“If I had a chair who didn’t have my back, it wouldn’t be sustainable” “I’ve been very lucky with chairs.” “I feel like I’m a head of department and I’m being micromanaged.”
One of the clearest findings in our interviews with independent school heads is that governance has become a decisive variable in whether headship feels sustainable: not the only variable, of course, because finance, complaints, staffing, regulation and market pressure all matter; but again and again, heads returned to the quality of the relationship with the chair, the behaviour of the board, and the question of whether governance was helping them carry the role — or adding to the weight of it.
The best accounts are strikingly consistent: informal trust, strategic alignment, regular but proportionate contact, and a chair who understands when to challenge, when to support, and when simply to have the head’s back. One head put it very plainly: “If I had a chair who didn’t have my back, it wouldn’t be sustainable”; another reflected, with some gratitude, “I’ve been very lucky with chairs.” Those comments aren’t soft sentiment; they are evidence of professional infrastructure.
The more difficult accounts are just as instructive: some heads describe boards that are more questioning and more involved, but not always more understanding; others speak of committee structures that require substantial preparation while adding limited value, or of parent governors whose dual identity can blur the boundary between governance and operational interest. In a few cases, governance feels less like stewardship and more like another layer of management; one head captured this sharply, saying they felt “like a head of department” being micromanaged.
There is a tightrope here: boards can’t be passive, because schools need sharper financial scrutiny, better risk oversight, stronger strategic thinking and more informed challenge than ever before. But intensity isn’t the same as effectiveness; more meetings, longer papers and more frequent intervention may make governance feel active without necessarily making it useful.
For chairs, the question may be whether the relationship with the head has enough trust to bear difficult conversations before they become formal ones. For boards, it may be whether they understand the lived reality of the role they are governing: the speed of decisions, the emotional load, the operational noise, and the extent to which a head is already carrying competing pressures from parents, staff, regulators and the market.
The important point isn’t that governors should step back, nor that heads should be left alone; it is subtler. Good governance should increase clarity, confidence and strategic discipline; it shouldn’t merely increase load. Chairs and boards may therefore want to ask a harder question of themselves: are we helping the head lead the school, or are we becoming one more pressure the head has to manage?