Interim Headteacher or Acting Headteacher: What Is the Difference?

A practical guide for proprietors, boards and senior leaders

These two terms get used interchangeably, and most of the time that causes no harm at all. But when a school is in the middle of a leadership change, the difference between an interim headteacher and an acting headteacher affects real things. It affects who’s accountable, how staff are paid, what you tell an inspector, and how the arrangement ends.

Many leaders tell us they only discovered the distinction mattered when someone asked them a question they couldn’t answer. It’s understandable, because neither term has a precise legal definition in the way that “designated safeguarding lead” does. What they have instead is settled meaning in practice, and that’s what this guide sets out.

What is an acting headteacher?

An acting headteacher is almost always an existing member of your staff, usually the deputy or an assistant head, temporarily stepping up to cover headship.

They remain your employee on their existing contract, typically with a temporary allowance or acting up payment. They know the school, the children, the staff and the history. They can usually start immediately, because they’re already there.

The arrangement is generally used when a headteacher is absent for a defined and often short period, such as maternity leave, sickness or a gap before a permanent appointment starts.

What is an interim headteacher?

An interim headteacher is normally brought in from outside the school for a defined period, engaged on a day rate rather than a salary.

They hold headship fully, with the same statutory responsibilities as a substantive head, but they arrive knowing nobody in the building and owing nobody anything. They’re usually appointed with a specific brief, and the engagement ends when that brief is complete.

Interim appointments are more common where a school needs capacity it doesn’t currently have internally, where there’s a significant improvement or compliance challenge, or where a leadership departure has been difficult.

The four differences that actually matter

Where the person comes from. Acting heads come from within. Interim heads come from outside. That single difference shapes almost everything else, including how quickly they can act and what they’re able to see.

How they’re engaged and paid. An acting head stays on your payroll with an allowance. An interim is engaged on a day rate, through a provider or directly, with no pension or redundancy exposure. This has practical consequences for budget lines, contracts and IR35.

What happens afterwards. An acting head goes back to their substantive role, or applies for the permanent post. Neither of those is straightforward. Returning to being a deputy after holding headship is genuinely difficult, and being an unsuccessful internal candidate for the permanent job is harder still. An interim simply leaves, which removes that problem entirely.

What they can say. This one gets underestimated. An acting head has to work with these colleagues for years afterwards, which affects how directly they can name a problem. An interim can be honest about a weak appointment, a failing system or a governance gap, because nothing in their working life depends on how those colleagues feel about them afterwards. Boards who want a genuinely honest read of their school often find this the most valuable part of an interim placement.

Can a school have both?

Yes, and in specialist settings this is often the strongest arrangement.

A common model is an experienced interim headteacher holding overall accountability two or three days a week, with an internal acting deputy or acting head of school handling day to day operations. The interim brings capacity, external perspective and the ability to be direct. The internal leader brings relationships, continuity and knowledge of individual children.

For pupils in a special school or alternative provision, that combination can be genuinely reassuring. The familiar faces stay familiar, while the school gains leadership capacity it was missing.

What matters is that the split is clear. Who holds safeguarding? Who chairs the senior team? Who does a parent escalate to? Written down, this works well. Left vague, it creates exactly the confusion you were trying to avoid.

What does Ofsted make of the arrangement?

Inspectors are not looking for a particular title. They’re looking for whether leadership is effective, whether accountability is clear, and whether children are safe and well served.

An inspection during either arrangement is entirely manageable. What inspectors notice is confusion. If different people give different answers about who leads safeguarding, or if nobody can explain the arrangement, that becomes a finding in its own right, regardless of which model you chose.

Schools that handle this well can say plainly: this is our arrangement, this is why we chose it, this is who’s accountable for what, and this is our plan for the permanent appointment. That answer works in either model. It’s also worth having ready before an inspection rather than in the moment.

Which should your school choose?

Every school’s circumstances are different, but a few patterns hold.

An acting arrangement usually works best where the absence is short and defined, where you have a genuinely ready deputy, and where the school is stable. It’s cheaper, it’s quicker, and it develops your own people.

An interim appointment usually works better where the gap is longer or open ended, where there’s significant improvement or compliance work to do, where the departure was difficult, or where promoting internally would leave a second gap you can’t fill. It also protects a strong deputy from being burned out by a job they weren’t ready for.

The question we’d encourage boards to ask isn’t which is better. It’s what does this school actually need for the next two terms, and which arrangement gives the children the steadiest experience.

From our experience

The most common difficulty we see isn’t choosing the wrong model. It’s choosing a model without saying so out loud.

A deputy quietly starts covering headship, no one names the arrangement, no allowance is agreed, no end date is set, and six months later everybody is unhappy. The deputy is exhausted and unrecognised, the board thinks the problem is solved, and the school has drifted without anyone deciding that it should.

Many leaders tell us that being asked to act up felt like a compliment at first and a trap by the second term. Where boards are clear from the start about duration, pay, support and what happens at the end, acting arrangements work well. Where they aren’t, good deputies leave.

Schools that handle this well usually decide deliberately, write it down, and review it at a set point rather than letting it run.

A common misconception

“Acting up is the loyal option and bringing in an interim signals a lack of faith in the team.”

We hear this often, and it’s understandable, but it isn’t how staff usually experience it. Teams rarely resent an interim appointment. What they resent is watching a colleague they respect being asked to do two jobs without support, or a leadership vacuum that nobody addresses.

Appointing an interim can be the most loyal thing a board does for its senior team, because it protects them from being set up to fail. It also protects the children, who need the adults around them to have the capacity to do their jobs properly.

Questions for leaders and proprietors

• Have we actually decided which arrangement we’re using, and is it written down?
• If someone is acting up, what are they being paid, and what has been taken off them?
• What happens at the end of this arrangement, and does the person know?
• Could every member of staff say who leads this school and who leads safeguarding?
• Is this arrangement the right one for the children here, or simply the easiest one to organise?

Our perspective

The title matters less than the clarity behind it. Both arrangements can work well, and both can go badly for the same reason, which is drift.

Schools that come through leadership change strongest usually made an active choice, resourced it properly, said so publicly, and set a date to review it. Whether the person in the office is called interim or acting is far less important than whether everyone in the building knows who they are and what they’re there to do.

That clarity is what keeps a school steady while the permanent question is resolved, and it’s what makes sure children and young people carry on getting the education they were promised.