Schools PCA matters: principal wellbeing risk
Recent results of the 2022 Australian Principals’ Occupational Health and Wellbeing survey should send a worrying message to governments and school communities. Our principals and school communities are being asked to carry an increasing and unsustainable workload due to insufficient funding and the critical workforce shortages.
The AEU’s Term 1 campaign to bring our principals to parliament to highlight these issues is strongly supported by the survey’s findings. For the first time in years, workforce shortages stand at number three of the main stressors for principals.
The survey involves principals, assistant principals, and deputy principals from every school type, sector, state, and territory. It commenced in 2011 and is the longest-running survey of its type. It is one of the most comprehensive longitudinal data sets of school leader health and wellbeing in the world. Each year since 2011, approximately 2,500 school leaders respond, many returning year after year to complete it; in total, over 7,100 individual school leaders have completed the survey at least once.
Teacher shortages and managing the health and wellbeing of students and staff emerged as greater concerns than previously reported.
Time to redress these concerns is diminishing, as there are signs that the cumulative impact is resulting in an exodus from the profession. The implications of this for education in Australia cannot be understated.
The top two stressors remain quantity of work and lack of time for teaching and learning.
For the first time, teacher shortages are the third highest stress. This is the most notable change to a stressor in the project’s history.
The cumulative impact of increasing workloads, teacher shortages, and supporting the wellbeing of students and teachers, are among the factors that have led to this escalation. The health and wellbeing of leaders is at risk.
Of particular concern is the disparity between sectors. Red flag emails are triggered when school leaders are at risk of self-harm, occupational health problems or serious impact on their quality of life. The emails alert principals to contact employee support services.
Special school principals fared the worst, with 56.3% triggering red flag emails in 2022. Mainstream government school principals closely followed with 51.8% (up from 31% in 2021) compared to 35.3% of their Catholic and 27.7% of independent school counterparts. These results need to be taken seriously and recommendations acted on by the government and the department.
