Headteacher Resignation Dates and Recruitment Timing

A practical guide for proprietors, boards and governing bodies

Almost every board that runs a headship recruitment round discovers the timing problem too late. They advertise in March expecting a September start, appoint in May, and then find the successful candidate can’t leave their current school until January.

Many proprietors tell us they lost a full term to this, and it’s entirely avoidable once you understand how the dates work and, importantly, where they don’t apply.

What are the standard resignation dates?

For maintained schools, notice periods for teachers and headteachers are set out in the Burgundy Book, the national conditions of service. Academies, foundation and voluntary aided schools aren’t required to follow it, though most do.

Under those provisions, headteachers give a minimum of three months’ notice in the autumn and spring terms and four months in the summer term. Contracts terminate at the end of a notional term rather than on any date.

In practice that produces three deadlines for a headteacher.

• To leave on 31 December, notice by 30 September.
• To leave on 30 April, notice by 31 January.
• To leave on 31 August, notice by 30 April.

Those are earlier than the teacher deadlines, which are 31 October, 28 February and 31 May. It’s a common source of confusion, and boards recruiting a head sometimes plan against the teacher dates by mistake.

Two other points. These are minimums, and many headteachers’ contracts specify longer. And a board can agree an earlier release if it wants to, so a candidate’s current employer may be willing to be flexible.

Why does this work differently in independent schools?

Because the Burgundy Book doesn’t apply to you.

Notice for a headteacher in an independent school or alternative provision is whatever the contract says. In practice that’s frequently one or two terms, and for headship it’s sometimes longer.

Two consequences follow, and they cut in opposite directions.

You have more flexibility on your own vacancy. You aren’t bound to a termly start date, so a January or Easter start is genuinely possible in a way it may not be for a maintained school.

Your candidates may not. If you’re recruiting from the maintained sector, or from another independent school with a long notice period, their availability is set by their contract rather than by your preference.

So the timing question isn’t really about your dates. It’s about the dates of the people you want to attract, and that means asking early rather than assuming.

Planning a round backwards from a start date

Work backwards, always. Boards that plan forwards from “let’s advertise soon” consistently arrive at a start date they didn’t intend.

For a September start, a realistic sequence looks like this.

January. Agree the brief, write the job description and person specification, prepare the candidate pack, decide the route.

Early February. Advertise, with a three to four week window, whether through open advertising or executive search.

Early March. Close, shortlist, and hold the selection process.

Mid March. Appoint, subject to references and checks.

By 30 April. The successful candidate resigns from their current post, subject to safer recruitment checks being complete, meeting the summer term deadline if they’re on Burgundy Book terms.

1 September. They start.

That’s a comfortable timeline with contingency. Note where the pressure sits: everything has to be finished by the end of April, which means starting in January rather than after half term.

What if the timing has already gone?

This is the situation most boards are actually in, because heads rarely resign at convenient moments.

If your head leaves in November, a September start is the realistic best case for a permanent successor. That’s three terms of cover, and pretending otherwise leads to a rushed appointment or a school running without leadership.

Two honest options.

Accept the timeline and cover it properly. Appoint an interim leader for the period, run the recruitment at a sensible pace, and appoint well. This is almost always the better outcome.

Look for candidates who are available sooner. People between roles, people whose current notice is shorter, or an internal candidate. That’s a narrower field, and narrower fields produce weaker appointments.

What we’d caution against is compressing the process to hit a start date. A headship appointment that doesn’t work costs you two years. A term of well managed interim cover costs you a term.

When is the best time to advertise?

January and February is the strongest window for a September start. The field is largest, candidates are actively looking, and the timing works with the April deadline.

September and October is the next best, for a January or Easter start.

The window to avoid is May to July for a September start. By then anyone on Burgundy Book terms has missed the deadline, so your field is limited to people already available, and you’ll be competing with schools who planned properly.

December is also weak. Applications drop off sharply and you’ll get a smaller field than the role deserves.

In specialist settings the pool is small at the best of times. Advertising in the wrong window can halve it.

From our experience

The single most common timing error is boards not asking about notice periods until after they’ve appointed.

A board runs a good process, chooses well, makes an offer, and then discovers the candidate can’t start for two terms. At that point you’re either waiting, or you’re going back to a shortlist you’d already rejected.

Ask at shortlisting. “What is your notice period and when could you realistically start?” is a straightforward question and it changes how you weigh the field.

Many proprietors tell us they’d assumed independent schools could simply agree a start date. You can, and your candidate’s current employer may not be as accommodating, particularly if they’re now facing their own leadership gap.

The other pattern is boards not deciding the interim arrangement until the recruitment has already failed once. Decide both at the same time. It’s a much better position than making a cover decision in a panic in July.

A common misconception

“We can advertise in the summer for a September start.”

It’s an understandable assumption, particularly for proprietors who aren’t from the maintained sector and haven’t dealt with resignation dates before.

By June, anyone on standard terms who wanted to move in September has already resigned from their current post. Your field is limited to people who are between roles or whose circumstances have changed suddenly, and that isn’t the field you want for a headship in a specialist setting.

Advertising late doesn’t just delay the appointment. It usually produces a weaker one, and the children in your school live with that for years.

Questions for boards and proprietors

• What start date do we actually need, and have we planned backwards from it?
• Are we planning against headteacher deadlines or teacher ones?
• Have we asked shortlisted candidates about their notice period?
• What’s our cover arrangement if the successful candidate can’t start for two terms?
• If this round doesn’t produce an appointment, what’s the plan?

Our perspective

Timing is the most avoidable problem in headship recruitment and it costs schools more terms than any other single factor.

Work backwards from the start date. Understand which set of deadlines applies to the people you’re trying to attract, not just to your own school. Advertise in January or February for September. Ask about notice periods at shortlisting. And decide your interim arrangement at the same time as your recruitment plan rather than when the first round has already gone.

Get that right and you appoint the person you actually wanted, on a timeline you chose. That’s what the children and young people in your school need from a decision that will shape their education for years.