The Big Question: Are We De-skilling the Next Generation of Headteachers?

The Big Question Series

This series of posts is a result of a unique event where Edurio hosted 32 trust leaders for a residential to discuss the biggest questions across the sector in a candid and deep discussion.

The questions were pre-submitted by the participating trust leaders, and the most popular topics were then discussed in groups of 10-15 leaders.

Chatham House rules were observed in the sessions. These blog posts summarise the main insights to elevate the discussion across the sector.

Across England, school trusts have reshaped how schools are led. Centralised services, aligned curricula and standardised systems are increasingly part of the everyday architecture of the sector. 

For many trusts, this has brought stability, consistency and capacity that simply did not exist before.

But it also raises a complex question, one that trust CEOs explored in this conversation: “Does centralisation, standardisation and alignment risk de-skilling the next generation of headteachers? And how should trusts evolve so that headship can once again feel like the summit of a professional career, not a stepping stone?”

Centralisation as support – not the problem in itself

For some leaders in the room, the benefits of centralisation were clear and non-negotiable. Removing operational burdens from headteachers, such as finance, estates, HR, and compliance, was seen as an unequivocal good. 

In this view, trust alignment enables heads to focus on teaching, learning and developing staff, rather than firefighting.

Several leaders pointed out that alignment often emerges bottom-up, not top-down. Shared curriculum resources, for example, were described as a practical response to teacher workload and variable quality, not an ideological move towards uniformity. In those contexts, alignment had improved consistency, reduced burnout and delivered better outcomes for pupils.

From this perspective, the real risk was not de-skilling but the opposite – leaving headteachers isolated, overstretched and forced to manage complexity that trusts are structurally better placed to handle.

Ensuring centralisation supports rather than de-skills heads

Others were more sceptical. The concern was not centralisation per se, but what happens when support hardens into dependency.

Several leaders reflected on whether some headteachers now lack opportunities to build the full range of leadership skills required to run an institution – particularly operational, strategic and system-level thinking. If key decisions always sit elsewhere, where do future CEOs learn to lead at scale?

A powerful metaphor surfaced repeatedly – scaffolding. Scaffolding is essential while a structure is being built, but it must come down at some point. The question is whether trusts are clear about when and how that happens for headteachers, or whether well-intentioned support quietly becomes permanent.

Linked to this was a deeper anxiety – not about de-skilling, but about ‘de-joying’ headship. If headteachers feel they are implementing rather than leading, and executing rather than shaping, does the role still carry the sense of purpose and agency that once drew people to it?

Another fault line in the discussion centred on vision and values. Operational centralisation is one thing, but ownership of vision is another.

Some leaders questioned whether trusts have unintentionally absorbed not just systems, but the moral and strategic centre of schools. If vision, values and direction are perceived to “belong” to the trust, what space is left for headteachers to lead authentically within their communities?

Others argued strongly that this need not be a zero-sum game. The most compelling trust models were described as nested – schools holding a strong, distinctive identity within a shared trust framework. Heads are both natives of their school and natives of the trust, not forced to choose between the two.

Achieving that balance, however, was widely acknowledged to be difficult – and fragile.

Are we solving today’s problems and storing up tomorrow’s?

As the conversation deepened, the question widened. Several leaders wondered whether trusts are exceptionally good at solving the immediate problems in front of them – compliance, improvement, inspection readiness – but less confident about the long-term consequences.

If predictability and consistency are prioritised above all else, do we risk narrowing professional agency across the system? And if we train teachers and leaders primarily to deliver pre-designed solutions, what happens to creativity, adaptability and moral courage over time?

This line of thinking led to an even harder reflection. Would today’s trust leaders choose to become headteachers in the trusts they now run?

Responsibility, not blame

There was a strong sense of responsibility in the room – an acknowledgement that today’s trust leaders are pioneers, shaping a system that is still contested and still evolving. 

Many spoke about unintended consequences rather than failures, and about the difficulty of leading well in a context of constrained funding, rising accountability and diminishing national coherence.

If there was a challenge, it was to resist complacency and keep interrogating where alignment genuinely enables schools, as well as where it quietly erodes agency. Furthermore, the challenge is to ensure that leadership pathways within trusts develop people who can not only run schools well, but also re-imagine the system itself.

Where this leaves the Big Question

By the end of the session, one thing was clear – there is no single “right” operating model. Trusts sit at different points on a continuum, shaped by context, history and values.

But the Big Question remains a useful one precisely because it refuses easy answers. It forces trust leaders to ask:

• Are we clear what we want headship to be in ten years’ time?
• Are we certain that we know what the headteachers want from being a head?
• Where are we intentionally building agency – and where are we inadvertently removing it?
• How do we ensure that leadership in schools remains a source of joy, meaning and ambition?

For many in the room, the most important outcome was not a solution, but a renewed determination to keep asking better questions of themselves, their trusts and the system as a whole.