What Should Be in an Interim Headteacher Contract?

A practical guide for proprietors, boards and trustees

Interim appointments are frequently agreed on a phone call and confirmed in an email. That’s understandable when a school needs someone quickly, and it works right up until the moment something is disputed.

Many proprietors tell us the argument they eventually had was about something nobody had thought to mention: whether school holidays were chargeable, what a conversion fee would be, or who was responsible when a placement ended early. None of those are difficult to settle in advance. All of them are unpleasant to settle afterwards.

This isn’t legal advice and your own adviser should draft or review whatever you sign. What follows is what we’d expect to see covered, based on the arrangements we see working and the ones we see going wrong.

What should an interim headteacher contract cover?

Ten things form the core.

Parties and engagement route. Who is contracting with whom. A school contracting with an interim leadership provider, with a limited company or directly with an individual are three different arrangements with different consequences.

The role. Interim headteacher, interim executive headteacher, interim deputy. Say it plainly, because the title carries expectations.

Start date and expected duration, with an acknowledgement that the end date may move.

Days and pattern. How many days a week, which days if it matters, and what happens if the school needs more. Also whether INSET, board meetings and out of hours attendance are included.

Fees. The day rate, what it includes, invoicing arrangements and payment terms. Expenses and travel treated explicitly rather than assumed.

Notice. On both sides, with the period stated in days or weeks.

Delegated authority. What the interim can decide alone, in figures. This belongs in the brief and it belongs here too.

Safeguarding. Whether the interim holds the designated safeguarding lead role, what training they hold, and confirmation that they’ll follow the school’s procedures.

Confidentiality and data protection. What they can access, what happens to information at the end, and confirmation that the school remains the data controller.

Insurance and indemnity. Who covers what. Take advice here, because it’s the clause most often missing and the one that matters most when something goes wrong.

The clauses schools most often forget

Six, and each of them causes a real argument at some point.

School holidays. Are they chargeable? Is the interim expected to be available? An arrangement that’s silent on this will be interpreted differently by each side.

Conversion or transfer fee. What it costs to appoint the interim permanently, and whether it reduces after a period. Agree it before the placement starts, not when you’ve decided you want to keep them.

What happens if the placement fails. Notice, fees payable, and whether the provider will find a replacement and at what cost. Nobody wants to discuss this at the outset and everybody wishes they had.

Review points. Dates in the contract, not just in the brief. It makes a difficult conversation routine rather than an event.

Handover obligations. A written handover, a safeguarding handover, and availability for a small number of calls afterwards. Put it in at the start and it happens. Ask at the end and you’ll get a summary.

Offboarding. Return of keys, devices and information, and removal of systems access by a stated date.

What about employment status and IR35?

This is the area where we’d most strongly encourage you to take proper advice rather than rely on a template or on what another school did.

The engagement route matters. A school contracting with a provider who employs or engages the interim is in a different position from a school contracting directly with an individual’s limited company. Off-payroll working rules may apply depending on your organisation’s size and status, and the determination has to be made properly and evidenced.

What we can say is that this needs settling before the start date rather than being discovered later, and that the assessment should be documented. Getting it wrong is an avoidable problem that arrives months afterwards, usually with a cost attached.

Your accountant or employment adviser is the right person for this. We’d be cautious of anyone, including a provider, who tells you the position is straightforward without looking at your particular arrangement.

What not to put in

Three things.

A full permanent job description. An interim contract isn’t a headship contract. Bolting one on creates expectations that don’t fit a defined placement and can muddy the status position.

Long term objectives. Vision, three year strategy, curriculum redesign. Not the interim’s job and not something to hold them to.

Anything you’re not prepared to enforce. A clause you’d never act on weakens the parts you would.

Where does the brief fit?

Alongside the contract, not inside it.

The contract governs the commercial and legal relationship. The brief says what the placement is for: the three or four objectives, the current position, what needs stabilising.

Keeping them separate means you can adjust the brief at a review point without renegotiating the contract, which is exactly what you want, because briefs often need adjusting once an interim has seen the school properly.

From our experience

The two arguments we see most often are about conversion fees and about school holidays. Both are entirely predictable and both are settled in a sentence at the outset.

Many proprietors tell us they didn’t ask about the conversion fee because raising it at the appointment felt presumptuous, as though they were assuming they’d want to keep the person. Then they did want to keep them, and found a figure they hadn’t budgeted for. Ask at the start. Any decent provider expects the question.

We often see delegated authority left out of the contract entirely, on the basis that it’s in the brief. That works while everyone is getting on. It works less well when a decision is challenged six months later and nobody can point to what the interim was authorised to do.

A common misconception

“It’s a short placement, so a detailed contract is overkill.”

It’s understandable, particularly when a school is appointing under pressure and the priority is getting someone in the building.

But an interim headteacher makes decisions with real consequences from their first morning. They lead safeguarding, they line manage staff, they commit the school to things. The brevity of the engagement doesn’t reduce any of that, and a two page agreement covering the ten things above takes an hour to produce.

The schools that end up in difficulty are almost never the ones that over documented. They’re the ones who agreed a day rate on the phone and worked out the rest as they went.

Questions for proprietors and boards

• Do we have the rate, notice, conversion and failure terms in writing?
• Does the contract say what the interim can decide without us, in figures?
• Have we taken advice on employment status and documented the assessment?
• Are the review dates in the contract, and are they in the diary?
• Is the handover obligation written in at the start?

Our perspective

A good interim contract is short, specific and boring, and it takes about an hour to get right with proper advice.

Cover the commercial terms, the authority, the safeguarding position and the end of placement obligations. Keep the brief separate so it can flex. Take advice on status and indemnity rather than assuming.

That leaves both sides free to concentrate on the actual work, which is making sure the school runs well for the children and young people in it while the permanent question is settled. That’s what the placement is for, and a clear agreement is what stops anything else getting in the way of it.