NAHT | Schools Week

Nine in 10 heads are headed for an ‘unmanageable’ budget deficit

More than 90 per cent of headteachers expect their schools to rack up an unmanageable budget deficit in the near future, a poll has revealed. Twenty-one per cent of the 589 heads who responded to a survey by the school leaders’ union NAHT said their school was already in deficit this year, an increase of […]

Police organisation teams up with NAHT to beat recruitment fraud

The NAHT union is teaming up with a Metropolitan Police website to tackle recruitment fraud. Schools will be told about an organisation providing free advice about job scams to which leaders can report any fraud problems. A Schools Week investigation last march found hundreds of schools are using apps to employ supply teachers, but union […]

NAHT launches commission to investigate school accountability

The way schools are held to account will be investigated by a new independent commission that seeks to find a “credible alternative” to the system of inspections and league tables – and Ofsted and the DfE have promised to get involved. The commission, which will propose an “alternative vision for the future” of school accountability […]

DfE doesn’t check whether academy leaders are ‘fit and proper’

Academy trustees and senior leaders are not being properly vetted for their suitability to run schools, the government’s spending watchdog has warned. Labour MP Meg Hillier, the chair of the powerful public accounts committee said she was “concerned” by the latest report from the National Audit Office, which found that people taking senior jobs at […]

Calls to boycott new baseline assessment trials – which won’t even start until 2019

Schools and parents are being encouraged to boycott trials of a new reception baseline assessment, two years before it is even due to start. Speaking today at a conference in London, Nancy Stewart, vice chair of the Association for Professional Development in Early Years, said that school leaders who do not agree with the introduction […]

NAHT: Senior leader recruitment getting even worse

Schools are increasingly struggling to recruit senior leaders, with the proportion of heads failing to hire a new assistant head or principal almost double what it was last year. The NAHT union’s annual recruitment survey has found that 19 per cent of leaders failed to fill one of these vacancies this year, up from 10 […]

The budget won’t help us – so what now?

With no new funding for schools or young people, the chancellor’s 2017 autumn budget clearly doesn’t have the future in mind, says Paul Whiteman In the three months since I became NAHT’s General Secretary, I’ve visited many schools and been inspired by the professionalism and hope that I see wherever I go. The absolute dedication […]

Russell Hobby, outgoing general secretary, National Association of Head Teachers

Russell Hobby did a profile with The Guardian when he started at the NAHT. In it the journalist interviewing him described him as the boy most likely to have his hand up in class. Given Hobby’s determined, enthusiastic and almost universally liked temperament, it seems a bang on point. But Hobby, with all the enthusiasm […]

Paul Whiteman nominated as next general secretary of NAHT

Paul Whiteman, director of representation and advice at the National Association of Head Teachers, has been nominated to succeed Russell Hobby as the union’s general secretary. The NAHT’s national executive committee has unanimously confirmed Whiteman as its “preferred candidate” to take over later this year, following an “in-depth recruitment process”. Members will now be consulted […]