Funny that this thread has returned this week: Just yesterday I posted my letter of resignation from my only remaining and very part-time permanent teaching job. (I'm already doing and enjoying lots of other freelance work).

I used to love this particular job in this particular school, but since the new headteacher has arrived, things have changed in much the same way that others have described in this thread. The new breed of headteachers and their management style - borrowed from "big business" - as described so well by Diana and Dianavan, seems to be spreading at an alarming rate.

My school no longer has staff meetings where people can put forward suggestions and air their views, knowing that their views will be listened to and respected, even if not actually followed. They are called "staff briefings". Headteachers are becoming the type of manager who delegates everything to the point that they, themselves, do precious little except swan around in an expensive designer suit, checking that their ideas, however unproven, impractical and outlandish, are fulfilled to the letter....that is, unless they are unavailable, out of the building, at some mysterious and unspecified "meeting". It is a management style, whatever the business might be, which suits the manager, but nobody else !

I feel very sorry indeed for full-time teachers who are having to adjust to working under such conditions. I am lucky, my job is so part-time that I have been able to leave it as soon as I saw the writing on the wall.

Very best wishes to you, Schantieman and Dianavan, and all other departing teachers, as we all embark on new adventures.

- jeanie