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Where the boardroom and classroom merge

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Heads with commercial acumen and experience of the education sector are what today's schools need, says Tony Speakman, regional manager of Northern Europe at FileMaker

We're not yet at the stage where pupils can expect to see Lord Brown of BP or M&S' chief executive Stuart Rose, taking assembly but the idea isn't inconceivable (if they would be willing to forsake their six-figure salary, that is).

The report last month from PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) suggested that schools look beyond the classroom for their head teachers – although it made it clear that teachers should remain in charge of teaching and learning. It's hardly surprising, given that the position of head teacher has moved away from hands-on teaching to encompass a variety of roles and skills that wouldn't look out of place in a job spec for a FTSE 100 chief executive.

PwC made reference to the increased need nowadays for heads to have expertise in areas such as finance, human resources, collaboration and project management. Indeed, there's certainly a lot more reporting and data management needed from heads today. It may not have been the government's intention, but the launch of school league tables and assessments such as Key Stage exams have increased the need for people in schools with the skills and experience to manage large volumes of data. If as a head, all you know is what teachers face in classroom and you know nothing about management of information and effective processing of information, then you will inevitably struggle to deal with the new challenges a head faces these days.

In fact, the type of reporting schools are now required to give to the government on their performance and progress is not too far removed from the process of filing annual reports that companies are required to do. Both businesses and schools are required to publish information every year in a consistent and transparent format. The big difference is that most public companies have people in charge who have the skills and experience to process information, not to mention the tools they need to manage and make sense of the data.

Appointing a business leader with this expertise as a head teacher doesn't seem so far-fetched, especially when you consider that schools have been gradually adopting a more commercial outlook, whether it is managing their own budgets or appointing a board of school governors with commercial experience amongst their ranks. When I was a school governor, the head expressly told me that he valued my commercial view on school issues. Lets also not forget the growing numbers of people leaving careers in the commercial sector to train as a teacher, many of which have ambitious plans to become a head of department or head teacher in a short space of time.

At the same time, there are some teachers that would prefer to stay in the classroom and focus on what they do best: teaching and learning. As the PwC report made very clear, the area of teaching and learning should remain with those who are best qualified to implement the National Curriculum and manage classroom behaviour: teachers.

Indeed, some of the potentially best candidates for head teachers may be those with experience of the school environment, although not necessarily from the classroom. Take the example of Kerry Callaghan, who featured in the Times Educational Supplement on February 2. She could be the first non-teacher to run a state school, having achieved her National Professional Qualification for Headship earlier this year and worked in largely administrative roles in schools - most significantly, recently managing a £10m budget at Cowley language college in St Helens.

As she said in the article, "It will be a very brave board of governors that first offers me a job as a head." But this will also be the group that provides checks and balances within schools to ensure that even with a non-teacher at the helm, a school stays focused on what it does best: teaching and learning. This should allay the fears of those who worry a commercially focused leader at the head of a school would have a detrimental impact on the school's reputation and status.

Ultimately, solving the problem of recruiting people to the top job in schools will remain a challenge. But what's clear is that heads today can no longer run a school with knowledge of classroom management alone. It's now time for everyone working in education to acknowledge that modern leaders need to possess a combination of commercial skills and teaching experience if they are to meet the challenge of running a school in the 21st-century.