Executive Headship and Federation Across Special Schools

A practical guide for governors, trustees and proprietors

When a special school loses its headteacher, the option of sharing a leader with a nearby school comes up quickly. It’s cheaper than a full appointment, it uses an experienced leader you already know, and it can look like an elegant solution to two problems at once.

Sometimes it is. Many governors tell us the arrangement they entered as a temporary fix became the best structure the school had had. Others tell us it weakened both schools and took two years to unwind.

The difference is almost entirely about how it was set up.

What are the different arrangements?

The terms get used loosely and they mean different things.

Executive headship. One person holds overall leadership accountability across two or more schools, usually with a head of school in each running day to day operations. The schools remain separate.

Federation. A formal arrangement where maintained schools share a single governing body while remaining separate schools with their own registration and budget. This is a governance structure rather than a leadership one, though it frequently comes with a shared executive head.

Collaboration or partnership. An informal arrangement where schools work together without a formal structure. Easy to enter and easy to leave, and correspondingly less binding.

Shared leadership during a gap. A neighbouring head covering another school temporarily, without any structural change. The most common version and the one most likely to be entered without documentation.

The first thing any board should establish is which of these it’s actually proposing, because the governance, the accountability and the exit routes differ considerably.

When does sharing a leader actually work?

Where several conditions hold together.

There’s a capable person in each school every day. This is the condition that matters most. An executive arrangement adds accountability above someone. It doesn’t substitute for someone.

The schools are genuinely similar. Two day special schools for similar needs is workable. A residential school and a day AP is two different jobs, and a leader will do one of them well.

They’re geographically close. A leader spending two hours a week driving is losing leadership time, and in a crisis they need to be able to get there.

Both schools are reasonably stable. Sharing a leader between one settled school and one needing serious improvement work means the settled school gets very little of them.

The arrangement is designed, not improvised. Written, with clear delegation, an end point or a review date, and agreement on how disagreements get resolved.

Where these arrangements go wrong

Four failure modes, and they’re all avoidable.

The stronger school subsidises the weaker one. The most common. A leader shared between a settled school and a struggling one will spend eighty per cent of their attention on the struggling one, because that’s where the urgent things are. The settled school drifts and its governors gradually notice.

Nobody wrote down where the line sits. The head of school thinks they lead the school. The executive head thinks they lead it and the head of school runs operations. Decisions fall into the gap, staff learn to ask both, and by half term the arrangement generates more work than it saves.

Safeguarding gets confused. Each school needs a present, trained designated safeguarding lead. That’s almost never the executive head, who may be at the other site. Where this is left ambiguous, you end up with a school where the DSL thinks the executive head is deciding and vice versa.

It becomes permanent by default. Entered as a temporary fix, never reviewed, and three years later nobody can say whether it’s still the right structure or how it would end.

How to structure it properly

Six things, and they take an afternoon.

Say which arrangement it is and get the governance right for it. A federation is a formal step with legal consequences, and an external review of governance before entering one is time well spent. Shared leadership during a gap isn’t, and shouldn’t be treated as one.

Split the leadership in writing. What the head of school decides alone, in figures. What needs the executive head. What goes to governors. Who chairs the senior team, who a parent escalates to, who a commissioner phones.

Allocate the days explicitly. Not “two schools”. Two and a half days here, two and a half there, and what happens when one school has a crisis.

Name the safeguarding leads separately, one per school, present and trained.

Agree the money. Who pays what proportion of the executive head’s cost, and how that’s reviewed if the balance of their time shifts.

Set a review date and an exit route. How would this end, who decides, and what notice applies. Agreeing that at the start is far easier than negotiating it when one school wants out.

What will inspectors make of it?

Executive arrangements are common and inspectors are used to them. What they test is whether leadership is effective in this school and whether accountability is clear.

Under the renewed framework, leadership and governance is a graded evaluation area in its own right, so this gets tested directly rather than incidentally. The awkward moment is when a member of staff hesitates over who leads the school, or when the head of school can’t answer something because it sits with someone who isn’t on site.

Have a one page structure you can hand over, and make sure every leader can describe their own remit without checking. That’s worth preparing as part of your inspection readiness rather than assembling it on the morning.

From our experience

The arrangements that work have a genuinely capable person in each building every day. The ones that fail were a way of covering a vacancy cheaply.

We often see a board reach for an executive arrangement because the day count is lower and the cost is shared. Where there’s nobody credible underneath, that isn’t executive leadership. It’s a school being led two days a week with three days uncovered, and the children experience those three days as an absence.

Many governors tell us the thing they wished they’d done was write down the delegation at the start. Almost every difficulty we’re asked to look at in these arrangements traces back to a boundary nobody defined.

The other pattern is drift. An arrangement entered for a term runs for three years with no review, and by then the question of whether it’s right has become the question of how to unwind it, which is much harder.

A common misconception

“Sharing a headteacher is a cheaper way of covering a vacancy.”

It’s understandable, because the cost genuinely is lower and shared. But the model only works where there’s someone leading each school day to day.

Without that, you haven’t bought executive leadership. You’ve bought a part time head for one school and diluted the leadership of the other, which is two problems where you previously had one.

Where you do have a capable head of school in each, the arrangement can be genuinely better than separate appointments, because it develops your own leaders with experienced accountability above them. That’s a good reason to do it. Saving money on a gap isn’t.

The pupils in each school experience only their own setting. What matters to them is who is leading it on a Wednesday, and that question has to have a name attached in both buildings.

Questions for governors and trustees

• Which arrangement are we actually proposing, and is the governance right for it?
• Is there a capable leader in each school every day, by name?
• Have we written down what the head of school decides alone, in figures?
• Does each school have a present, trained designated safeguarding lead?
• When do we review this, and how would it end?

Our perspective

Executive headship and federation are good models used for the right reasons and poor ones used to cover a gap cheaply.

Be clear which arrangement you’re entering. Confirm there’s someone leading each school daily. Write down the delegation, the days, the money and the safeguarding position. Set a review date and agree how it would end.

Do that and you can genuinely strengthen two schools at once, developing your own leaders with experienced support above them. Skip it and you risk weakening both, which the children in each of them would be the ones to notice.