Recruiting a new Head Teacher Process & Interview Questions

My younger brother is also a School Governor in the London Borough of Kingston Upon Thames. He has been a School Governor a few years longer than me and is a member of the governing body of my childhood primary school.

Last week his governing body recruited a new Head Teacher and he sat on the recruitment panel so I asked him to share his process and interview questions so I could share them with others on this blog. Tomorrow (Sunday) I will cover the management interview questions they used, on Monday curriculum interview questions used and finally the final headship interview questions used on Tuesday's blog.

The Process:

Once application sifting was done the panel chose the three strongest applicants picked from all responses to advert.

Day one Morning

Task one: Candidates were asked to perform a 30 minute lesson of their choice based on an object they brought in with them to a mixed ability group of pupils.

Task two: They were quized by the school council for 20 minutes with supervision from panel members who took notes on the candidates responses and overall interaction with children.
(pre-determined questions only so we could make sure all questions were appropriate)

Task three: The candidates were asked to perform a data handling exercise to show their knowledge of Raise Online, Target Tracking & Pupil Tracking.

Each of these tasks were done on a carousel system with different members of the panel observing each task.

Lunch with existing Key Stage Leaders and their Teaching Assistants's to see how they interacted with current staff.

Day one Afternoon

Task one: Management Interview questions (Will blog about these on Sunday)

Task Two: Curriculum Interview questions (Will blog about these on Monday)

Task Three: In tray exercise with example letters from parents and staff. Looking for prioritising and appropriate responses.

Day two was a 10 minute presentation on "What are the 4 main things do you think make an outstanding school?"

Then the full final formal interview with the headship questions (I will blog about these on Tuesday).

(Anyone deemed not suitable after day one wouldn't have been asked back for the second day)