Workload and the leadership of care: Senior leader time use relating to attendance, behaviour and inclusion

THOMAS PERRY, UNIVERSITY OF WARWICK, UK

Introduction

The Sustainable School Leadership project found that an ‘ethic of education and care’ has become a defining, and increasingly dominant, feature of senior leadership roles (Greany et al., 2026). In case study interviews, senior leaders across England, Scotland and Northern Ireland described complex and extensive work spanning pastoral and inclusive practice, engagement with families and communities, and sustaining staff wellbeing. How much of leaders’ time does care-related work take, and does it fall more heavily on some leaders and contexts than others?

Workload implications

The project’s conceptual framework positions ‘an ethic of education and care’ as one of four dimensions of sustainable leadership, alongside leadership practice, identity and place (Greany et al., 2026). The final report shows how this work spans activity in schools, with families and communities, and in sustaining staff. Here, I focus on the workload implications of care work and how unevenly it is prioritised, demanded and distributed.

Earlier studies of headteacher time focused on the growth of administrative and accountability-related burdens (Earley, 2013; DfES, 2007). Our results confirm that administrative work remains prominent. Compared to earlier studies, though, the Sustainable School Leadership research suggests that care-related work – including attendance, behaviour, SEND, inclusionAn approach where a school aims to ensure that all children are educated together, with support for those who require it to access the full curriculum and contribute to and participate in all aspects of school life, safeguarding and wellbeing – has become more time-consuming and central to how senior roles are understood, practised and sustained. More recent research supports this picture (Lupton, 2023; DfEDepartment for Education - a ministerial department responsible for children’s services and education in England, 2025), alongside broader patterns of work intensification and time poverty (Creagh et al., 2025).

Data and methods

This article draws on the UK Sustainable School Leadership survey, completed by 1,624 school leaders across England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales in winter 2024/25 (Perry et al., 2025). Leaders were asked how much time they spend in a typical week on eight categories, choosing from five time use bands ranging from ‘none’ to ‘over 10 hours’. The categories included ‘student attendance, behaviour and wellbeing (including SEND, inclusion and safeguarding)’, used here as a proxy for ‘care leadership’ – although, in practice, this work straddles several categories.

This article examines how time spent on care-focused leadership varies, and whether it is linked with leader wellbeing. Specifically, I explore how responses vary by school and individual factors, including school phase, governance type, seniority/role, age and sex, before comparing the time use band with leader wellbeing, using a mental wellbeing scale and a single-item measure asking leaders to report whether their experience over the previous 12 months was best described as ‘thriving’, ‘surviving’ or ‘sinking’.

Senior leader time use on care and inclusion-related work

Overview of time use

I begin by situating attendance, behaviour and inclusion-related work within leaders’ overall time use, drawing on the eight-item time use battery reported in Greany et al. (2026, Figure 5.1, p. 103) and Perry et al. (2025, Table 3, p. 16). I then turn to how this varies by role, phase and governance type, and its relationship with wellbeing.

Figure 1 shows that ‘general administration’ dominates leaders’ time, with over 45 per cent spending more than 10 hours a week on it. Attendance, behaviour and inclusion-related work is second, with around 30 per cent of leaders spending 10 or more hours on this weekly and a further 33 per cent 5–10 hours – well ahead of staffing, instructional leadership or external engagement. These results confirm the pattern identified across the wider project: care-related work has become one of the most significant demands on leaders’ time.

Figure 1: Senior leader time spent by leadership activity (n=1,506)

Who spends most time on the leadership of care and inclusion?

Time use on care-related work is also highly variable. The survey received responses from leaders at different career stages and seniorities. Most were headteachers, principals or heads of school (62 per cent), with deputy and assistant heads, middle leaders, executive leaders, business managers and advisers also represented. Table 1 breaks down hours spent on care and inclusion-related work by role. It reveals considerable variation in headteachers’ time use, with sizeable numbers reporting ‘under five hours’ (29.9 per cent), ‘5–10 hours’ (37.5 per cent) and ‘over 10 hours’ (32.6 per cent) spent per week. Executive leaders and those working across schools spend less time in this area, as might be expected given the nature of the work. The pattern for school-based middle and senior leaders is more variable: some spend more than 10 hours – usually alongside heavy teaching loads – and others focus on other areas of leadership.

