ABSTRACT
Until the late 1980s few LEAs had given their headteachers any indication of the criteria under which they were accountable. Morgan et al. (1983) had in their research into secondary headteacher selection, the POST project as it became known, found ‘only one of 85 LEAs [which] provided a written description of its view of the full range of secondary heads’ duties’. They found no instance of selectors using even the most elementary job analysis to identify the requirements for a particular post. Two years later the same team, now completing a follow-up study on the role of the secondary headteacher, concluded that ‘a satisfactory definition of headship must include how heads approach the job as well as the tasks they perform’ (Hall et al. 1985).
