Headteachers don’t just need support - they need a better system

We have reached a point where it is no longer enough to say that headteachers need support.

They do. Of course they do. But if that is all we say, we risk avoiding a more uncomfortable truth: the system we have built has been asking too much of individual leaders for too long, in ways that are no longer sustainable.

Headship has changed fundamentally. Leaders are no longer responsible only for standards and outcomes; they are navigating complex demands around SEND, safeguarding, attendance and staff wellbeing, often while responding to broader social challenges that surface most acutely in schools.

Making school leadership sustainable

In many communities, schools are now the front line of issues that extend far beyond education.

And yet, structurally, we continue to organise leadership as though this were still a role that can be effectively held within the boundaries of a single school. It cannot.

The sector’s instinct to talk about supporting headteachers is right, but incomplete. Support, on its own, does not alter the conditions; it simply helps leaders to endure those conditions. And endurance is not a strategy.

If we continue to rely primarily on the resilience of individuals, then leadership fatigue, recruitment pressures and inconsistency between schools will persist. The issue is not whether our leaders are strong enough. It is whether the system is sufficiently well designed.

There are signs that the system itself is beginning to shift. The direction of travel towards greater collaboration and more formalised groupings of schools, chiefly through multi-academy trusts, reflects a growing recognition that leadership capacity must be shared if it is to be sustainable.

But structural reform alone is not the answer. Without coherence and clarity of purpose, larger structures risk reproducing the same pressures at scale.

How we move forward

What matters is how we use this moment.

I feel there is a growing willingness, and a definite opportunity, to think more deliberately about how we organise ourselves.

This includes exploring deeper partnerships between schools, developing associate models that allow alignment without immediate structural change and, in some cases, considering whether mergers or more formal consolidation would better serve our communities.

These are not simply technical or organisational questions; they go to the heart of how leadership is experienced.

When approached thoughtfully, such developments can strengthen the system, reducing duplication, clarifying accountability and enabling leadership to be distributed in ways that are both effective and humane.

They allow schools to draw on shared expertise and collective capacity, rather than relying disproportionately on the strength of individual leaders.

But they also require a degree of political honesty.

From endurance to design

We cannot continue to ask schools to do more, whether on inclusion, attendance, or wider social responsibility, without recognising what this demands at system level.

If expectations increase, then the structures around schools must evolve accordingly. Anything less risks placing responsibility without providing capacity.

For those of us working in Church of England education, this moment is anchored in a clear sense of purpose. Our vision has always been about more than outcomes. It is about dignity, community and enabling every individual to flourish.

That vision has practical implications for how we design leadership. A system that enables flourishing is not one that relies on individuals to carry unsustainable levels of responsibility.

It is one that prioritises relationships, builds genuine collaboration and creates the conditions in which leaders can succeed over time. This is the shift we now need to make: from endurance to design.

A flourishing future

Supporting headteachers will always matter.

But the real task is to ensure leadership is sustainable and shaped by structures that distribute responsibility, partnerships that reduce isolation, and cultures that enable trust rather than depending on resilience alone.

That may require difficult decisions about how schools and trusts organise themselves in the years ahead. But avoiding those decisions will not reduce the pressure; it will simply leave it where it already sits - on the shoulders of headteachers.

If we are serious about the future of school leadership, we must move beyond supporting individuals within the system we have and instead commit to building one that works for them.

Only then will we move from simply sustaining leadership to truly enabling it to flourish.

Christalla Jamil is chief executive of LDBS Academies Trust and LDBS Academies Trust 2, and is also vice chair for WomenEd, an organisation supporting and connecting women leaders in education