Field entry, published 2026-11-03T00:00:00.000Z, updated 2026-11-03T00:00:00.000Z. Group: Teaching and education occupations

How are education managers classified?

Education managers belong among Managers in ISCO-08, in the professional services management area, with an education focus. Their main work is directing, planning, and coordinating an education institution, department, programme, or service, rather than teaching a class, even when the manager has a teaching background and works in a school, college, university, or training organisation.

What work makes a job education management?

Management work in education includes setting direction for an institution or service, planning provision and timetables at whole institution level, recruiting and supervising staff, managing budgets and resources, ensuring compliance with regulations and standards, reporting to governors, owners, or public bodies, and answering for quality and outcomes. A headteacher, principal, college director, dean of a faculty, head of a training centre, and manager of an education service all share that pattern, even though their institutions differ in size and phase. The unifying feature is responsibility for the organisation, not responsibility for one class, one subject, or one cohort. A manager may visit lessons, observe teaching, and shape curriculum policy, but those activities serve the management role when they are done to lead an institution rather than to teach learners directly.

How are managers separated from senior teachers?

Senior teachers and managers often work side by side, and the boundary follows the balance of duties. A head of department who teaches a substantial timetable, plans a subject curriculum, marks work, and coordinates colleagues within that subject remains, in general terms, a teacher with added coordination. A deputy head who teaches only a little, and whose days are filled with whole school planning, staffing, behaviour policy, safeguarding oversight, and external accountability, moves toward management. A headteacher with no regular teaching load sits clearly with managers. The same logic applies in universities, where a dean who mainly leads a faculty, manages budgets, and represents the faculty externally belongs with managers, while a professor who leads a research group and teaches, with administrative duties attached, remains with academic teaching or research roles depending on the dominant work.

What kinds of institution count?

Education management covers a broad institutional range. Primary and secondary schools, special schools, nurseries and early years services, further education colleges, universities, vocational training centres, adult education services, and education departments within larger organisations can all have education managers. A manager of a school district, a regional education office, or a national education programme also fits, because the managed unit is an education service rather than a single classroom. Private training providers, tutoring companies, and education charities count as well when the managed work is education provision. What matters is that the organisation or service being managed exists to provide education or training, and that the manager’s main task is running it, rather than teaching within it or providing a neighbouring service such as catering, transport, or building maintenance for a school.

Role, in general	Main work that points toward management
Headteacher or principal	Whole institution leadership, staffing, budget, accountability
College or university dean	Faculty or school leadership, planning, resources, representation
Head of a training centre	Provision planning, employer liaison, quality, staffing
Education service manager	Programme or district leadership, policy, coordination
Head of department with a full teaching load	Subject teaching first, coordination second, so teaching group

What about a head teacher who still teaches?

Teaching a class does not automatically remove a job from management, and holding a management title does not automatically remove a job from teaching. The test is dominance across the job as a whole. A headteacher who teaches one class a week, to stay close to classroom life, while spending the rest of the week on leadership, remains a manager in classification terms, because teaching is a small strand. A teacher who takes on a temporary acting headship, with a full management load for a term, holds a management job for that period, even if the substantive post is teaching, because ISCO-08 classifies jobs, not careers. A teacher who leads a subject, mentors colleagues, and teaches a full timetable holds a teaching job with leadership elements, because teaching still dominates. Those judgements need a full job description, not a title, and they can change when duties change.

What sits near education managers but apart?

Education advisers, inspectors, curriculum specialists, and policy officers work on education systems without managing an institution, so they generally sit with professional or specialist groups rather than with managers, depending on their main tasks. An inspector who visits schools, judges quality, and reports findings is doing professional assessment work, not running a school. A curriculum specialist who designs programmes and advises teachers is doing specialist teaching related work. A registrar, admissions officer, or examinations administrator in a university provides administrative support to education, and belongs with clerical or professional support groups by task. Keeping those neighbours apart matters for statistics, because counting every senior education worker as a manager would overstate management and hide the professional work that shapes teaching from outside the institution.

Sources checked

1. ILO ISCO-08

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