18.8% in primary schools.
Merthyr Tydfil has the highest total percentage of heads aged 55 or over at 42.9%, while Blaenau Gwent has the lowest rate at 14.8%.
In Cardiff and Swansea around one in five heads are 55 or over, including nearly a quarter of secondary heads in the capital.
Across Wales there are a total 1,458 heads teachers including special schools and pupil referral units. Of those seven are in independent schools.
On gender the survey shows most primary heads are women and most secondary heads men, although this is changing slowly.
At secondary level 65% of the 203 heads are men and at primary 64% of the 1,176 heads women while all 11 nursery heads are women.
This compares with less than 20% women heads at secondary level in 2004.
At deputy head level 45% at secondary are women while half of all secondary assistant heads are women.
And while 36% of deputy and assistant heads say they can speak Welsh only 29% say they have the ability to speak through the medium of Welsh.
Across the sector in Wales 76.1% of heads are white British and 1.6% were from other ethnic groups while 22.3% did not wish their ethnicity to be recorded.
The top five subjects for heads to be trained in are English, history, maths, PE and Welsh.
When asked what affects recruitment and retention and what can be done to boost applications heads told the EWC they enjoy their jobs but