How far a dearth of deputies really matters depends upon the reasons for it. As John Lancaster points out opposite, this can be unplanned and unwelcome. But as some of the case studies on pages five and six illustrate, a minority of schools have taken advantage of the relaxation of the statutory requirements on numbers of deputy heads to broaden and flatten their management; in these schools, then, the death of the deputy has been seen as a positive development, though in some there appears to have been something of a reincarnation albeit under a different name and on a different pay scale, though not necessarily a cheaper one.

Many more schools, however, are being forced to dispense with one or more deputies simply to cut costs. That is clearly a personal and professional tragedy for such senior staff where it means compulsory or otherwise extorted redundancy. It also represents a loss to education as a whole of a number of highly-experienced practitioners and a frustrating reduction in the opportunities for advancement.

Time served, of course, is not always synonymous with energy or efficiency in either management or teaching, though fairer, more humane and more efficient conditions of employment and pension entitlement would allow for a more gradual relinquishment of responsibilities. And the disappearance of the deputy leaves a number of whole-school management tasks still to be done. It raises questions about how the heads of the future will be able to demonstrate such abilities, as the deputy given the last word in this Update points out (page 20).

There is, however, a growing acknowledgement that heads and deputies are not the only ones involved in school management or able and willing to provide effective whole-school leadership. The growth of the curriculum co-ordinator in primary schools underlines this and the recognition of the middle management roles of heads of department and year.

There has been a steady increase in the numbers of extra responsibility points handed out to main-scale teachers since schools acquired such discretion. This represents a growing investment in the management of teaching rather than in teaching; a shift in spending that itself ought to have given rise to a reappraisal of management teams, though most schools only seem to have embarked upon this when threatened with severe cuts. How many heads and governors even track the increasing costs of management as opposed to the teaching that is their primary function?

Over the first four years of local management, spending per pupil on teaching staff in schools rose from Pounds 1,028 to Pounds 1,303 a pupil - that is by 6 per cent in real terms after the effects of inflation are taken into account. And yet over that period class sizes grew as schools employed fewer teachers but paid them more to spend less of their time in school teaching.

Was more management and less teaching really the priority in so many governors’ minds when they approved their budgets? Or did they expect teachers to work extra hours for the additional responsibility allowances they approved?

The increasing average age of the teaching force of recent years has also contributed to growth in teaching costs. But should not a more experienced workforce mean correspondingly less support and management is needed from senior staff? Not necessarily, especially when schools have had to respond to rapid and repeated change or a more competitive environment.

But the purpose of annual increments is presumably to reflect the higher value and increased contribution to school success expected of more experienced staff. With or without extra responsibility allowances, school managers need to make full and effective use of the larger proportion of staff now at the top of the pay scale.

The latest survey of teachers’ working hours carried out by the school teachers’ pay review body suggests they are not always succeeding in this; older, more experienced main scale teachers work fewer hours on average than the younger and more recently qualified.

The school teachers pay review body and the Office for Standards in Education have repeatedly called upon schools to re-examine their management structures to ensure highly paid deputies were really devoting their expensive time to professional tasks that could not be taken over by lower-paid administrative staff and that strategic and line management functions are clear to all. And Kevin McAleese (page 8) even questions whether it makes either economic or educational sense for deputies and heads to be teaching at all.

So are all deputy heads really necessary? Schools can no longer afford to take for granted the continuation of traditional management structures, roles and relationships. They certainly cannot afford to continue adding to them without thought to the cost as well as the putative benefits.