The Shared Headship Network in the press

The Shared Headship Network in the Press:

Co-headship can help “keep experienced leaders in the profession we might otherwise lose”.

Geoff Barton, the general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders. Schools Week, March 2018.

“Change starts from the ground up. I believe that job share headships must become more common place to address the headteacher crisis and to provide opportunities for both women and men to be able to combine parenthood with headship.”

Hannah Turbet, Co-founder, Shared Headship Network. Ambition Institute February, 2018.

“The Shared Headship Network offers invaluable support to professionals looking to share a headship - with anything from networking opportunities, practical job application support and even coaching.”

We are proud to be recognised as a TeachFirst network, ending educational inequality through effective school leadership.

Photograph: Christian Sinibaldi/Guardian

Shared Headship Network as part of the solution to the teacher retention crisis:

“Hinds said a big part of the strategy is encouraging job shares to retain teachers who might otherwise leave, and to do so, he wants to tackle the cultural and structural issues that have held back schools from using job shares. What we are keen to do is to find a way for people who don’t have a background together to find a partner to apply for a job with, hence the Match.com terminology”.

Damien Hinds, Secretary of State for Education 2018-1019. The Guardian, January, 2019.

Co-heads Nick Tildesley and Evelyn Holdsworth share the responsiblity of running John Donne primary school in Southwark. Photograph: John Donne

Positive experiences of shared leadership:

“We have worked together for 14 years and know each other’s strengths and expertise. We share the same values and we both understand the school’s history and systems. As a result, we have achieved continuity in an upward way, similar but different.

We share the emotional burden that we believe would be overwhelming if carried solely by one head but manageable and shared if carried out by co-heads. The co-headship model allows for ideas, initiatives and key decisions to be tested, sounded out and sense-checked between each of us and so decisions are not taken unilaterally. Our professional dialogue results in better, clear-headed decisions that are in the best interest of the school.”

Anne Kennedy and Katie Pearce, Co-Headteachers at The Holt School in Wokingham, Berkshire @theholtschool . Leader, the magazine for school and college leaders.

“two heads are better than one”

“It can be lonely at the top and I've lost count of the times I have seen heads struggling in schools. I watch and worry and realise that person is going to be broken and leave education. I see heads on their own, miles down the wrong path, and think if only you'd had someone with you this never would never have happened.”

Evelyn Holdsworth and Nick Tildesley, Co-Headteachers at John Donne primary school in Peckham, south London. The Guardian, December, 2013.