ABSTRACT
As head of a school you are at the boundary between the school and the community it serves. Although members of your staff will have contact with parents and governors, you are the main point of contact for the world outside the school. You are the school’s official representative and are seen to be responsible for everything that goes on. You are in a position to encourage people from outside the school to contribute to its needs and at the same time you need to protect the staff from some of the outside pressures. Schools have a life of their own which is demanding and absorbing and it is easy to become too inward looking although the parents of children in a primary school are usually too much in evidence to make it possible to forget that the school is part of a community which sees the school as serving its needs.
