Headteacher Job Description and Person Specification

A practical guide for proprietors, boards and trustees

Most boards write a headteacher job description by adapting one they found, and it shows. The result describes a generic school leader, attracts generic applications, and gives the panel almost nothing to assess against.

Many proprietors tell us they realised at shortlisting that the document hadn’t done its job. Everyone appeared to meet the criteria, because the criteria described anyone who had led a school.

An hour spent getting this right shapes the whole round. It determines who applies, what you assess, and what you can defend afterwards.

What is the difference between the two documents?

Worth being clear, because boards frequently merge them and lose the value of both.

The job description says what the person will do. Responsibilities, accountabilities, reporting lines, scope.

The person specification says what they need to be able to do it. Experience, knowledge, skills and qualities, each marked essential or desirable.

The person specification is the one that matters most, because it’s what you shortlist and score against. A vague specification means an indefensible shortlist, and in a senior appointment that’s a governance problem as well as a practical one.

Every criterion should be assessable. If you can’t say how you’d test it, it doesn’t belong there.

The lines most boards leave out

Six, and each of them costs you either the right candidate or a clear shortlist.

The specific setting type. Not “experience of special educational needs”. “Substantive leadership of a residential independent special school for pupils with complex needs.” That’s the difference between a shortlist of nine and a shortlist of three you actually want.

Safeguarding leadership as a named responsibility. Say whether the head holds the designated safeguarding lead role or line manages the person who does. Boards leave this ambiguous and then discover the new head assumed the other arrangement.

The regulatory dimension. Which framework you’re inspected under, what registration or approval position applies, and that the head is expected to lead compliance with it. Candidates without that experience should be able to see it’s required.

Commissioning and placing authority relationships. In an independent special school or AP, holding these commissioning relationships is a leadership responsibility rather than an administrative one. It’s part of the job and it should be on the page.

Business and financial responsibility. How much of the commercial side sits with the head. In a small owner led setting this can be substantial and it’s frequently unstated.

The honest current position. Not in the job description itself, but the specification should reflect it. A school with unmet standards needs someone with experience of regulatory recovery, and saying so attracts the right people rather than deterring them.

What should you leave out?

Four things weaken these documents.

Criteria you can’t assess. “Passionate about children’s outcomes.” Every candidate will claim it and no process will test it. Replace with something observable.

Too many essentials. A list of eighteen essential criteria means nobody meets them all, so the panel starts making exceptions, and the specification has stopped doing its job. Eight to ten is usually right.

Qualifications you don’t actually require. In an independent school there’s no requirement for a headteacher to hold QTS, and no legal requirement for NPQH anywhere. If you want them, say so and know you’re narrowing the field, particularly in specialist education where strong leaders come through SEND, care and therapy routes. If you don’t, leave them out.

Everything the previous head happened to do. A job description built by listing the outgoing head’s tasks encodes their particular arrangement, including the parts that weren’t working.

A workable structure

Two pages for the job description, one for the specification.

Job description: purpose of the role in two sentences; reporting line and who reports to them; core accountabilities grouped under headings such as safeguarding and welfare, quality of education and SEND provision, leadership and staff, compliance and regulation, commissioning and external relationships, finance and resources; then any specifics of your setting.

Person specification: a table with three columns. Criterion, essential or desirable, and how assessed. That third column is the one most boards omit and it’s the one that makes the document useful, because it forces you to design the process while you write the specification.

Under experience, be specific about setting type and about leading in difficulty. Under knowledge, name the regulatory framework, safeguarding, SEND and commissioning. Under skills and qualities, keep only what you can genuinely observe in a selection process.

Getting the board to agree it

Writing the documents is usually easier than getting a board to sign them off, and this is where rounds lose time.

The disagreement is almost never about wording. It’s about the underlying question the board hasn’t resolved: what kind of leader does this school actually need now. A proprietor who wants continuity and a governor who wants change will argue about a criterion when they’re really arguing about direction.

Settle that first, in one conversation, before anyone drafts. Ask what has to be different in two years and work back from the answer.

Where a board genuinely can’t agree, an independent review of where the school currently stands frequently resolves it, because the disagreement is usually about diagnosis rather than about preference.

Then delegate the drafting to one or two people. A specification written by committee ends up with eighteen essential criteria because everyone added theirs.

From our experience

The most common failure is a specification that describes a good headteacher rather than the head this school needs.

We often see a board produce a document that any competent leader could meet, then struggle at shortlisting because the criteria don’t separate anyone. The fix is specificity, and specificity feels risky because it narrows the field. That’s what it’s for.

Many proprietors tell us they were reluctant to name the setting type as essential in case it deterred applicants. It does deter applicants, and the ones it deters are the ones you’d have rejected at interview after wasting everyone’s time.

The other pattern is the missing “how assessed” column. Boards write criteria they never test, then make the appointment on impression, and can’t explain their reasoning afterwards. In a senior appointment that’s worth avoiding for governance reasons alone.

A common misconception

“A tighter specification will shrink the field too much.”

It will shrink the field, and that’s the point.

A wide specification produces more applications and not more viable candidates. You end up with fourteen applications, three of whom could do the job, and a panel spending its energy on the eleven who can’t.

A tight specification produces five applications, four of whom could genuinely lead your school. That’s a better position by every measure, and it’s a far better use of your panel’s time.

The children in your school need a leader who can do this particular job in this particular setting. A specification that describes that honestly is how you find them, and it’s a service to candidates too, who deserve to know what they’re applying for.

Questions for boards and proprietors

• Does our specification describe a good headteacher, or the head this school needs?
• Could we say, for each criterion, exactly how we’d test it?
• Have we named the specific setting type in the essential criteria?
• Does the document say who holds the designated safeguarding lead role?
• Are we requiring qualifications we don’t actually need?

Our perspective

These two documents do more to determine the outcome of a recruitment round than anything else you’ll do, and they get the least attention.

Write the person specification first and let the job description follow. Be specific about the setting type, the regulatory context and the commissioning relationships. Make every criterion assessable and note how. Keep the essentials tight enough to discriminate.

Do that and you’ll get fewer applications, a clearer shortlist and a defensible decision, which is exactly what a headship appointment needs. The person you appoint will shape the education of every child in the school for years, and this is where you decide who that could be.