The last candidate had barely closed the door when the chair of governors turned to the panel and said: “Right, then, we’ll have the lass, shall we?” Officers and adviser gulped and even I, well used to my chairman’s eccentricities, was surprised. After two days interviewing prospective deputy heads his mind was made up, discussion was unnecessary.

That was 10 years ago and, as a new National Association for Governors and Managers paper on selecting heads and deputies makes clear, is not an approach which should be tolerated now.

The fact that “the lass” was appointed and did an excellent job is irrelevant. For heads and governors, appointing a deputy is a major responsibility with potential long-term effects and must be treated seriously - not least because of the requirements of both education and equal opportunities legislation. NAGM’s paper (No 50: Selecting Heads and Deputies) is a good reference point for governors faced with replacing a deputy and concerned about their statutory responsibilities.

When a deputy resigns or retires, the first question must be: “Should he or she be replaced ?” Many governing bodies have opted to dispense with one or more of their deputies and share the responsibilities among other staff.

While attractive financially, this should not be undertaken lightly. Deputies play a crucial (and increasingly important) role in school and their numbers should only be reduced when it is clear the work can be better done in another way. Too often, the result of cutting deputy posts is to increase the head’s load.

If the decision is to replace the outgoing deputy, the next question must be “with what role?” Management structures have obsolescence built in and a deputy’s departure is a perfect opportunity to review all posts within the management team. In this process the outgoing deputy can be very useful. Not just in providing an up-to-date view of the work he or she has actually undertaken (as opposed to what it says on the job description) but also in making “no axe to grind” suggestions about restructuring.

Naturally, there is a tendency to hurry a deputy replacement process to avoid a vacuum when the existing post-holder leaves, but real care should be taken at the “what do we want?” stage.

If the impending departure was known about for some time, the head will have thought through (and probably discussed with the senior team) how responsibilities should be re-organised. If not, it’s a process which requires careful thought and should involve the whole governing body.

On the basis of these discussions a job description and personnel specification should be created. These two documents will, to a large extent, determine who is appointed. It’s therefore essential to get them right.

Attention must also be paid to the content and style of the information pack sent to applicants. Too often, still, these are sketchy, convey little that a candidate wants to know and are distant and unencouraging in style. Personally addressed, warmly phrased and straightforward letters, and details which convey a real flavour of the school rather than dry information are most likely to generate plenty of applications from good candidates.

The aim of the preparatory stages of selection is to make the interview process as stimulating for everyone involved as possible. Candidates should gain professionally even if they’re not appointed. That’s why short-listing has to be so thorough.

Using the job description and personnel specification as guides, the panel must try to judge candidates on the basis of what they’ve put on paper. Some are good at this, other’s not and the real treat for an appointing panel is to discern the quality candidate from a superficially unpromising application.

Decisions about the last stages of the selection will have been made right from the start - whether to ask candidates to do a presentation, write a report, go through an assessment centre, take a psychometric test, join in a group activity or any of the other hoops appointing panels expect candidates to jump through.

Whatever processes are used it should be clear what information the panel will gain from them. Interviews are a notoriously unreliable way of appointing people but are required by law for heads and deputies. Unless it is understood how the other methods feed into the last stage, then their benefits can be wasted and the appointment ends up being done on the basis of “performance in interview”.

There are people who are just not very good at interviews but would do the job excellently. Interviewing panels, therefore, have a responsibility to enable candidates to show as much of their real selves as possible.

This doesn’t just mean the chairman making jokey remarks intended to relax the candidate at the beginning, but all members being aware of the candidate’s feelings and working, within the context of a professionally-challenging experience, to help him or her do as well as possible.

In the end, if the task has been well managed, a new deputy will have been appointed. This is a tremendous professional step for an individual. The successful candidate will have left “the staff” and joined “the management”.

It will also make a big difference to the school. New sets of relationships will have to be built, ideas adopted and ways of working accepted. And that’s only among the staff. Students, too, will be curious about the new deputy. They are less interested in “management structures” than in whether they can get on with the person now occupying Mr or Ms X’s office and word will travel quickly about the new deputy’s style and foibles.

Perhaps the person most affected will be the head whose working landscape will have changed. Whatever the relationship with the outgoing deputy, it was a known quantity. For a time with the new one there will be important issues of philosophy and procedures to explore while still maintaining the school’s day-to-day effectiveness.

Having a new deputy is also one of the head’s most professionally challenging opportunities, particularly if the incumbent has headship ambitions. Which is why, in the end, I was glad my chairman plumped so decisively for “the lass”. After four lively years together she went on to her own headship and is still able to laugh over the story of her appointment.

* Mike Fielding is Principal ofthe Community College, Chulmleigh, North Devon