Our thanks to our associate education experts, Deborah Bruce and Keith Clover, for their help with this article.
You can’t postpone your headteacher’s departure
Your headteacher decides when they want to resign.
As long as they’ve complied with the correct notice period, you can’t prevent them from resigning or retiring, and you can’t intervene by taking a vote on their departure date.
Chair: speak to your headteacher privately about other departure options Do this before you tell the rest of the governing board about their departure to avoid confusion. You could ask your headteacher to: Delay their departure and stay in post slightly longer, for example one further school term, to give the governing board more time to recruit a replacement Undergo a phased retirement, slowly reducing their hours, and/or responsibilities