Headteacher CV: what to include

Lead with responsibility, not subjects

Open with a profile naming your qualification, years of teaching, the leadership posts you have held and the size of the school or department. A panel should know within two lines whether you have led adults as well as learners.

Show what changed

For each leadership role, describe what you were responsible for and what improved: "Led the science department; introduced a common marking standard and termly results analysis" or "Coordinated national examination preparation for three years". Be careful to claim your own contribution rather than the school's.

Include management experience beyond teaching

Mention budget or procurement involvement, property or asset responsibilities, timetabling, staff deployment, reporting to the district, and committee membership. These are the areas where teaching candidates most often look thin, so any genuine experience is worth stating.

Professional development

List leadership, management, assessment or inclusion training with dates, and any sessions you have led for colleagues. Leading professional development is strong evidence for headship.

State the size of what you have led

Panels read leadership claims against scale. Say how many teachers were in the department you led, how many streams or learners the school has, and what you were accountable for in each post. Leading four teachers is a real achievement and a different one from leading twenty, and a panel left to guess will usually guess low.

Show that you can account for money

Even modest financial experience belongs on a headteacher CV, because it is the area panels worry about most in a candidate coming straight from teaching. Club funds you managed, an examination budget you handled, procurement you took part in, or records you kept for an audit are each worth a line. Say what you were responsible for, and that it was accounted for properly.

Structure

• Personal and contact details as the application requires.
• Profile of three or four lines.
• Leadership and teaching experience, most recent first, with responsibilities and results.
• Education and teaching qualifications with dates.
• Professional development, including anything you delivered.
• Referees, including a head or district officer who has seen you lead.

Mistakes to avoid

• Claiming school-wide results as personal achievements.
• Listing duties with no evidence of what improved.
• Leaving out finance, property or reporting experience that you do have.
• Dates that make your leadership experience hard to count.
• Language that suggests you would run the school alone.