Notifying the DfE of a Change of Headteacher

A practical guide for proprietors of registered independent and independent special schools

This is an administrative duty that boards routinely forget, and it’s understandable why. A headteacher leaving generates a great deal of urgent work, and updating a registration record sits well below safeguarding cover and staff communication on anyone’s list.

The difficulty is that it’s also one of the easiest things in the world to be found not to have done. Registration records are checked, and a school whose registered details are out of date has given an inspector or a regulator an entirely avoidable opening.

Many proprietors tell us they weren’t sure whether a change of head was something requiring approval or simply something to report. That distinction is the heart of it, so let’s start there.

Do you have to tell the DfE if your headteacher changes?

Yes, you need to keep your registered details accurate, and the headteacher is one of those details.

What you don’t need is permission. A change of headteacher isn’t something you apply for and wait to be approved. You’re updating a record rather than seeking consent, and the school carries on operating throughout.

That’s a useful distinction to hold onto, because proprietors sometimes delay appointing while they wait for a response that was never coming.

What counts as a material change and what does not?

Material changes are the things that alter what your school fundamentally is, and those genuinely do require approval before you make them.

Typically that means changes to your registered pupil numbers, age range, the sex of pupils you admit, whether you’re approved to admit pupils with EHCPs and for which needs, your premises, and a change of proprietor. Those need an application, and in many cases the change cannot lawfully be made until it’s approved.

A change of headteacher generally sits in the reporting category rather than the approval category. You update your details and carry on.

The one to watch is where a leadership change comes bundled with something else. A school being sold, for example, involves a change of proprietor, which is a material change requiring approval, and the new head is a detail alongside it. If your leadership change is part of a larger restructuring, check whether anything in the package needs approval before assuming none of it does.

Where you’re genuinely unsure, an independent school standards compliance review will tell you what your current registration actually says, which is not always what proprietors believe it says.

What should you update, and when?

Do it promptly. Within a few weeks of the change is a reasonable standard, and there’s no advantage in waiting.

Four things are worth checking each time a head changes.

Your DfE registration details. The named headteacher for a registered independent school.

Your GIAS record. Get Information About Schools is public, and an out of date head on a public record is the version parents and commissioners see.

Your single central record. The incoming head, whether interim or permanent, goes on it with the full checks recorded. This is where gaps are most often found.

Everything else that names a headteacher. Your website, your policies, your safeguarding documentation, your complaints procedure, your letterheads and your commissioner facing material. It’s surprising how long a departed head’s name lingers on a safeguarding policy.

What about an interim headteacher?

This is the question we’re asked most, and it’s a reasonable one, because an interim isn’t a permanent appointment and proprietors are unsure whether the same duty applies.

Our advice is to keep the record accurate regardless. If someone is holding headship, the record should say so, and if you’re genuinely uncertain whether a short cover arrangement warrants an update, ask rather than assume.

What’s not optional is the safer recruitment side. An interim leader needs the full checks and needs recording on the single central record exactly as a permanent appointment would. Being temporary changes nothing about that, and being engaged through a provider doesn’t transfer your duty to verify.

Who else needs to know about a change of headteacher?

The registration record is the formal duty. It isn’t the whole list, and the others matter more to how your school is experienced day to day.

Your placing authorities. Commissioners watch leadership stability closely, and they’d far rather hear it from you than from a parent or a social worker. A short call telling them the head has changed, who’s leading now and who to contact about placements protects relationships you’ll need next year.

Parents and carers. Families in specialist settings notice leadership changes and appreciate being told plainly rather than working it out. A short note naming the new leader and saying who to contact is enough.

Your insurers and, where relevant, your care regulator. If you run residential provision, there’ll be a separate set of notification duties attached to the registered manager and to leadership arrangements. These are easy to overlook when the school side is taking all the attention.

Your bank, your auditors and anyone holding a signatory list. Unglamorous, and it causes real practical difficulty when a departed head is still the only person who can authorise something.

Your staff. Obvious, but worth naming because it should happen before any of the above. People should hear it from you first.

Where do proprietors trip up?

Four patterns come up repeatedly.

Nobody owned it. The head who would normally have handled the administration is the one who left, and the task falls between the proprietor, the business manager and the new leader.

The interim was treated as not counting. A school runs with interim leadership for two terms and the registration record still names someone who left in September.

GIAS was forgotten. The DfE details were updated and the public record wasn’t, or the other way round.

The paperwork lagged. Website, policies and safeguarding documents still name the previous head a year later, which looks careless in exactly the context where you’d rather not.

None of these are serious in themselves. All of them are the kind of small thing that shapes an impression when someone is forming a view about how well a school is run.

From our experience

We often find out of date registration details when carrying out an independent review, and it’s almost never a compliance problem in isolation. It’s a symptom of a school that lost its head and hasn’t yet caught up on the administrative tail of that.

Many proprietors tell us they assumed the departing head had done it, or that the new head would. Schools that handle this well put it on a leadership handover checklist, so it’s owned by a named person rather than assumed by everyone.

The other thing worth saying is that inspectors do check. Not because the record itself is important to children, but because accurate records are a reasonable proxy for whether a school keeps on top of its obligations generally.

A common misconception

“We need DfE approval before our new headteacher can start.”

You don’t, and this belief costs schools real time. Proprietors have delayed appointments, or left a school without properly held leadership for weeks, waiting for a confirmation that was never part of the process.

Appoint the right person, get them in post, complete the checks properly, and update the record promptly. The children in your school need leadership on Monday morning far more than they need a registration record to have caught up first.

Questions for proprietors

• Does our registration record name the person actually leading this school today?
• Is our GIAS record accurate as well as our DfE details?
• Is our interim leader on the single central record with full checks?
• Have we searched our website and policies for the previous head’s name?
• Who owns this task, by name, when a leadership change happens?

Our perspective

This is a small piece of administration and it’s worth doing well precisely because it’s small. Accurate records are the cheapest form of reassurance a school can offer.

Put it on your handover checklist, give it to a named person, and do it within a few weeks of any leadership change including an interim one. It takes very little time and it removes an entirely avoidable source of difficulty at a moment when you’ll have plenty of real ones to deal with.

That leaves your attention where it should be, which is on making sure the school continues to run well for the children and young people in it while the leadership question is settled.