Can whizz-kid head teachers win out over decades of experience?

Good grief. If you thought policemen were getting younger, have a look at your child’s head teacher. That stripling who looks like a work experience teenager? She’s in charge not just of the class but the school, the budget, the whole shebang.

News that schools are promoting twentysomethings to leadership roles comes as no surprise to me. Several years ago I interviewed a slew of head teachers in their fifties and over who were due to retire. They warned of a looming vacuum because there were no obvious candidates to take over. Their own deputies were so dismayed by the unreasonable workload that they had no intention of applying for the top job.

Anyone who has ever watched a hitherto “outstanding” primary slump down the league tables after the departure of its head will know only too well the importance of good leadership and sound judgment in maintaining standards.

Older teachers do not have the monopoly on either of these, but I do think at primary level, where children are younger and in greater need of pastoral care and good old TLC, wisdom does, generally speaking, come with age and time served.

But large secondary schools, academies and grammars

are multimillion-pound organisations. A typical school with 920 pupils can have a budget of anywhere between £3.9 million and £5.8 million

– a difference large enough to pay for 40 full-time teachers.

While the Government claims funding reforms will redress imbalances (although the 9,000 cash-strapped schools in England that are set to lose money under the new formulae wouldn’t agree), it is up to the head teacher first and foremost to decide the best way to make the increasingly frayed ends meet.

Could it be that a sharp business brain and a highly competitive streak is actually more useful than a couple of decades spent standing at the blackboard (which is now a whiteboard)?

If the only option to keep our schools open is fast-tracking those with fewer than nine years in the classroom into positions of power, then so be it. Parents can only watch from the sidelines and hope, for the next generation’s sake, that youthful energy will outweigh decades of experience.