NEW headteachers in Wiltshire are to be offered help and support by 'buddies' under a fresh scheme.

The initiative has come from the Wiltshire Association of Secondary and Special Schools Headteachers.

The WASSH's new chairman, Martin Watson, said the buddy scheme is designed to complement the local education authority's mentoring scheme for new headteachers.

"It's early days for our buddy system," he said. "It is informal and will involve new headteachers being linked to another headteacher who they can turn to for advice or support.

"We are setting this up because there is a feeling that the pressure on heads is getting greater and greater and that it can be a very lonely job, as the head of any organisation can be.

"There are times when heads need the help and support of their colleagues which they can't perhaps get in their own school or through the local education authority.

"Instead, their 'buddy' will be able to help because they will have been in the same situation and they can talk it through with them."

Mr Watson, who has been headteacher of Lavington School near Devizes for the last five years, said it was hoped that eventually the buddy system would include other headteachers, not purely newly appointed ones.

Mr Watson also highlighted other issues currently being considered by WASSH, which has monthly meetings for secondary and special school teachers and discussions with the local education authority, the Department for Education and Skills and the Learning and Skills Council.

Another concern that headteachers have raised is the appropriateness of some special needs pupils being placed in mainstream schools.

Mr Watson said: "The majority of pupils with learning difficulties should be in a mainstream school and mixing with other pupils.

"But some children have quite complex learning difficulties and special needs and while most, if not all, mainstream schools teach them pretty well we need to look again to see if there are children coming into mainstream schools that would be better served in special schools.

"I and my colleagues have noticed that the complexity and severity of pupils coming into mainstream schools has increased.

"We have to ask ourselves if it is appropriate for a pupil who joins a secondary school and struggles to do what they have tried to do in an infants' school."

WASSH is also concerned about stress levels for all teachers.

Mr Watson, who has been a teacher for 25 years, said: "Stress levels have become too great and that has led to less teachers joining the profession or more teachers leaving soon after joining."

He added that it was caused by a wide range of factors. "Behaviour of children in the classroom due to marriage break-ups can lead to increased stress for teachers as can frequent changes to the curriculum which increases teachers' workloads," he said.

"No-one wants a system where nothing changes year on year but when many different aspects to the education system change each year it is very hard to cope."

Mr Watson is also waiting to see what changes the Government is going to make to the funding formula.

Wiltshire County Council is one of the lowest funded local education authorities and Mr Watson fears that the county will not benefit as much as campaigners hope for.

He said: "Recruitment of staff is even harder in London and the South East and to improve Wiltshire's funding might mean taking funding from the South East which will not go down well."

But he added: "Despite the pressures and the concern about funding the teachers and schools in Wiltshire are doing a better and better job, year on year.

"The results in Wiltshire are among the best in the country."