With school principals at a high risk of burnout and depression as a result of increasing workplace stress, it comes as no surprise that Victorian schools are facing a serious shortage of principals.
According to a new report by Henrietta Cook in The Age, 115 out of 1531 Victorian state school principals exited their jobs in 2018.
But it’s not just workplace stress and demands pushing principals out of the profession.
According to The Age, violence in schools and helicopter parents are increasingly driving principals out of the top job.
One anonymous principal told The Age that he was forced to retire three years earlier than anticipated due to the pressure of dealing with helicopter parents.
“Some believe that they know what is best not only for the child but for the entire school,” he told the publication.
“One of my biggest issues is the way parents have almost unfettered ability to make life difficult for staff and principals.”
The increasing pressures have also had a serious impact on the hiring process in schools, with some job openings for principals reportedly receiving no applications.
Side note – If you’ve ever been tempted to spy on your kids, this episode will scare you off helicopter parenting for good. Post continues below…
It’s not just Victoria facing a shortage of principals however.
Principals all across Australia are struggling to deal with the increasing pressures of the role.
In 2017, a survey found that one in five school principals is overwhelmed by workplace stress.
The Principal Health and Wellbeing Survey found that almost half of the respondents faced threats of violence in the workplace.
Out of 2,800 principals, deputies and assistant principals across Australia, one in three respondents had also faced actual violence at work.
The survey also found that more than 50 per cent of all principals are working more than 56 hours a week while 27 per cent are working up to 65 hours.
The research also showed that principals are experiencing workplace demands 1.5 times higher than the general population, making them more susceptible to higher levels of burnout, depression and difficulty sleeping.
Top Comments
Once again, it is not just the teaching profession experiencing high rates of burnout. ALL professions are currently experiencing increased hours, unpaid overtime, constant restructures, redundancy, workplace bullying, burnout and stress. Teaching is not unique, except in the amount of leave staff get to recover from this. I wonder where vacating teaching staff are going to, when the rest of the workforce have it much worse than them.
Blaming helicopter parents is also unfair. More than ever, teachers are placing increasing demands on parents to participate/contribute to/attend school activities and events, many of which parents don't want. Parents want their children to be able to read, spell and string sentences together, know their times-tables and how to measure and work out percentages, what a mammal is, what geographical region of the world Australia sits within, all about our first peoples and Aboriginal culture, etc. etc. etc. Is it Principals or teachers or the education department who are constantly adding and adding extra events to the curriculum, which depend on now mostly-working mothers or working fathers to assist with or pay for?
Schools bang on and on about wanting kids to be resilient yet they continuously draw parents more and more IN to school life, rather than let their kids navigate this world for themselves separately to parental input. School reports may be now taking longer for teachers yet they say lots of nothing. A few sentences about my child and where they are at, like it used to be, would be so much more useful to parents than whole generic paragraphs of teacher-speak that leave parents with no choice but to make time to meet with or talk to teachers to find out where their child is actually at, taking up teacher time.
Parents are constantly forced to speak to teachers about social issues because schools continuously separate kids from their friends in the name of resilience. This just de-stabilises kids rather than builds resilience, puts them under pressure and causes discord and bullying. Resilience can be building on their strengths, which are friendships. Would teachers cope with an entirely new staff room of staff each year, forcing them to start again each year in forging new professional and peer-support relationships? Adults would struggle with this so we shouldn't do it repeatedly to our kids.
Why has so much about education, that used to work perfectly well (individualised school reports, chanting times tables, putting kids with at least one friend in class for example) gone? Whose idea was this because I'm sure it isn't what parents want.