A teacher friend of mine is always saying,“It’s wrong for teachers to compete with each other about how hard they work. We all work hard.” Amen to that, though there is, nevertheless, a case for some senior teams needing to be more aware of the workload carried by secondary heads of department, writes Gerald Haigh.

Typically, they have two full-time jobs: one in the classroom, one as a manager. Sadly, the first casualty of work overload is inspiration, and stressed HoDs lose touch with their leadership qualities.

It is a key point made by Peter Fleming in The Art of Middle Management, an excellent book aiing to help team and subject leaders to leave room for vision.

Managing to Movitate has a similar purpose, but covers leadership much more generally. Starting from the observation that teachers would be more effective if they were better motivated, it looks at some techniques and effects of good motivation.

Each of these books assumes that successful secondaries are run by teams rather than individuals. In recent years, primary schools, too, have thought in terms of management teams - head, deputy and one or two key phase or subject leaders.

But Wallace and Huckman’s Senior Management Teams in Primary Schools warns that increasedpressure on primary heads for performance and accountability makes them reluctant to loosen the reins and allow creative people to fly. It advises how effective teams may be developed in the current climate.