Do you have a new deputy headteacher?
A useful operational duties/ emergencies list for primary school headteachers to share with newly appointed deputies.
I wrote this for my new deputy headteacher, If you find it useful, feel free to use it and share it.
Suggested General/ Operational
Overview of staffing every day, on the day– keep in your diary/in your head who is doing what every day (no one else in the school will know this). This includes things like:
Which staff are in and which are out (and where they are obviously)? What impact does it have if a staff member is off sick? Were they supposed to be doing anything important that day e.g. leading assembly, leading inset, taking a club, going on a trip, taking the class swimming etc?… You and the headteacher will need to put contingencies in place for any of these things.
Which classes might be challenging behaviourally if their class teacher is not in – you might need to go and see these classes first thing and issue a general warning about behaviour for the day. This is a pain, but it often saves the hassle of dealing with detentions cards/lunchtime behaviour etc.
Lunchtime supervisors and support staff - whether there will be enough cover at lunchtimes (there might not be enough coverage if there are two school trips or if several staff are off sick).
Overview of diary/staffing in advance – your diary and school’s diary will contain the most amount of information about who is doing what and when. You will need to co-ordinate the diary to ensure there are no double bookings/conflicting events etc… The headteacher might be putting dates in the diary up to a year in advance – write everything down in your personal diary, even things like when important letters need to go out.
Staffroom diary - this will need to be updated every Friday. Thursdays are good days for the HT and DHT/ leadership team to look at the dates ahead
Plan ahead for staff in terms of deadlines – remind staff about assessment deadlines well in advance, Liaise with the headteacher to put these dates in the diary.
Don’t leave any assessment deadlines until the last few days of term, you or someone else will invariably have work to do on the data after people have submitted it, so get it in early to leave yourself time to sort anything out before the deadline.
Plan ahead in terms of diary/events/ordering –make sure all the dates of big events planned and shared with everyone. Make sure the orders go in early in summer 2, for September, so everything is in school in plenty of time. Be particularly careful about which books are ordered.
Time management – You will soon find out which are the busiest times of the day. Don’t expect to get anything done before 9.00 am. From the minute you arrive, until about 9.00 am, you will only be dealing with the basic issues of the day (talking to staff about urgent issues, catching up with staff about what happened the day before, sorting out an immediate challenge, seeing a parent, answering general queries, being in the playground etc…). Playtime and lunchtime are very busy. After school is very busy for about an hour, then people will usually leave you alone! Plan to do anything important during the times whenstaff are in class.
Emergencies – It is important to know what you would do in the event of an emergency if the headteacher was not at school. This could be anything from an incident involving a child, to a global catastrophy !
You are in charge if the fire alarm goes off, if all the toilets have to be shut, if the heating fails, if it snows heavily, if a child or staff member seriously injures themselves, etc… Sounds dramatic, but all plausible.
Read all the H&S Policies.
Obviously, in the first instance, try and reach the headteacher on the phone immediately. In some of these cases, however, there won’t be time for this.
If the fire alarm goes off and you are not expecting it – DON’T PANIC. All class teachers will know what to do and will make sure the children get out. If you are unlucky, it will be raining and you’ll need to move even faster! Make sure the office staff get out to the playgrounds with the registers as a matter of urgency. Ascertain WHERE the alarm has sounded- check with the site manager. You can do this by taking the map of the school that is normally above the fire alarm box . This will tell you which sector the alarm has sounded in. Once you have found the alarm, ascertained that there is no danger to anyone, get the site manager to ‘mute’ the alarm (it sometimes takes a while to reset) and get everyone back in asap.
In the unlikely event that there is a fire, be sure that every pupil and staff member is accounted for in this case – send members of the leadership team to check. You’ll need to make final decisions about everything, but get members of the leadership team to help you with everything that needs to be done and give you their advice.
If there is a serious injury to a staff member or a pupil – don’t be afraid to call the ambulance. The worst that can happen is that they get here and they say it isn’t serious enough for hospital – at least you called them and made sure. Make contact with the staff member or pupil’s families and get them to come to school asap. For staff, send someone in the ambulance with them and send someone else to the hospital in a cab as back up. For pupils, if the parents have arrived, you don’t need to send anyone. If parents have not arrived, send an appropriate staff representative and back up if necessary. Don’t feel you have to go yourself – you’ve got the rest of the staff/school to worry about. As soon as the incident is off the premises, you will need to go about investigating what happened. Try to do this as soon as you can. You will need to gather witness statements from staff, pupils, anyone else involved. Ask as many people as you can what they saw. Try to gain a clear picture of what happened.
In the event of needing to close the school in an emergency (e.g. weather, heating, toilets etc…) there is guidance on procedures. Again, this is the decision of the Headteacher andthe CEO or the Chair of the GB. If you cannot reach them, discuss with members of the leadership term, make a joint decision and follow the guidelines/policies.
Whenever there is an emergency, people will come to you first. DO NOT feel under pressure to make a decision too quickly or on your own. Ask others for their advice and consider all options carefully first.