Interim Deputy Headteachers, SENCos and DSLs: Cover Below Headship

A practical guide for proprietors, boards and headteachers

Boards think about interim leadership when the headteacher leaves. They rarely think about it when the deputy, the SENCo or the designated safeguarding lead does, and in specialist settings that’s frequently the more damaging gap.

Many headteachers tell us the hardest year of their career wasn’t the one where they took over a struggling school. It was the year they covered their own deputy’s role alongside their own, because nobody thought that warranted an appointment.

It’s an understandable blind spot. Headship is the visible role. The roles below it are where the work actually happens.

Which roles get covered most often?

Five, and each creates a different problem.

Deputy or assistant headteacher. Usually holding behaviour, safeguarding, teaching and learning, or a combination. The head absorbs it and does two jobs badly.

SENCo or head of SEND. In a special school this is the provision. Annual reviews, plan compliance, professional coordination, commissioner conversations about individual children.

Designated safeguarding lead. The one that genuinely cannot be left uncovered for a day.

Pastoral or care leadership. Particularly in residential settings, where the head of care role has its own requirements.

Compliance or quality lead. Frequently the person quietly keeping the school’s regulatory position sound, whose absence isn’t noticed until an inspection.

Why is the DSL gap different?

Because it’s the one gap that creates immediate risk rather than accumulating cost.

Every school needs a designated safeguarding lead who is available, trained and known to staff. Not a name on a policy. Someone who’s there when a teaching assistant needs to report something at half past two on a Tuesday.

Two things go wrong when a DSL leaves. The deputy DSL is named as the replacement without being told, and without current DSL training. And the role gets added to someone’s existing job with no time attached, so it’s held administratively rather than led.

The second is the more common and the more dangerous. Records still get kept and referrals still get made. Nobody is analysing patterns, auditing practice or asking whether the culture is right. A safeguarding audit surfaces this quickly, and so does an inspection.

If your DSL has left or is absent, this needs resolving on the day rather than at the end of the week.

Why does the SENCo gap matter so much in specialist settings?

Because in a special school the SENCo role isn’t an addition to the provision. It largely is the provision.

They hold the annual review cycle, the relationship between what plans specify and what children actually receive, the coordination with therapists and health colleagues, and the conversations with placing authorities about individual pupils.

When that role goes uncovered, the deterioration follows a predictable sequence. Annual reviews slip first. Then provision drifts from plans. Then nobody is tracking individual children’s progress. Then the external professionals disengage because nobody is chasing them.

None of it is visible for a term. All of it shows up in the inclusion evaluation area when someone case samples a handful of pupils, and more importantly, in what those children actually received during the months nobody was checking.

How does interim cover below headship work differently?

Four practical differences from headship cover.

It’s usually part time and it works. An interim SENCo three days a week, or an interim DSL two days with clear arrangements for the other three, is often entirely adequate. Unlike headship, these roles can genuinely be held part time provided the arrangement is clear.

It’s considerably cheaper. Specialist and deputy level placements sit at the lower end of the market. For many boards this is the most affordable useful thing they can commission.

The brief is narrower. Hold this function, close these gaps, hand over properly. That’s easier to write and easier to review than a headship brief.

They report to your head rather than to the board. Which means your headteacher needs to have agreed the arrangement rather than had it imposed, and needs the time to line manage it.

The cost of not covering it

Worth being direct about, because this is where boards consistently misjudge.

A headteacher covering their own deputy’s role for two terms is doing two jobs badly. The predictable results are a stalled improvement plan, safeguarding held rather than led, staff who can’t get decisions, and eventually a head who leaves or becomes ill.

That costs more than an interim deputy three days a week for a term, and it costs it later, when your options are worse. Many proprietors tell us their headteacher’s resignation traced directly back to a year of covering someone else’s job.

The arithmetic that boards use is the day rate against zero. The honest arithmetic is the day rate against a stalled term, a burnt out head and the staff turnover that follows.

From our experience

The gap that does the most damage in specialist settings is the SENCo one, and it’s the one most often left uncovered for a term or more.

We frequently find, during an independent review, a school where the head is coping visibly and the SEND function has been unheld for four months. Annual reviews are late, three children’s provision doesn’t match their plans, and two placing authorities have stopped getting the reports they expect.

None of that was anyone’s fault. There was simply no one to do it, and nobody had counted what “no one” was costing.

Many leaders tell us that when they finally got interim SEND cover, the first thing it produced was a list of things they’d known were slipping and had no capacity to address. That’s precisely what the placement is for.

A common misconception

“It’s only the deputy, the head can cover it.”

They can, for a few weeks, and it’s frequently the right short term answer.

Beyond that it stops being cover and becomes two jobs. A headteacher doing two jobs isn’t doing one and a half. They’re doing the urgent parts of both and none of the important parts of either, which means the improvement work, the monitoring and the development all stop.

In a small special school, the roles below headship are where the provision is actually delivered. A school can survive a term without strategic leadership. It can’t survive a term without someone holding SEND or safeguarding properly, and the children are the ones who carry that.

Need interim SENCO or DSL support?

Losing key leadership capacity can put pressure on an already stretched team. An experienced interim SENCO or DSL can provide continuity while you put a longer-term solution in place.

Talk to us about interim leadership or Speak to Shaun

Questions for leaders and proprietors

• Who holds the designated safeguarding lead role today, and do they have current training for it?
• How long has our headteacher been covering a second role, and what has stopped as a result?
• Are our annual reviews on time, and would we know if they weren’t?
• What would two or three days a week of specialist cover actually cost us?
• What is the current arrangement costing us, in things that aren’t happening?

Our perspective

Interim cover below headship is the most underused option in this sector and frequently the best value one.

It’s cheaper, it works part time, the brief is easy to write, and it addresses the actual problem rather than the visible one. A board worried about the cost of interim leadership should look here first rather than assuming the only option is headship cover.

And where the vacancy is the DSL or the SENCo in a specialist setting, it isn’t really a budget question at all. Those roles are what children’s safety and children’s provision depend on day to day, and they need holding properly whoever is sitting in the headteacher’s office.