Interim Cover for a Headteacher on Long-Term Sick Leave

A practical guide for proprietors, boards and trustees

Long term sickness absence is the leadership gap boards handle least well, and it’s not because they don’t care. It’s because it never arrives as a decision point.

A headteacher is off for a fortnight. Then it’s another two weeks. Then a sick note takes it to half term. Nobody ever sits down and decides to run the school without a head, and yet by Easter that’s exactly what has happened.

Many proprietors tell us they held off arranging cover because it felt disloyal, or because arranging cover seemed to say something about whether the person was coming back. It’s an understandable instinct and it’s usually the thing that makes the situation worse for everyone, including the absent leader.

The pattern to watch for

Sickness absence rarely announces its length. It extends in fortnights, and each extension individually looks too short to act on.

Meanwhile the deputy has quietly picked up headship on top of their own job. There’s no written arrangement, no additional pay, no reduction in their substantive role and no end date, because nobody expected it to last. Two months in, the school has stopped moving and the deputy is exhausted, and still nobody has named the situation.

From our experience, if you’re three weeks in with no clear return date, you’re already in a situation that needs a decision rather than another fortnight of waiting.

When should you bring in cover?

A useful rule of thumb is to make the call at the point where the absence becomes open ended rather than at the point where it becomes long.

Bring in interim cover where there’s no clear return date, where the absence has already passed a few weeks, where your internal cover is visibly straining, particularly if a inspection window falls in the absence, or where something significant is due in the absence period such as an inspection window, a registration process or a regulatory deadline.

You can often manage without where the return date is known and close, where you have genuine internal capacity that isn’t being asked to do two jobs, and where the school is otherwise settled.

What we’d encourage is making it an actual decision, minuted, with a review date. The drift version is the one that damages schools.

How do you frame it without it sounding like a judgement?

This is the part boards find hardest, and the framing matters.

Cover is not a replacement and it should never be presented as one. The message to staff and to the absent head is the same: the school needs leadership capacity while our headteacher recovers, we’ve arranged it, and their job is here for them.

Be careful about the language. “Interim headteacher” can sound permanent to an anxious person on sick leave. “Interim cover” or “leadership cover during absence” says the same thing more kindly.

Tell the absent head before you tell the staff, where you’re able to make contact. Hearing about it second hand while unwell is genuinely distressing and it damages a relationship you may well need to rebuild.

And be honest with the interim about what this is. Someone brought in to cover a sickness absence needs to know the head is expected back, so they lead accordingly rather than making changes that bind a returning leader.

Practical arrangements

A few things are worth settling at the outset rather than working out later.

Contract length. Open ended arrangements with a notice period usually work better than a fixed term you have to keep extending, because a return date after illness is rarely predictable.

Days per week. Be realistic. Covering a headteacher’s role at two days a week is possible in a small settled school and not in a complex one. Under resourcing this is the most common false economy we see.

Safeguarding. If the absent head held the designated safeguarding lead role, that needs a named holder from day one, properly trained and known to staff. If nobody internally holds current designated safeguarding lead training, arrange it immediately.

Delegated authority. Written down, in figures. An interim covering an absence often has less authority than one covering a vacancy, which is reasonable, but it needs stating rather than being left to guesswork.

Keeping in touch. Agree with the absent head who contacts them, how often and about what. Some want to stay connected and some need to be left alone. Both are legitimate and it should be their choice, taken on advice.

Planning the return

Plan it from the beginning, not from the point at which it’s announced.

Ask the interim to keep a running record of significant changes and the reasoning behind them, so the returning head can be brought up to speed properly. Build in an overlap if you possibly can, even a few days. An independent review partway through a long absence can also give the board an accurate picture of how the school is holding up. Where a phased return is happening on medical advice, work out in advance how the two leaders share the week and write down who’s leading on which day.

Expect the return to be harder than it looks. A leader coming back after months away returns to a school that has adapted, staff who have formed a working relationship with someone else, and their own recovery still in progress. That’s a lot, and it needs the same planning attention the absence got.

What if they don’t come back?

Sometimes the outcome is that the headteacher doesn’t return, whether through ill health retirement or a decision they take themselves.

Handle that as its own event, with proper HR advice, rather than as a natural continuation of the cover arrangement. You’ll then need to decide whether to extend the interim while you run a permanent recruitment, and whether the person covering is a candidate for it.

What we’d caution against strongly is pressing an unwell person for a decision about their future because the school would find it convenient. Take advice, be patient, and plan for both outcomes in the meantime.

From our experience

Boards almost always arrange cover later than they should, and the reason is nearly always kindness rather than neglect. They don’t want the absent head to feel replaced.

The difficulty is that waiting doesn’t protect that person. It just means a deputy carries an impossible load, the school drifts, and the returning head comes back to a setting that has slipped rather than one that was held steady for them.

Many leaders tell us that returning to a school that had been properly covered was a relief rather than a slight. The version that hurt was returning to find their team burnt out and their improvement plan untouched.

The other pattern is a deputy covering for two terms with nothing written down. Schools that manage this well name the arrangement in week two, pay for it, and reduce the deputy’s own role to make room.

A common misconception

“Arranging cover suggests we don’t expect them back.”

It’s entirely understandable that boards feel this, and it’s the single biggest reason cover gets delayed. But it isn’t how it lands, and it isn’t what the arrangement means.

Arranging cover says the school will be properly run while someone is unwell. That’s what a responsible employer does, and it’s what allows a person to recover without carrying the knowledge that their absence is damaging the school and their colleagues.

The children in the school don’t get a lighter term because their headteacher is ill. They need leadership every day, and providing it is a kindness to the absent leader rather than a judgement on them.

Questions for proprietors and boards

• Have we actually decided how to cover this, or has it accumulated?
• Who’s carrying the headship work today, and what have we taken off them?
• Have we told the absent headteacher what we’re arranging, and how?
• Who holds safeguarding, and are they trained and known to staff?
• Have we planned the return, or only the absence?

Our perspective

Long term sickness absence is a human situation before it’s a leadership one, and boards are right to handle it carefully.

Handling it carefully means arranging proper cover early, framing it honestly, supporting the person who’s unwell, and planning their return with the same care you gave their absence. It doesn’t mean waiting and hoping, however well intentioned that is.

Every school’s circumstances are different, but the schools that come through this well are the ones that made an actual decision in week three rather than a series of small accommodations that added up to a term.