Headteacher Work-Life Balance is Not About Working Fewer Hours, It is About Leading Sustainably
Claudia Cubbage is known for her work in leadership and career development, particularly within education. She is the founder of RenewEd Ltd and is currently developing the RenewEd book series, drawing on over 25 years of school leadership experience.
A safeguarding concern needs an immediate decision. A staffing absence has left an important part of the day uncovered. Papers for governors are due, and a family commitment cannot simply be moved again. This is not necessarily a sign of poor organisation. It is the reality of headship: several legitimate claims can coexist at the same time, and each can seem to need the leader now.
Conventional ideas about work-life balance offer little help in this moment. The image of two evenly weighted sides suggests that the answer lies in dividing time more fairly or keeping work within fixed boundaries. For many headteachers, that picture feels so far removed from the role that the very idea of balance can begin to sound unrealistic.
Education Support’s Teacher Wellbeing Index 2025 found that 86% of senior leaders feel stressed, while 81% say they have too much to do and not enough time. The figures reinforce the point that headteacher work-life balance cannot be treated as a private scheduling problem.
But balance in school leadership was never going to mean equal hours, a quiet diary or reduced commitment. It means retaining the judgement to decide what this moment genuinely requires, without allowing its demands to become the permanent shape of leadership.
Some imbalance is part of leadership
There are periods when work must expand. A serious safeguarding matter, an inspection, a staffing crisis or a difficult budget decision may rightly command more time and attention than anything else. Sustainable leadership does not require a headteacher to hold back when the school needs more from them.
The important distinction is between a conscious response to exceptional pressure and an unexamined pattern of permanent overextension.
Temporary intensity has a purpose. The leader knows why it is necessary, what has been displaced, and when they intend to return to it. Permanent overextension is different. Everything continues to feel exceptional. Strategic work is repeatedly postponed, personal commitments become permanently negotiable, and the leader absorbs more because there is no time to reconsider who should carry it.
The number of hours worked may look similar from the outside. The leadership reality is not. In one, the headteacher is making a deliberate trade-off. In the other, pressure has begun making the decisions.
Balance is a judgement, not a timetable
In “Why Sustainable Schools Depend on Sustained Headteachers,” I argued that sustainable schools depend on headteachers who can sustain their own thinking, energy and perspective. The Headteacher Compass develops that argument through four interconnected dimensions: Balance, Clarity, Impact and Renewal. Balance is the first, but also one of the most easily misunderstood.
Within the Compass, Balance means equilibrium: the capacity to adjust as circumstances change and return deliberately to a sustainable centre, rather than a fixed state.
This makes the most useful questions different from the familiar question of whether a leader is working too many hours. Hours matter, particularly when excessive working becomes chronic, but they do not tell the whole story. A fuller test is whether attention remains proportionate. Can the leader still think beyond the immediate issue? Are they choosing where to intervene, or reacting to the next demand that arrives? Has one period of pressure displaced every other part of the role and life around it?
Consider a secondary headteacher dealing with a serious staffing issue during the same week as an important curriculum review. Giving both matters equal attention would not be balanced. The staffing issue needs more of her now. She postpones the review rather than quietly abandoning it, asks the appropriate senior leader to continue the preparation, and sets a date for her return to the strategic discussion.
Her attention has not been evenly divided. It has been consciously moved and then restored. That is balance in practice.
When intensity becomes the culture
A headteacher’s way of responding to pressure does not remain personal for long. It becomes an organisational signal.
When the head is always available, answers every question and responds immediately to every escalation, staff may interpret this as commitment. Over time, however, the school can learn something less helpful: difficult decisions should travel upwards, urgency secures attention and progress depends on the headteacher being involved.
The consequences spread. Senior leaders wait for permission instead of exercising judgement. Staff mirror the expectation of constant availability. Strategic conversations become shorter because operational issues always appear more pressing. What began as one leader’s attempt to protect the school can make the school increasingly dependent on that leader’s overextension.
Calm boundaries send a different message. They show that an issue can matter without becoming everybody’s emergency, that leaders are trusted to use their authority and that thoughtful decisions are valued more than immediate ones. Boundaries cannot remove structural workload, financial constraints or accountability pressure. They can prevent those pressures from dictating every organisational habit.
This organisational effect is why the wider Brainz discussion of balance and boundaries matters: a leader’s boundaries shape the expectations and decision-making habits around them.
Accountability does not require personal ownership of everything
One of the hardest tensions in headship is that accountability remains with the headteacher even when others must carry the work. It is easy for accountability to become personal ownership of every action, emotion and decision.
Yet being responsible for the quality of safeguarding, attendance, curriculum or staff development does not mean personally resolving every issue within those areas. Sustainable leadership requires the headteacher to know where their involvement adds unique value, where another leader needs clear authority and where support should strengthen someone else’s judgement rather than replace it.
This is not a withdrawal, and it is not delegation as a way to avoid difficult work. The headteacher still establishes expectations, checks quality and intervenes when necessary. The difference is that responsibility is held without absorbing everything the organisation needs to do.
In my own headship, and now through my work as a headteacher coach and school leadership coach at RenewEd Ltd, I often support headteachers who are carrying too much personally, losing time for strategic thinking or struggling to balance competing demands. Coaching does not make the role undemanding. It provides a confidential space to separate genuine accountability from unnecessary personal ownership, clarify priorities and make decisions that protect both leadership effectiveness and wellbeing.
A practical reset
Balance does not need another productivity checklist. It needs a regular return to three questions:
What genuinely needs more of me now?
What has this period displaced?
What must I deliberately restore when the immediate pressure passes?
The first question permits intensity where it is justified. The second makes its cost visible. The third prevents a temporary response from becoming the leader’s permanent operating model.
Restoration might mean returning to a strategic priority, handing authority back to a colleague, rebuilding thinking time, or becoming properly present outside work again. The answer will change with the circumstances. The discipline lies in making the return intentional.
Leading sustainably
Balance is not achieved by making headship smaller, caring less or lowering expectations. Nor is it evidence that a leader has finally organised every competing demand into a manageable week.
It is maintained through continual adjustment. Sustainable leaders can lean into pressure when the moment requires it, while remaining alert to what that pressure is displacing. They know that exceptional effort may sometimes be necessary, but permanent overextension is not a credible leadership strategy.
Balance is not the absence of pressure. It is the ability to give pressure its proper place, then return deliberately to the wider work and life that leadership must not permanently displace.
That return also protects clarity. When leaders no longer treat every demand as equally important, they are better able to decide what genuinely deserves their attention and what the school needs from them next.
If you’d like to explore Balance alongside the rest of the framework, it’s set out in full in my book, RenewEd Leadership: How Coaching Transforms Headteachers and Schools.
If you are a headteacher struggling to find balance, book a confidential coaching conversation with RenewEd Ltd. Visit here to find out more.
Read more from Claudia Cubbage
Claudia Cubbage, Headteacher and Career Change Coach
Claudia Cubbage is a UK-based career change coach and headteacher coach specializing in sustainable leadership and purposeful transitions. After a decade as a headteacher and 30 years in education, including 25 years in senior leadership roles, she brings deep, practical insight into the realities of leadership. She supports headteachers and school leaders to lead effectively while balancing the demands of complex roles, alongside professionals from outside education navigating career change. She is the founder of RenewEd Ltd and the creator of the Compass framework, which underpins RenewEd Leadership coaching. Her work focuses on helping people lead and work in ways that are sustainable, values-led, and confidence-building.
