A matter of principals: ‘No improvement’ in the challenges facing school leaders

A newly-released Victorian Auditor-General’s report has revealed “the department is not effectively protecting the health and wellbeing of its school principals”. It found “numerous strategies and initiatives to address” the challenges facing principals “have not improved principals' health and wellbeing”.

This finding comes as no surprise to principals who have been experiencing intensified working conditions for years. It will come as no surprise to researchers who have been issuing clarion calls about the occupational health and safety issues faced by principals as they deal with greater accountability demands and community pressures to do more with less.

The longitudinal results from the Australian Principal Occupational Health, Safety and Wellbeing Survey reveal the human costs of such pressures – 50% of Australian school leaders are at risk of experiencing severe mental health conditions, with Australia facing a critical occupational crisis concerning the health and wellbeing of school leaders.

For principals working in impoverished communities, the pressures are even greater.

Highlighting principals’ workload

The current COVID environment has intensified pressures on principals. With an acute teacher shortage, heightened levels of mental illness in students, and physical violence between students at a five-year high, the work of principals is arguably more difficult than ever.

The Auditor-General’s report and the government/policy responses highlighted the workload of principals – 55 hours per week of mostly administration, management, and compliance tasks.

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Although the strategies to support principal health and wellbeing have made some inroads, most specifically on the provision of resources and raising awareness of these issues, there have been no discernible impacts on outcomes for principals.

The report notes the department “needs to better monitor, evaluate, and report on those outcomes. It will then better-understand principals’ health and wellbeing, and whether its initiatives are leading to desired outcomes.”

A change in focus

A new Australian Research Council study of principals’ emotional labour is addressing this gap in understanding. It argues that there needs to be a change in focus.

Research needs to address not only the impact of excessive workload in terms of long hours (crucial though that is), but the increased emotional intensity of this work. That is, it’s the emotionally-draining nature of the work, the “hard” hours where principals are dealing with more and more demanding, emotionally-intense situations as they support troubled staff, students, and parents.

The ratcheting up in the emotional intensity of principals’ work has been a more “invisible” element of principals’ work – not easily quantified or measured.

But it can play a significant role in increasing the stressors that impact their health and wellbeing.

Principals can tell their stories

A new survey of these emotional demands led by researchers at Monash University is exploring the intensified emotional demands placed on government school principals across Australia.

It provides a chance for principals in public schools to tell their stories about how these demands are impacting the nature of their work. It will provide new understandings of the changing nature of the principals’ role when it comes to these emotional demands.

In addition, it will give the public a glimpse into the nature and complexity of this work through a publicly-available website that curates, in de-identified form, some of the principals’ stories.

The aim of these testimonies is to make more visible the new emotional intensities of principals’ work.

It’s only through such efforts to expose and examine the “root causes of poor principal health and wellbeing” that changes might be possible and the dire situations in our schools be addressed. This is what the Victorian Auditor-General report, as well as Victoria’s principals, are hoping for.