Managing the drama: the headteacher's work in an urban primary school

Previous studies of the work of primary school headteachers tend to adopt a fairly superficial approach to categorizing tasks and contacts. As part of an ethnographic study of teachers’ work in an inner city primary school, I ‘shadowed’ the headteacher for three one-week blocks plus four interviews and numerous informal talks. Life at this school was intense and often dramatic, I develop an approach which suggests the headteacher's work contains ‘routines’,‘events’ and ‘stories’ and give examples of each. Some ‘stories’ develop into ‘sagas’ or ‘social dramas’ and two instances are described, I examine how this headteacher not only copes with, but enjoys, what appears to be an increasingly stressful job.