ABSTRACT
Headteachers in the UK have been ‘encouraged to be more self-determining, entrepreneurial, cost effective and consumer orientated’ (Bowe et al. 1992:140). They have become targets as well as agents of change in a drive for improved standards in schools, and a recent survey by the National Association of Headteachers in the UK has revealed ‘probably the worst recruitment crisis in living memory’ (TES 1997). Between 1996 and 1997 the number of vacancies for primary school headships in England has risen by 29 per cent. Similar
problems have also been reported in the USA, for example, by Oberman (1997) on drop-out of principals in Chicago and by Portin and Williams (1997) on the effects of increasing pressures in Washington State.
