Why do schools struggle to find quality applicants for senior leadership positions? According to one assistant principal, it might be partly your fault.

Writing in the 20 April issue of Tes, Mark Roberts argues that the overwhelmingly negative perception of SLTs, propagated by teachers, is unfair, and that it is discouraging many from stepping up to leadership jobs.

“Teachers are fearful of the backlash. They don’t want to spend their time being castigated for decisions made with good intentions. They worry what their non-SLT friends will think of them if they move over to ‘the dark side’,” he writes.

“They’re put off by the sweeping, negative generalisations people make about SLT. They don’t want to be ‘one of them’ - hated and ostracised.”

This, he says, is leading to a leadership crisis: he points to research from the Future Leaders Trust, Teaching Leaders and Teach First that predicts England will face a deficit of about 19,000 heads, deputy heads and assistant heads by 2022. Another survey he cites reveals that 43 per cent of school governors report that they are struggling to find decent candidates for SLT positions.

Roberts concedes that “SLT make mistakes, and some (a very small proportion) may not be very good at their job”, but claims “these anecdotes contribute to unfair generalisations about the motivation and intellect of senior leaders”.

He says the education sector is rife with “extreme tales” about SLT incompetence, and “though they are representative of only a tiny number of truly awful leaders, we let ourselves believe it is a comment on the whole - that when promotion happens, the illness of SLT cannot be avoided. That’s ridiculous.”

Roberts proposes some ways in which this negative stereotype could be challenged. He believes SLT needs to be less of a closed club, with staff being invited to see more of what the job entails. He also advocates that the SLT teaches, if possible, and always puts teaching at the heart of decisions, while ensuring teachers are listened to. “We need less ‘done to’ and more ‘done with’,” he argues.

But he says teachers need to play their part, too: “[They] must continue to highlight terrible practice that puts unnecessary burdens on hard-working teachers. But [they] need to avoid demonising those who put their reputations and careers on the line when trying to transform schools. As former headteacher Jill Berry says, ‘We need to be kinder to ourselves and our colleagues - and that works both ways.’

“If we can’t do that, then we create a self-fulfilling prophecy: the vast majority of SLT are there to support teachers and improve the lives of young people, but teachers are fast creating a situation where no one with those aims in their heart will be willing to step up.”

Mark Roberts is an assistant headteacher at a secondary school in the South West of England. You can read the full article in the 20 April issue of Tes