Professor Alex McEwen of Queen’s University, Belfast, helped 35 heads in the north-west of England compile computer diaries.

These showed that many heads got caught up in more minor tasks while deferring more highly valued work oncerned, for example, with the future direction of the school.

Quite often, he said, heads asked him for lessons in how to delegate. He told the conference: “They rush around doing often immediate but trivial tasks, thinking that if they don’t do them staff will say: ‘But you’re paid to do that.’”