Inverness High School head teacher, John Rutter, says he is 'gutted' in candid interview

Inverness Courier reporter, Annabelle Gauntlett, interviewed Inverness High School head teacher after he resigned from his post.

Transcript

00:00 do you feel like now is the right time? There's a whole load of circumstances, some of them

00:08 are personal and which I don't really want to go into them but there's a whole host of

00:14 things that have kind of come together at the same time so I think it's probably time

00:18 to move on. And as three out of five high schools in Inverness don't currently have

00:23 a permanent headteacher, do you think there needs to be some improvements made to the

00:28 recruitment process of headteachers? There's a few things actually that are involved there

00:32 because one of the reasons we moved up in the first place, I've been here for nine years

00:37 and quality of life was a big thing for us moving north. It's obviously not the quality

00:44 of life that's putting people off applying for jobs in Highland, the remoteness is obviously

00:51 a bit of an issue for some people. I think there is a recruitment problem, not just with

01:01 headteachers but with teachers across Highland and also in certain circumstances nationally

01:08 as well. Jobs are well paid, can't deny that, but it is pretty stressful and so I think

01:16 that does affect people's decisions when they look at headteachers and they see what

01:21 they have to deal with. Do you think that the duties that you're expected to do as

01:26 a headteacher when you originally sign up are aligned with what you actually have to

01:31 do? That's a difficult one. So I did a qualification called the standard for headship which was

01:39 the original kind of headship qualification, it's been replaced now by something else.

01:45 We did a lot of work in that about how to strategically lead a school, how to raise

01:52 attainment and do all the long term thinking that was originally why I came into it. I

02:01 thought that was how you were going to make a big difference to the school but the reality

02:06 is somewhat different. There's so many things that are so immediate that have to be dealt

02:11 with on a day to day basis that you often don't get time to get around to the strategic

02:17 stuff as much as you would like. The duties are not, I think when you get into the role

02:22 that's the only time that you find out exactly what the duties are and you have to deal with

02:27 things that you didn't really expect to like leaking roofs and refurbishment projects that

02:33 go on for a long time and the duties, the immediate day to day duties do get in the

02:40 way of long term planning unfortunately.

02:42 What improvements do you think need to be made with the recruitment process of teachers?

02:48 There are certain issues I would say with, we have what's called a job sizing process

02:57 for senior staff in secondary schools. I think this is something that needs to be addressed

03:03 at a national scale because you end up with head teachers especially in smaller schools

03:09 getting paid less than perhaps deputy's in bigger schools. I think there's more support

03:17 perhaps that's needed in the way of staffing for secondary schools.