Who needs headteachers?

GPs have practice managers.  Barristers have clerks.  Solicitors have senior administrators.  So, if the most significant impact on a child's learning comes from a teacher, shouldn't we pay teachers lots of money and get them to be organised by administrators - paid a reasonable amount but not as much as the teachers themselves.  Set up free schools run by teacher partnerships.  Wouldn't that mean that the art and science of teaching take pride of place in any school? 

How would you make it work?  Well - you'd have to get a group of highly talented, visionary teachers who want to work together for the benefit of children and young people.  They will need to work closely together, although each teacher would keep a considerable amount of autonomy and authority in what they did for the children in their care.  Each teacher would be hugely accountable for the success and wellbeing for the children in their care.

It might work.

If it did, it would promote a model of schooling where teachers wanted to stay in the classroom to keep honing their skills, rather than seeking promotion in order to get more money and more influence. 

If the Adonis/Gove free school model is to be tested completely, then such teaching partnerships are bound to feature on the landscape at some stage.   I bet we'll see one in the news before the end of 2013.