Recruiting a Deputy or Assistant Headteacher

A practical guide for proprietors, boards and headteachers

Boards run a careful, structured process for a headship appointment and then fill the deputy post with an advert, a single interview and a decision made over coffee.

It’s understandable, and in a small specialist setting it’s the wrong way round more often than people realise. Many headteachers tell us their deputy appointment mattered more to how the school actually ran than their own did, because the deputy holds the things that happen every day.

Why does this appointment matter more in a small setting?

Four reasons.

They hold the operational load. Behaviour, safeguarding, day to day staffing, incidents. The head sets direction. The deputy makes the school work on a Tuesday.

There’s no bench. A large secondary losing a deputy has three assistant heads. A forty pupil special school has the head, and the head then does two jobs.

They’re frequently the safeguarding lead. Which makes this a safeguarding appointment as much as a leadership one.

They’re your succession. In a sector where headship recruitment is difficult, the deputy you appoint now is quite possibly the head you appoint in four years.

That combination means a weak deputy appointment doesn’t produce a slightly less effective senior team. It produces a headteacher doing two jobs and a school that stops improving.

Scope the role, don’t inherit it

The most common mistake is advertising the previous deputy’s job.

Before writing anything, ask what this school actually needs from a second leader now. That’s frequently different from what it needed four years ago, and the outgoing deputy’s portfolio usually accumulated rather than being designed.

Three questions help. What does the head most need taking off them? Where is the school weakest, and does the deputy role need to address it? And who will hold the designated safeguarding lead role, because that decision shapes everything else about the post.

Be explicit about the safeguarding position in the job description. A candidate who thought they’d be supporting the DSL and discovers they are the DSL has a legitimate grievance and may leave.

Internal or external?

Both work and the honest question is what the school needs rather than what’s easiest.

Internal appointment gives you continuity, knowledge of the children, and development of your own people. It’s quicker and cheaper. In specialist settings the relationship knowledge is genuinely valuable, because pupils have often built trust with specific adults.

The risk is that you create a second gap. Promoting your best teacher or SENCo into a deputy role leaves that post open, and in a small school that’s the same problem moved sideways.

External appointment brings experience you don’t currently have and a fresh view of the setting. It’s the right call where the school needs something it can’t grow internally, or where an internal promotion would leave a hole you can’t fill.

Where you have an internal candidate, run a genuine process and tell them honestly whether the post is being advertised externally. An internal candidate who believes it’s theirs and then watches an external appointment arrive will usually leave, and you’ll have lost two people.

Selection

A day is usually enough, and it should test the actual job rather than general leadership.

Include a safeguarding scenario. If this post holds or supports the DSL role, this is the most important part of the process and it’s routinely omitted at deputy level.

Include something operational. An in-tray exercise with realistic items, or a behaviour scenario involving a specific pupil profile, tells you far more than a presentation about their leadership philosophy.

Let them spend time with pupils, unscored. In a specialist setting, how someone is with children when nobody is assessing them is the most reliable signal available.

Involve the headteacher properly. They’ll be working with this person daily, and a deputy appointed over a head’s reservations rarely works out.

And involve staff. A deputy the team doesn’t respect cannot do the operational job, whatever the panel thought.

Safer recruitment is the same

Worth stating plainly because this is where the corners get cut.

Full checks: enhanced DBS with barred list, prohibition checks, identity, right to work, qualifications, references taken up directly, employment gaps explored, online searches on shortlisted candidates with candidates told in advance, and an entry on the single central record.

None of that reduces because the post is below headship. If anything a deputy who holds safeguarding is a higher risk appointment than a head who doesn’t, and the safer recruitment standard should reflect the role rather than the title.

Below deputy: SENCo and DSL appointments

The same argument applies further down and gets even less attention.

In a special school the SENCo appointment is arguably the most consequential one you make after the head, because that person holds the relationship between what plans specify and what children actually receive. It deserves a structured process, not a conversation.

The same is true of a designated safeguarding lead appointment. Test the safeguarding judgement properly, check they have or will get current DSL training, and be clear about the time attached to the role rather than adding it to a full job.

From our experience

The deputy appointments that go wrong are usually the ones where the role was never scoped.

A board advertises the previous deputy’s job description, appoints someone capable, and six months later that person is holding a portfolio that was assembled by accretion over five years and doesn’t match what the school needs now.

Many headteachers tell us they’d have designed the role differently if anyone had asked them. They’re the person who most knows what needs taking off them, and they’re sometimes not consulted properly.

We often see the safeguarding question left ambiguous. The advert says the deputy will “support safeguarding”, the reality is that they’re the DSL, and nobody addressed it until the appointment was made. That’s an unfair start for the person and a real risk for the school.

A common misconception

“It’s a deputy post, so we don’t need the full process.”

It’s understandable, particularly when a board has just been through a headship round and is tired of process.

But in a small specialist setting the deputy frequently holds safeguarding, runs behaviour, and is the person staff go to first. That’s a more operationally consequential role than the title suggests, and the appointment carries the same risks.

It’s also your succession plan. The person you appoint casually today is the person you’ll be considering for headship in four years, at which point you’ll wish you’d assessed them properly the first time.

The children in your school interact with the deputy more than with the head. That’s reason enough to appoint them with the same care.

Questions for boards and headteachers

• Have we scoped this role from what the school needs now, or inherited the last one?
• Does the job description say clearly who holds the designated safeguarding lead role?
• Is there a safeguarding scenario in the selection process?
• Has the headteacher been properly involved in designing the role and the process?
• Are we running the same safer recruitment standard as we would for a head?

Our perspective

The deputy appointment is the one boards under-resource and then live with daily.

Scope the role from what the school needs now. Be explicit about safeguarding. Involve the head and the staff. Test operational judgement rather than leadership philosophy. Run the full safer recruitment process. And be straight with internal candidates.

Do that and you appoint someone who makes the school work every day and who might be your next headteacher. Both of those matter a great deal to the children and young people in your school, which is a good reason to give this appointment the attention it deserves.