Background

The role of Lead Headteacher is a new development within the Sheffield Learning and Achievement Service. The development is part of a coordinated project designed to address school improvement and leadership development across Sheffield.

In order to provide some context, the key challenges we face in Sheffield are:

• Too many pupils under-perform
• Too many schools are hard to shift or in danger of slipping into that category
• Too many schools are in OFSTED categories, particularly Notice to Improve

We have already set in place many strategies to deal with these challenges, and these are beginning to have an impact on the performance of pupils.

The DCSF is positive about our strategies and has provided additional funding to support us. They agree with us that a barrier to improvement is the potential shortage of exceptional school leadership, particularly in the most demanding and vulnerable schools.

A number of existing Sheffield Headteachers are accelerating improvement in several schools, and we are currently engaging more Headteachers to become Local Leaders in Education.

However, to drive forward the improvements even more quickly we need to expand our capacity to provide exceptional school leadership, and so are recruiting Lead Headteachers from across the country.

We are extremely pleased to have appointed 13 Lead Headteachers in 2008 and 2009 and are keen to meet with other experienced primary headteachers who would like to find out more about joining the team.