In the ever-expanding universe of multi-academy trusts, we’ve birthed a lexicon of titles that would make a Victorian aristocrat blush. We have CEOs, deputy CEOs, directors of education, phase leads and the increasingly enigmatic executive headteacher (EHT).

Having occupied the head’s office under almost every permutation of these, I’ve come to a conclusion: the EHT role is at a crossroads, and we have to ask ourselves if it is a vital bridge for school improvement or an outdated middle-management layer that stifles the very autonomy it’s supposed to nurture.

The pain of micro-management

Because when you’re a qualified headteacher, sitting in a headteacher’s office, yet you’re forced to report to an EHT who still wants to pick the colour of the staffroom sugar bowls, tells you how to run an assembly or has to sign off behaviour policy tweaks, it’s hard to see the benefit.

This is very much a reality that I experienced as a head. I was reporting to an EHT who had clearly found the transition from the chalkface to the boardroom difficult and could not let go of their “hands-on” leadership style.

Every minor operational decision, from adjusting a lunchtime duty rota to altering a curriculum map, had to be run past the EHT. By the time I’d got the green light to implement a new behaviour initiative, the kids had already invented three new ways to circumvent the old one.

This doesn’t just create a bottleneck; it creates a leadership time-lag that can be fatal in a fast-moving school environment.

Stuck in the middle with you

This was my caretaker phase, and it was, quite frankly, a nightmare. Micro-management doesn’t just slow things down; it actively deskills the person in the post.

It breeds a culture of checking upwards rather than taking ownership. If a headteacher has to ask permission to change the way they do morning gate duty, they aren’t leading. They are just a highly paid site manager with a PGCE.

There was, perhaps, a time when the role made sense: the early to mid 2000s when we had the rise of superheads, who, within smaller trust, could swoop to turn around a school, guide new headteachers in difficult moments and keep track of a manageable number of projects.

But the world has moved on. Modern trusts are massive, and the EHT role is being squeezed out by more streamlined, specialised positions that support heads by offering useful insights into more nuanced aspects of the role, rather than trying to do the job from another rung up the ladder.

Too much distance

I am sure, of course, that some EHTs do get the balance right. But from talking to other heads, it seems the issue of an overly zealous EHT, who is stuck between the trust management and day-to-day school operations, is not uncommon.

Conversely, the gap can become too big sometimes. In one former role, I reported directly to a deputy CEO.

They were more corporate, focused on the cold, hard reality of KPIs, budgets and the bottom line. It was autonomy by default because they were too busy to care about my staff briefing notes. It was better than being micro-managed, but it felt cold and impersonal, and support was often hard to find.

In my current role, though, I report to a director of education, who oversees a large cluster of schools. It is, by far, the most liberating professional relationship I’ve had.

They have enough distance to remain objective but enough pedagogical street cred to support school improvement without meddling in the day-to-day.

Deep and meaningful conversations

Our conversations are about trajectory, not trivia. They don’t want to see my seating plans; they want to see my strategy for the Year 11 cohort. They aren’t trying to be the head of my school; they are trying to ensure that I am the best version of a head I can be.

This should be the default that all trusts aim for when setting up management layers between heads and trusts. Oversight is, of course, important, but line-managing a headteacher is a delicate art.

It requires a low-stakes, high-challenge approach that respects the professional boundaries of the office. We are, by nature, a prickly bunch.

After all, you don’t get to this position without having a fairly robust vision of how things should be done. Headteachers need the oxygen of autonomy. We need to be trusted to set the vision and execute the strategy without a super-head looking over our shoulder at every Friday afternoon briefing.

When you try to manage that vision out of us, you end up with a hollowed-out leader who is just waiting for their next instruction. And that is a surefire way to cause more leaders to leave your trust - or the profession entirely.

The writer is a headteacher with 15 years’ experience who now works in a large multi-academy trust