Malaga province's schools struggle to attract candidates for headteacher positions

Every four years, schools in Spain must renew their executive teams. This process, which was due in 211 schools in the province of Malaga this year, has revealed a concerning reality. A total of 23 schools have been left without headteachers, as no candidates have come forward to replace those who have decided to leave the position.

This has forced these schools into a period of temporary leadership, pending mandatory appointments from the regional education department or attempts to persuade some former headmasters to stay on until a replacement is found.

SUR has obtained a list of schools currently in this situation. A clear trend reveals that finding a headteacher for a primary schools (also known as CEIP in Spain) is more difficult than for a secondary school (IES). Six secondary schools currently have no immediate candidates, compared to a total of 17 primary schools.

The problem is more prevalent, although not exclusively, outside the province's major population centres. According to SUR's findings, these are some of the municipalities and schools looking for someone to fill the position: Malaga, with the Manuel Alcántara and Christine Picasso secondary schools; Colmenar, with IES Los Montes; Fuengirola, with IES Eduardo Janeiro; Manilva, with IES Las Viñas; Torrox, with IES Alfaguar; Arriate, with CEIP Virgen de la Aurora; Casarabonela, with CEIP Blas Infante; Cortes de la Frontera, with CEIP Nuestra Señora del Rosario; and Igualeja, with CEIP Santa Rosa de Lima.

Disaffection with school leadership positions is particularly acute in small towns. In total, eleven per cent of schools that need to elect a new headteacher have no candidates.

Why are fewer and fewer teachers seeking the top position in their school's hierarchy? SUR consulted several headteachers currently working in secondary and primary schools in Malaga, who shared their opinions on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals. "The added effort isn't worth it. The day-to-day work is increasingly complex, more bureaucratic, and the emotional stress of dealing with parents who blame the school for everything that goes wrong with their children is on the rise," one headmaster says.

Money is not an incentive. Depending on the size of the school, a headteacher might earn between 300 and 900 euros more per month. With the resulting increase in income tax brackets, what's left in the end doesn't translate into a significant salary increase.

At the same time, those who do decide to take on the role immediately see an increase in workload. "It is a job where you have to be available 24/7. Your phone can ring at any moment. A teacher calling about something, any problem... Saturday and Sunday," another headteacher says.

In addition to the availability factor, there's a heavy bureaucratic burden. "Although they say they want to reduce it, it's a lie. We have to write reports for everything. Nobody reads 90 per cent of them. But we have to do them to cover our backs," another headmaster with many years of experience at a Malaga city school states.

"Before, the headteacher was someone who carried some weight in society. Nowadays, anyone dares to question our judgment. Parents think we're responsible for everything that happens to their children, when the time they spend at the school represents no more than a quarter of their lives," they say.

There's another key stressor that several high school headteachers point to: mobile phones. In addition to the increased workload, there's the burden of receiving calls or WhatsApp messages at any hour. "The job of a headteacher has always come with greater responsibility. But the biggest emotional burden has come with mobile phones. One's number is constantly being shared and many parents don't even respect weekends," teachers say.

Héctor Sánchez is head of one of the teachers' unions (Asadián) in Malaga. He says that school headteachers have become more like administrative and legal managers and that the responsibilities of the position distance them from pedagogical work. "headteachers are buried under mental health protocols, harassment and infrastructure management, without the necessary training," he says.

The unions are demanding improvements for headmasters, both in terms of pay and management. "We demand an immediate improvement in working conditions, an increase in working hours, a real increase in bonuses and the provision of guidance counsellors and healthcare professionals to handle harassment protocols. We will not allow the system to continue being patched up with appointments made arbitrarily to cover the shortcomings of an administration that does not value its management teams," Asadián states.