The two faces of secondary headship

Men continue to outnumber women at the secondary head teacher level. This article reports on some of the preliminary findings of a larger study exploring the ways in which women deputy head teachers, as potential aspirants to headship, perceive the secondary head teacher role. Using an Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis methodology, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 12 participants. The data revealed that, while making decisions about their professional futures, the majority of the women held dual, contradictory images of secondary headship. One image consisted of a role plagued by risk, performativity and stress, whereas the other focused on the agentic capacity head teachers have to transform lives and communities. The article highlights the ways in which a belief in the power of headship to make a meaningful difference to the lives of young people can encourage some women to aspire towards headship regardless of the precarity they perceive as being ingrained within the head teacher role.