Petition launched to urge Nicky Morgan to address lack of women headteachers

The petition was set up by Keziah Featherstone, headteacher of the Bridge Learning Campus in Bristol. The appeal calls for Morgan to “immediately address” the fact that just 36 per cent of heads are women.

The petition has been launched despite 62 per cent of qualified secondary school teachers being women. The proposal has come ahead of the the first Women in Education “unconference”, which aims to tackle the problem of fewer women occupying senior positions.

Featherstone said: “I’m talking to too many leaders who are tired of being told they have to fit into a very old-fashioned model of leadership.

“We need to find some way to ensure that women who have the capacity and will and desire to be the leaders of the future are not put off.”

The guardian has noted that while the Ofsted advisory board has seven members, just one is a woman. Similarly, the DfE-appointed ‘commission on assessment without level’ was announced in March. The commission is chaired by a man, while three of its eight members are female.

A DfE spokesperson said: “Members of our expert panels are appointed on merit based on the breadth of skills and experience they can bring … but we know there is more to do.”

The former education minister, Lord Jim Knight said “We want to model the behaviours we are after, and we are after boys and girls who are good and caring and helping each other to grow, and who are good at leadership and teamwork. If it looks like certain genders ‘do’ certain things, then that’s not helpful to children.

“I don’t think that people are consciously discriminating, but I think that people forget that the way we achieve change is to make it easier for groups who are unrepresented, rather than for them to have to break through the glass ceiling.”

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