Many schools are still searching for a permanent head teacher

Workload and stress are two reasons why some schools are having problems in filling the vacancies, one former head teacher said.

Across the East Midlands, 47 schools had to re-advertise for a new head teacher post in the past 12 months.

Lincolnshire had 21 vacancies, followed by Derbys with eight, Leics and Derby with five and Nottingham with four.

There are also four vacancies in the Peterborough area.

In some cases there were no applications at all in the first round.

'Very stressful'

John Illingworth, the former head of Bentinck Primary in Radford who has retired due to stress at work, said: "Head teachers find themselves doing paperwork all the time when they want to be out working with pupils.

"It is very stressful and there is a lot pressure on you and you generally get blamed for anything that goes wrong."

The job of being a head teacher now is very different from what it used to be John Illingworth, former head teacher

Nottinghamshire County Council and Rutland County Council failed to provide figures for the survey.

One former head teacher said 20 years ago it was not unusual to get more than 50 applications for an inner city school.

Two schools in Leicestershire - the Church of England primaries in Witherley and Sheepy Magna - had no applications at all.

Lincolnshire County Council said there were 42 head teacher vacancies in local primary schools in the past 12 months - of which 18 had to be re-advertised.

In the last academic year 26 primary schools in Lincolnshire had acting head teachers, but some of the posts have been filled permanently and there are now 11 vacancies unfilled.

It said this is a national problem and the council is actively finding ways of addressing the issues.

Job sharing

The council is attracting attention amongst education specialists for its work in trying to identify and support potential future heads.

Some schools are also looking at a novel approach where one head may oversee more than one school, or where two heads may job-share.

Leicester is the only education authority in the East Midlands not to have re-advertised a single head teacher vacancy in past 12 months.

Mr Illingworth said: "The job of being a head teacher now is very different from what it used to be - it is just not an attractive job."

Shaun Haggerty, regional officer for the National Association of Head Teachers and a former head teacher, cited pressure from a new Ofsted framework and the on-going debate over testing and league tables as the cause of some of the problems.