Can an Interim Headteacher Be Made Permanent?

A practical guide for proprietors, boards and trustees

It happens often, and usually for a good reason. A board appoints an interim to hold a school steady, watches them work for two terms, and realises they’d rather not lose them.

Many proprietors tell us they felt slightly awkward raising it, as though wanting to keep someone good was somehow bending the rules. It isn’t. Appointing an interim permanently is entirely legitimate, and in specialist settings it often produces a better appointment than an open recruitment round would have.

What matters is how you go about it, and what you agreed before the placement started.

Can you appoint an interim headteacher permanently?

Yes. There’s nothing preventing it, and no rule that an interim must leave when the placement ends.

Two things need attention. The first is any conversion or transfer fee owed to the provider who introduced them, which should have been agreed in writing at the start. The second is your own process, because if the permanent post is being advertised, the interim needs to go through it on the same terms as anyone else.

Neither is difficult. Both cause real problems when they’re discovered late.

Why does it often work well?

An interim appointment gives you something no recruitment process can: two terms of evidence.

You’ve seen them lead a real school on real days. You know how they handle a safeguarding decision under pressure, how staff respond to them, whether commissioners take their calls, and whether they tell you things you don’t want to hear. A shortlisting panel and a day of interviews cannot generate that.

They also know what they’re taking on. A significant proportion of headship appointments fail because the person arrived with an incomplete picture of the school. An interim who has been in the building for two terms has no such illusions, and if they still want the job, that tells you something.

For the children and young people in a specialist setting, continuity of leadership in a special school matters enormously. Pupils who’ve experienced placement breakdown notice adults arriving and leaving. Keeping a leader they’ve already built trust with is a genuine benefit, not just an administrative convenience.

Agree the conversion terms at the start

This is the one thing we’d urge every board to do, and it takes five minutes at the point of appointment.

Ask your provider directly: if we want to appoint this person permanently, what does that cost and how does it work? Get the answer in writing before the placement starts.

Arrangements vary. Some providers charge a percentage of first year salary. Some reduce or waive the fee after a minimum number of days worked. Some operate an introduction only model where the question doesn’t arise in the same way. All of these are reasonable. What isn’t reasonable is finding out in month seven.

We regularly see boards fall for an interim, decide to appoint, and then discover a substantial fee nobody had budgeted for. It sours a good outcome and occasionally prevents it altogether.

How do you do it fairly?

You have two honest routes, and the important thing is to pick one deliberately.

Direct appointment. The board decides, on the evidence of the placement, to appoint without an open process. This is available to independent schools and proprietor led settings, and it’s defensible where you can articulate why. Record the reasoning. “We have two terms of evidence of this person’s performance in this specific setting, which exceeds anything a recruitment process would generate” is a perfectly sound minute.

Open recruitment with the interim applying. You advertise the post and the interim applies alongside external candidates. This is more robust, particularly where there are internal candidates or where the appointment might be questioned later.

What doesn’t work is the version in between: advertising the post while everyone knows the decision has already been made. External candidates spend time on an application that was never live, internal candidates feel misled, and your own staff notice. If you’ve decided, appoint directly and say so.

What are the practical checks?

Being already in post doesn’t reduce what’s required for a permanent appointment.

• Full safer recruitment for the permanent role, including references taken up fresh and the prohibition checks that apply to your setting.
• Update the single central record to reflect the change from interim engagement to employment.
• Notify the DfE of the change of headteacher if you’re a registered independent school.
• Employment status. Moving from a day rate arrangement to an employment contract changes pension, notice, holiday and IR35 position. Take proper advice.
• Tell people properly. Staff, parents and placing authorities should hear it from you, framed as a permanent appointment rather than an extension.

When is it the wrong answer?

Sometimes the enthusiasm to keep someone is really relief at not having to recruit.

Be honest about whether you’re appointing this person because they’re the right permanent head, or because the alternative is another round of uncertainty. Those feel identical in the moment and they aren’t the same thing.

Ask whether the skills that made them a good interim are the skills you need for the next five years. Stabilising a school and building one over years are different jobs, and some excellent interims are genuinely better at the first. A good interim will usually tell you this themselves if you ask.

Consider also whether you have an internal candidate who was developing towards headship, perhaps through an aspiring headteacher programme. Appointing the interim over them may be right, but do it knowingly and have the conversation with that person yourself.

From our experience

Interim to permanent appointments generally hold up well. The people who do it have already demonstrated they can do the job in that setting, which removes the largest single risk in headship recruitment.

The difficulties we see are almost never about the person. They’re about process. A board that never discussed conversion terms, or advertised a post it had already filled in its own mind, or forgot to tell a disappointed deputy before the announcement went out.

Many leaders tell us the moment they knew they wanted the job permanently came somewhere around week ten, and they didn’t feel able to say so. Schools that handle this well raise it openly at the mid point review rather than leaving both sides guessing.

A common misconception

“If we appoint our interim we haven’t really tested the market.”

It’s an understandable worry, particularly for a board that takes governance seriously. But the comparison isn’t quite right. A recruitment process tests candidates against a description of your school. An interim placement tests one candidate against the actual school, for two terms, on the hardest days.

That’s a stronger evidence base than any interview panel produces. Where a board can say clearly why it reached its decision and can show the checks were done properly, appointing the interim is good governance rather than a shortcut around it.

Questions for proprietors and boards

• Do we have the conversion terms in writing, and when did we get them?
• Are we appointing this person because they’re right, or because recruiting again feels hard?
• Are the skills that made them a good interim the ones we need for the next five years?
• Have we decided between direct appointment and open recruitment, and are we running that honestly?
• Who else in this school was expecting to be considered, and have we spoken to them?

Our perspective

Keeping a good interim is often the best outcome available to a school, and boards shouldn’t feel they need to justify wanting it.

Do it properly, though. Agree the terms at the start so the decision is about the person rather than the fee. Choose your process deliberately and run it honestly. Complete the checks as though they were arriving for the first time.

Get that right and you’ve turned a period of instability into a settled leadership appointment, which is exactly what the children and young people in your school needed from the moment their previous head walked out of the door.