Elite private schools are facing major challenges finding expert teachers and recruiting pupils in some parts of the country, according to the new leader of the Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference (HMC).

Mike Buchanan, who will become the HMC’s first executive director on Monday, told Tes that the country’s ongoing teacher recruitment and retention issues were being felt in the independent sector.

He also dismissed the idea of independent schools being wealthy and privileged institutions - saying that the majority were “small schools run on tight margins” that had to work hard to find pupils.

Mr Buchanan said HMC schools faced “similar challenges in a different context” to state schools in recruiting and retaining teachers.

He said that while HMC schools tended to have more subject-specialist expert teachers than in some state schools, finding them was becoming a challenge.

Mr Buchanan added: “In certain sections of the country, in certain subjects, the challenge of recruiting fantastic teachers who are expert in their field is high.

“It does vary from place to place, but the challenges we face in a different context are very similar[to the state sector] - finding the right people has got to be headteachers’ great obsession.”

Speaking ahead of the HMC annual conference, which begins in Manchester on Monday, he said: “The issues for headteachers are making sure we have enough expert teachers in schools and then there are the economic pressures.

“There is a perception that our schools are wealthy, well-endowed foundations, but this doesn’t ring true,  both in London and certainly as you get further away from London.”

He said that ensuring schools had enough pupils and expert teachers were the key challenges facing HMC schools.

Mr Buchanan added: “For schools in London, it is relatively straightforward for schools to get enough pupils for your school, but it is different outside of London.

“In my school in East Kent, for instance, I didn’t have hundreds of pupils lined up applying for places; it was a matter of getting out and selling it on a day-to-day basis to persuade parents to part with their hard-earned cash with us.

“Most independent schools have fewer than 400 pupils; only 70 schools have more than 1,000 pupils.

“The reality is that most schools are small, run on really tight margins - and making sure you have enough pupils is an ongoing challenge.”

Mr Buchanan is currently seeing out his last week as headmaster of Ashford School in Kent and was HMC chairman in 2016-17.

He has also raised concerns about Labour’s plans to charge VAT on independent school fees. Mr Buchanan described this as the wrong answer to the right question.

“People want to address unfairness in society and they associate privilege and affluence with independent schools,” he said. 

“The reality is that most of our schools mostly serve middle-class parents who are both working and who spend all of one their incomes on their children’s education.”

He warned that imposing VAT on fees would drive up costs and lead to thousands of pupils leaving the independent sector because fees would rise and bursary support would fall.

He said: “We believe that it would cost the Treasury more than it would raise.

“There are 650,000 pupils being educated in the independent sector. If, for example, 100,000 pupils left the sector, you would need to pick up the cost of educating them at £6,000 a time and that is before you ask whether there is enough space to take on these pupils.”

Mr Buchanan said that the HMC’s offer to provide 10,000 free places a year remained in place and he said he would welcome talks with Labour’s shadow education secretary, Angela Rayner, about how to address fairness in society.

“We already play a part in helping with this and we would like to help further,” he said.

Mr Buchanan has also urged universities to stop making unconditional offers to pupils.

He said that it led to too many pupils “taking their foot off the gas” when they learned that they did not need to pass their A levels to secure a place in higher education.

He warned that they were then lumbered with poor grades for the rest of their careers.