Table 1: Senior leader time use relating to student attendance, behaviour and wellbeing (inc. SEND and inclusion, safeguarding)

Table 1 also shows time use by phase and school type. Care and inclusion-related work is a larger part of the role for primary leaders than for secondary; even so, while just under half of secondary leaders’ (45.4 per cent) time use is fewer than five hours, most still devote a considerable amount of time to it. Special schools, alternative provision and pupil referral units fall in between (although the small n for this group means that we should be cautious in interpreting this finding).

I also looked at variation by sector in England, comparing academies with local authority (LA)-maintained schools. Restricted to England and headteachers for comparability, and with respondents needing to identify their school, the sample is smaller (n=288) and less certain to be representative. However, the figures suggest that leaders in LA-maintained primary and secondary schools spend less time on care and inclusion-related work. While not robust enough to generalise, this suggests that school structures and contexts do have an influence on how much of this work falls to school leaders.

Turning to individual characteristics, the analysis finds no clear relationship between age and care and inclusion work among headteachers or leaders generally. Breaking the results down by phase to account for the greater proportion of female school leaders in the primary stages, and looking at headteachers only (n=914), large gender differences emerge (see Table 2). At primary level, 41.6 per cent of female headteachers report spending more than 10 hours, compared to 24.4 per cent of male headteachers. At secondary level, the figures are 33.7 per cent and 22.6 per cent, respectively. The smaller number of responses for special schools and alternative provision suggests a similar gender difference here, too.

Table 2: Senior leader time use relating to student attendance, behaviour and wellbeing (inc. SEND and inclusion, safeguarding) (Headteachers only, n=914)

Wellbeing and care and inclusion-related work

The wellbeing–workload relationship is complex; addressing it in depth is beyond this article’s scope. What requires attention is the link between leader wellbeing and time spent on care and inclusion-related work. The survey included the Short Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale (SWEMWBS), a widely recognised and validated measure. The average SWEMWBS score in the UK population is 23.5; for leaders in the UK Sustainable School Leadership survey, it was 22.8 – already below the population average.

The average SWEMWBS score for leaders spending fewer than five hours, 5–10 hours and more than 10 hours on care and inclusion-related work is 23.6, 22.8 and 21.7, respectively. In other words, leaders spending fewer than five hours have wellbeing that is in line with the UK population average; those spending more have markedly lower average. Below this average, 27.8 per cent of leaders spending more than 10 hours have a wellbeing score below 19.5, putting them in the bottom 15 per cent of the UK population (Ng Fat et al., 2017). The corresponding figures for those spending fewer than five hours and 5–10 hours are 15 per cent and 16.5 per cent. Low wellbeing is common among school leaders, but it is at nearly double the rate for those spending more than 10 hours on care and inclusion-related work.

This association is also revealed in our overall evaluative measure of wellbeing, asking leaders whether their experience over the previous 12 months was best characterised as ‘sinking’, ‘surviving’ or ‘thriving’. Among leaders, 36.1 per cent of those spending more than 10 hours, 23.6 per cent of those spending 5–10 hours and 18.4 per cent of those spending fewer than 5 hours reported ‘sinking’ mostly or sometimes. Again, we see around double the rate of low wellbeing between the most and least care-focused groups.

Conclusion and implications

As the Sustainable School Leadership research (Greany et al., 2026) explores in detail, the relationship between the ‘drains’ of the job and wellbeing is complex: difficult, relational and emotional labour often sustains school leaders’ sense of purpose and value. But, as this data suggests, it can come at a personal cost, raising questions about whether people or schools can sustain this level of education and care. During case study visits, we heard how the system and support available to school leaders is often not set up or resourced for care and inclusion-related work. This work is frequently unseen, unrecognised and unsupported. In some cases, it is seen as a distraction from the school’s ‘core’ work. How this work might be better recognised and resourced, and school leadership better sustained, is considered at length in Greany et al. (2026). Options include revising headteacher standards and preparation to reflect care and inclusion work’s centrality; meaningful resourcing, support and supervision; clearer boundary setting with other agencies, including parents and local services; and development of new collaborative models for providing care alongside educational provision.