We all know too many classrooms across the country are without teachers. But imagine the impact on schools and student outcomes if hundreds of principals walk out the door? It's not an unlikely scenario based on the latest Australian Principal Occupational Health, Safety, and Wellbeing Survey report, released today.
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In fact, the new report reveals there's an escalating risk of this happening. This year's report explicitly asked one new question about principals' intention to leave their current job. The result was that a staggering 56 per cent agreed or strongly agreed with the statement.
The reason this question had not been asked previously is the project's intention is to support principals to remain and thrive in their work, not leave it. We saw this issue emerge a couple of years back when 19 participants volunteered this information through open-ended comments at the end of the survey. Then, in 2023, it jumped to 66. It's not a particularly large sample from a survey that regularly gets around 2500 participants each year, but it was enough for us to signal a modest concern.
And once we asked, they spoke, and very loudly.
Let's put some real figures to this to demonstrate why we are so concerned about this finding.
This latest survey saw 2307 school leaders participate, so we could be looking at over 1250 walking out the door. Even if we discount this by more than half, to compensate for some type of participant bias, let's assume we only have 500.
Put bluntly, that's over 5 per cent of the nation's 9629 schools left without a principal, on top of the ongoing challenge it is to have a full complement of teachers.
The situation is compounded by the fact there's not a bustling line-up of replacements for them, either. Despite the best efforts of departments of education and various principal associations across the country running principal preparation courses, there's simply not enough to replace those who are already transitioning into retirement or other non-school employment. The pressure on systems and schools would be acute if these intentions materialise.
And even if we could bring in some new recruits, the loss of experience and wisdom exiting the door is significant. It is long-serving leaders most willing to finish up. This would compound the challenge.
In terms of policy response, it seems there's an assumption principals will just keep turning up and getting on with the job. Other issues getting a look-in, and rightly so, are mental health issues for students and (increasingly) teachers, improving literacy and numeracy, and turning disruption into respectful cultures of learning in classrooms.
Two recent announcements of full funding for government schools in Western Australia and the Northern Territory are cause for hope, and the Improving Outcomes for All report, the Review into a Better and Fairer Education System released late last year, will hopefully see a new national school funding agreement that supports teachers with more curriculum resources to lighten their load, and for schools to better support student mental health needs through providing mental health counsellors.
But policy imperatives like these all require healthy principals to lead their implementation.
They will not be achieved without them. It's perhaps unsurprising an increasing number of them volunteer regular comments such as, "it appears to everyone looking on that everything is fine, but that is at great personal cost to my lifestyle and enjoyment of life".
We would do well to heed the advice of preventative medicine and mental health practitioners: better to put a fence at the top of the cliff than to send more ambulances to the bottom.
The first response must be for the Education Ministers Meeting to place responding to this report immediately on their agenda.
The second response is to revise initiatives under way to include principals as essential contributors to their development and implementation.
The third response is to increase resourcing to speed up initiatives already under way.
Conservative estimates vary, but the cost of replacing a school principal is in the order of $100,000. A $50M price tag to replace the 500 might cause some treasurers to blanch, but the cost to the education of our nation's children is far greater. It's time for more urgent response.
- Dr Paul Kidson is an ACU Australian Principal Occupational Health, Safety, and Wellbeing Survey investigator, senior lecturer in educational leadership and a former school principal.
