Interim Leadership During a Staff Restructure or Redundancy Process

A practical guide for proprietors, boards and senior leaders

A restructure in a special school is not the same exercise as a restructure elsewhere. The staffing is the provision. Ratios, key worker relationships and therapy hours are frequently what an EHCP specifies and what a placing authority is paying for, which means a structural change is a change to what children receive.

Many proprietors tell us they went into a restructure thinking about the budget and came out of it having learned that the real question was what the school could still lawfully deliver. It’s an understandable starting point and it’s the wrong one.

This guide is about running the process properly and about where interim leadership genuinely helps.

Why are restructures happening?

Usually one of four things, and the reason shapes what a good outcome looks like.

Falling rolls or fee pressure, where the model no longer works at the current roll. A change of ownership, where a new proprietor is aligning the school to a group structure. A change in the cohort, where the needs profile has shifted and the staffing hasn’t. Or a leadership review that has found the structure genuinely doesn’t fit the school.

Only the last of those starts from the provision. The other three start from something else and arrive at the provision, which is exactly why they need care.

Why does an interim leader help here?

Three reasons, and the first is the most important.

Independence. A restructure run by a headteacher who appointed most of these people, and who’ll be working with the survivors for years, is genuinely difficult to run fairly. Not because anyone is dishonest, but because relationships shape judgement in ways nobody can fully set aside. An interim leader who appointed none of these people, and who won’t be managing whoever remains, can apply the criteria the same way to everyone.

Capacity. A consultation is a substantial piece of work: proposals, meetings, individual conversations, appeals, documentation. It runs alongside the whole of the ordinary job. Schools that try to absorb it into an existing leadership team usually do both badly.

Protecting the incumbent. A headteacher who runs a redundancy process will carry it afterwards. Some never recover the team’s trust. Where you want to keep your head, having someone else run the process is a genuine kindness to them.

There’s a counterweight worth naming. An interim doesn’t know the staff, and selection criteria applied without any contextual knowledge can produce outcomes that look fair on paper and are poor in practice. The answer is an interim running the process with the incumbent leadership advising on context, not one operating alone.

What can an interim do, and what can’t they?

They can design a structure that fits the provision, run a consultation properly with advice, apply selection criteria consistently, hold difficult conversations without a history in the room, and give the proprietor an honest view of what the school can deliver afterwards.

They can’t make an unlawful process lawful, remove the human cost, or make a structure work that’s below what the plans require. And they can’t substitute for proper employment law advice, which is needed regardless of who runs the process.

Take that advice at the design stage. Most of the problems we see in restructures were created before the consultation started, in decisions about pooling, criteria and scope that hadn’t been tested.

Protecting provision through the process

This is the part that gets least attention and matters most.

Before consulting, model the proposed structure against your actual EHCPs. Not in general terms. Take the plans, look at what provision is specified, and check whether the structure delivers it. If it doesn’t, the structure is wrong regardless of what it saves.

Keep safeguarding capacity out of scope wherever you can. A restructure that reduces designated safeguarding lead time, or removes the person who holds the relationships with social care, creates a risk that costs more than it saves.

Think about key worker relationships specifically. In a specialist setting, a child’s progress frequently depends on one or two adults. Losing those is not the same as losing a role, and it should be weighed properly rather than treated as an inevitable consequence.

And be honest with placing authorities. Where provision will change, they need to know, and hearing it from you is far better than hearing it from a parent. Where a plan can no longer be delivered, that conversation has to happen rather than be avoided.

Communication during the consultation

Be clear, be consistent and don’t over reassure.

Staff need to know the timeline, the scope, the process and where to get support. What they don’t need is a leader promising outcomes that aren’t within their control, which destroys credibility the moment the first notice is issued.

Say the same thing to everyone. In a small school, inconsistency is discovered within hours.

Tell families something. They’ll notice staff distress and children will pick it up. A short note saying the school is reviewing its structure, that provision is being protected, and that they’ll be told of any change affecting their child, prevents a great deal of speculation.

And accept that some people will leave voluntarily during the process, often the ones with the most options. Plan for that rather than being surprised by it.

Afterwards

The week after a consultation concludes is when the real work starts, and it’s routinely unplanned.

The remaining team has watched colleagues leave and will be watching how the school treats them. Trust is low. Discretionary effort drops. And in a specialist setting, that’s the thing the provision runs on.

Rebuilding takes a term or two of deliberate work: giving decisions back, being visible, fixing something real, and being honest about what the school can and can’t do now. If you’re keeping your headteacher, this is where they need to be leading rather than the interim, so plan the handover to land at the right moment.

Watch retention at the end of the following term, because that’s when the second wave of resignations usually arrives.

From our experience

The restructures that go wrong were usually designed before anyone modelled the provision impact. A structure that saves the required amount is proposed, consulted on, implemented, and then the school discovers it can’t deliver what three EHCPs specify.

At that point you have a compliance problem, a commissioner problem and a staffing structure you’ve just spent a term putting in place. Working backwards from the plans first avoids all of it.

Many leaders tell us the thing they underestimated was the aftermath. The process was run properly, the outcome was defensible, and the school was a difficult place to work for two terms afterwards because nobody had planned for that part.

We often see safeguarding capacity quietly reduced too, usually as a side effect rather than a decision. It’s worth checking explicitly.

A common misconception

“We’ll restructure to save money and then work out what it means for provision.”

It’s an entirely understandable sequence when the financial pressure is real and immediate, and it’s the wrong way round.

In a special school, provision comes first because it’s a legal obligation to individual children with named plans, not a discretionary service level. A structure that doesn’t deliver it isn’t a cheaper version of your school. It’s a school that can’t meet its commitments, and that becomes a bigger financial problem within two terms as placements are challenged and referrals stop.

Start from what the children are entitled to, work out what structure delivers it, and then see what that costs. If the answer is unaffordable, that’s a genuinely serious conversation, and it’s a different one from a restructure.

Questions for proprietors and boards

• Have we modelled the proposed structure against actual EHCPs, plan by plan?
• Does the new structure preserve safeguarding leadership and capacity?
• Who is running this process, and can they be genuinely independent?
• Have we told our placing authorities what’s changing?
• What’s our plan for the term after this concludes?

Our perspective

A restructure in a specialist setting is a provision decision that happens to have a budget attached, and treating it the other way round is what causes most of the difficulty.

Model the impact against the plans first. Take advice at the design stage. Protect safeguarding capacity. Use independent leadership to run the process, both for fairness and to protect the head you want to keep. Communicate consistently and tell your commissioners. And plan properly for the term afterwards.

Done that way, a school can come through a restructure with a sustainable structure and its provision intact, which is what the children and young people in it need whatever is happening to the budget.