Supernumerary school managers, here is in which case you lose your job due to restructuring and reorganization of the management

In a few days, in all the regional school offices, there will be discussions on the procedures for assigning assignments, changing assignments and confirming assignments, referring to school managers. In a few cases there will also be a discussion about interregional mobility. Due to the school sizing established in 2023 and which will take place starting from 1 September 2024, there may be cases of supernumerary school managers due to the consequence of the restructuring and reorganization of the management offices.

Phase b of the procedure

The mobility of school managers will be arranged taking into account some procedural phases. Phase a) refers to the confirmation of the positions held at the end of the school director’s three-year period of service in his or her school institution. Therefore, school managers whose contract expires on 31 August 2024 and whose institute has not been subject to sizing should be confirmed for another three-year period (2024/2025, 2025/2026 and 2026/2027). However, phase b) of the mobility of school heads is much discussed, because it is the procedure that would involve school heads who carry out service in schools undergoing restructuring and reorganization of the management office. In this case, if the school managers were to find themselves in the legal condition of supernumeraries, they would go on mobility with the precedence defined in phase b).

Merger by merger

To understand when a school manager ends up in a state of supernumerary status caused by the restructuring and reorganization of the management office, it is necessary to specify what the legal terminology aggregating school and aggregate school means. By aggregating school we mean a school A which includes branches and/or students of one or more abolished and split schools. Therefore the aggregating school will not change its name and the other schools will have to be abolished and split up. Let’s take a practical example in which in the 2023/2024 school year there were three schools, school A, B and C, school C was abolished and split into two parts which we will call D and E, part D was incorporated into A and part E is incorporated into B. School A will continue to be called “A” even if it has incorporated part D of the abolished school C and school B will continue to be called “B” despite having incorporated part E of the abolished school C. In essence, the head teacher of school C will be supernumerary and will participate in phase b) of the mobility of school leaders, while the head teachers of school A and school B could easily be confirmed in phase a) or, if their contract is expiring, make use of the phase c). It is important to underline what is meant by a merger between schools, legally it would be called “merger by amalgamation”. The merger does not involve any school suppression and usually occurs between two schools. Let’s take the example of school A with 700 students which merges school B with 400 students. In essence, a new school called A+B is created using a merger by merger.

In the event of a merger, the school heads of school A and school B will not be supernumerary and will be able to participate in the mobility and, taking into account the priorities of law 104, the new school institution will be assigned to the most qualified of the two school heads of schools A and B. In this case, as there are no supernumeraries, they will not be able to take advantage of the priority of phase b).

By mid-July, schools must have their DS

The applications for the mobility of school leaders will be presented in the next few days and the results, which are particularly complex due to school size, must be public by mid-July.