A headteacher support service has warned that it is still receiving “traumatic” calls from school leaders about Ofsted inspections that raise concerns further tragedies could occur.
In Headrest’s 2024 report, shared exclusively with Tes, it says that, despite the school watchdog providing mental health training for inspectors, it has received calls that “lead us to believe that not all inspectors have appropriately grasped how to manage staff and school leader wellbeing issues effectively”.
“We have received traumatic post-inspection calls where we have ended the conversation fearful that a repeat of the Ruth Perry tragedy might occur,” the volunteer service adds.
Ms Perry took her own life in 2023 after an Ofsted report downgraded her school from “outstanding” to “inadequate” following an inspection, which a coroner later ruled had contributed to her death.
Fears for school leaders in inspections
Despite the number of calls to Headrest about Ofsted falling compared with last year, the support service says the inspectorate still has “major work to do in ensuring that all of the organisation’s staff pay sufficient regard to this key issue [school leader wellbeing]”.
Headrest is a support service run by former headteachers that was started in late 2020.
Headrest’s annual report comes after a major survey by the NAHT school leaders’ union showed that most of its members do not have confidence in Ofsted being able to design an effective new inspection framework.
In its report Headrest says that the “restoration of trust in Ofsted is, in reality, approaching the irreversible”. It adds that the “adamantine approach” to restoring full inspections while headteachers and their staff were burned out in the Covid recovery period “undermined trust in Ofsted to almost irrecoverable levels”.
Ofsted has been approached for comment.
Here are seven key findings from Headrest’s 2024 report, due to be published today.
1 . ‘More work’ needed on inspector training
Calls made to Headrest about Ofsted suggest that some inspectors have still not “appropriately grasped” how to protect the wellbeing of school leaders and staff.
Ofsted chief inspector Sir Martyn Oliver has said that all inspectors need to have mental health training before they are allowed to inspect.
Headrest recommends that the training should strongly focus on the “management of the most serious situations” where the headteachers show a stress level indicating potential suicide risk.
“It is our experience, from some of the more distressing calls we received in 2024, that further work needs to be done in this regard”.
2. SEND system ‘imploding’
The pressures felt by leaders over special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) are highlighted as a key issue in calls to Headrest in 2024.
Concerns raised to the support service include “diminished funding”, “reduced staffing due to recruitment/retention issues”, “the demand for support exceeding a school’s capacity to cope”, and “local and national SEND infrastructures imploding”.
The Department for Education was criticised by MPs this week for a lack of “urgency” in tackling the SEND “emergency”.
Headrest says it has received “several calls” from leaders of independent special schools.
“They expressed concerns about numbers on their roll decreasing as local authorities sought to retain and/or recall more SEND pupils into borough/county provisions.”
Independent special schools are currently not exempt from the government’s introduction of VAT for private schools, although their students with education, health and care plans (EHCPs) are.
Another worry that has arisen from calls concerns the recruitment and retention of teaching assistants, which is a “particular problem in special schools” and “some mainstream schools serving socially disadvantaged communities”.
3. Funding difficulties ‘damaging leader wellbeing’
Headrest also says calls about school budgets are becoming “more frequent”.
“Many headteachers in such calls feel that they are wrestling with finding the least bad solution rather than what they believe is needed to meaningfully address issues,” the report says.
Headteachers’ leaders have previously warned that funding allocations for next year will leave many schools at risk of having to make further cuts.
Headrest says the “moral injury these colleagues feel at not being able to deliver what is required is clearly damaging to their morale and general mental wellbeing”.
Headrest has also received calls about the state of school buildings.
“Headteachers are having to oversee buildings that are, as in the case of those with RAAC (reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete), visibly crumbling before their eyes,” the report warns.
4. Heads suffer ‘malevolent’ treatment
Calls about issues around governance have increased, with leaders concerned they are being “micro-managed” or, at worst, “undermined” in situations involving school governing bodies.
Headrest says it has also had an increasing number of calls where executive leaders in multi-academy trusts or local authorities “clearly do not see leader wellbeing as a significant issue”.
“On occasions, the reported treatment of headteachers appears sufficiently malevolent to be deemed workplace intimidation,” it says.
Headrest recommends that MATs and LAs should have a trained and named employee with responsibility for headteacher wellbeing.
5. Leaders of small schools
The report proposes that an independent report should be commissioned on the wellbeing needs of leaders of small schools, which Headrest continues to receive a high number of calls about.
It says that headteachers in these schools face unique demands and often lead with “no other senior leaders to support them and with larger teaching commitments than many of their school leader colleagues in bigger settings”.
The report says: “In our calls it was not uncommon to find these leaders were also the business manager, Sendco, caretaker, designated 51 lead and additionally had several subject leadership responsibilities.”
6. The school readiness problem
Another concern that Headrest raises is the “increased number of young pupils arriving at the school who were still not toilet-trained”.
“This was a stressor worsened by school leader fears that those who pass judgement on their establishments sometimes seemed unable, or unwilling, to accept the impact of post-pandemic developmental delay on individual and whole-school progress data,” the service says.
The government has recently identified school readiness as one of its key priorities, with former children’s commissioner Baroness Longfield warning that the problem is holding young children back.
Headrest recommends that the government focus with “urgency” on establishing successful strategies to enhance school readiness.
7. ‘Unreasonable parental behaviours’
“An increasing number of callers expressed concern around apparently unreasonable parental behaviours,” Headrest says.
This has sometimes involved the “misuse of social media” and the “use of vexatious complaints”, which Headrest says are often aligned with a threat to notify Ofsted.
A Tes investigation last year revealed the extent of parental complaints against schools, with eight in 10 school leaders seeing an increase in vexatious complaints.
The support service further warns that school leaders often feel they “lack sources of impactful support in such circumstances”.
It calls for greater legal protections for school leaders and staff facing vexatious actions.
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