Content Warning: This newsletter discusses school leader mental health challenges, workplace mistreatment, and systemic pressures. Please read with care.
It's Friday Reader, and I need to share something with you.
I’ve just read Headrest UK’s 2026 Annual Headteacher Wellbeing Report, and I can’t stop thinking about it.
Headrest is a volunteer-run support line for school leaders in the UK. Staffed entirely by former headteachers. They started in October 2020 thinking they’d respond to a temporary pandemic crisis.
Five years later, they’re still needed.
That alone should tell us something.
Their latest report is blunt. School leader wellbeing, they write, “remains in a state of unacceptable jeopardy.” Leaders are leaving within five years. Experienced heads are taking early retirement driven by what the report calls “exhaustion and fear.”
The statistics are brutal.
Of 1,600 UK school leaders surveyed, 82% experienced abuse from parents in the past year. Nearly half suffered online harassment. Ten percent experienced physical violence.
Four percent were spat on.
But here’s what really got me:
The report describes something called “moral injury.” It’s the deep psychological harm caused not by what leaders do, but by what the system prevents them from doing.
Leaders often know exactly what a child with special needs requires. But they can’t deliver it because budgets won’t stretch. They’re forced into impossible choices that conflict directly with the values that brought them into education.
You know this feeling. I know you do.
Because whilst Headrest’s data comes from the UK, this crisis crosses borders.
I speak with international school leaders every week facing remarkably similar pressures. Budget constraints that make adequate support impossible. And group-level inspection systems that create more anxiety than improvement.
The small school leaders have it particularly tough.
For the head they are often the safeguarding lead. The SEND coordinator. The timetabler. Often a classroom teacher as well. One family’s circumstances can radically shift your school’s outcomes and inspection judgements.
The report notes that many small school heads work “at, or beyond capacity, simply to maintain compliance with statutory duties.”
There’s little capacity left for actual strategic leadership.
Or rest.
I found this most telling: “Headrest began as a temporary response to an emergency. It has become, instead, a needed constant.”
That’s the problem.
We’ve normalised the crisis.
We’ve accepted that leading schools means working yourself to exhaustion. That being intimidated is just part of the job. That feeling like you’re failing children because the system is underfunded is something you should just cope with better.
This isn’t acceptable.
Fixing this needs people to act. Policymakers who understand that writing standards without providing resources is cruelty dressed up as accountability. Governing bodies and group leadership who protect their heads rather than scapegoating them. Parents and communities who remember that school leaders are humans. Legal protections against harassment. Properly funded support systems.
And all of us need to stop pretending this is fine.
If you’re reading this and recognising yourself in these descriptions, you’re not alone.
The isolation of school leadership makes it feel like you’re the only one struggling. You’re not. The system is broken, and that’s not your fault.
I know many of you are carrying weight you don’t talk about.
Please reach out to someone. Whether that’s a trusted colleague, a professional support service, or just hitting reply to this email to let me know you’re not okay.
You matter. Your wellbeing matters.
Take care of yourself this weekend.
Shane
P.S. If you’re in the UK and need support, Headrest’s free confidential helpline is at HeadrestUK.co.uk. For those outside the UK, please reach out to whatever support systems are available. And if you don’t have any, that’s exactly the problem we need to fix.