Latest news

A confronting headline appeared in the Advertiser newspaper on 27 February with an equally confronting article: ‘Repeated Attacks on SA principals prompt call for Parliamentary enquiry’.

According to the latest Australian Principal Occupational Health, Safety and Wellbeing Survey, which is in its ninth year, 45 per cent of principals experienced threats of violence during 2018, while 37 per cent were subjected to acts of physical violence. Students and parents were the most common perpetrators.

The survey, conducted by the Australian Catholic University and involving more than 2300 principals and deputy principals in public and private schools across all jurisdictions, has revealed a considerable increase in the number of principals dealing with offensive behaviour since data collection began in 2011.

Government primary schools reported the highest prevalence of violent threats at 49 per cent, while 40 per cent of female principals, compared with 32 per cent of males, experienced violence.

Physical violence prevalence has risen from ~27% in 2011 to ~37% in 2018; 1 in 3 principals (now 9.3 times the rate of the general population, up from 7 times in 2011).The highest prevalence is in Government primary schools (42%; 10.5 times the population rate). Women are most at risk with 40% experiencing violence compared to 32% for men.

One state school principal reported that he had been assaulted at least forty times by parents and students and felt totally unsupported by the Education Department and the police. His mental health was suffering but in accessing the Department’s Wellbeing and Policy Procedures he felt he was then victimised because he had declared a mental health issue. He feels that a number of significant social issues are contributing to this situation: unemployment, drugs, dysfunctional families and domestic violence, compounded by the fact that there are few real consequences for treating school leaders in this way despite assaulting a teacher being an offence.

Violence while it is a significant problem was only part of the survey. Other issues such as long working hours were also identified as a major problem for school leaders where the majority of the respondents reported to be working in excess of 60 hours per week. Research data shows that this has a negative impact wellbeing.

• Working more than 10 hours a day led to a 60% increased risk of cardiovascular disease
• 10% of those working 50–60 hours a week report relationship problems, and 30% for those working more than 60 hours.
• Working more than 40 hours per week is associated with
  • Increased alcohol and tobacco consumption
  • Unhealthy weight gain in men
  • Depression in women
  • higher injury hazard rate

The survey also found that principals experience high levels of job demands (1.5 times the general population) emotional demands (1.7 times) and emotional labour (1.7 times) being the highest demands when compared to the general population. This is correlated with higher levels of burnout (1.6 times higher), stress symptoms (1.7 times higher), difficulty sleeping (2.2 times higher), cognitive stress (1.5 times higher), somatic symptoms (1.3 times higher), and, depressive symptoms (1.3 times higher).

The report has a number of recommendations for dealing with these issues but at the national level it notes:

De-politicising education at the macro-and micro-political levels to promote equity, continuity and transparency. For example, the politicisation of the Gonski report, universally agreed by educators to provide a sensible and equitable way forward in education, should have set the conditions for a decade of educational development. Instead, it is suffering the fate of many educationally sensible reforms in Australia and its potential is being diminished. This becomes demotivating to educators. It is an example of the ‘moral harassment’ suffered by educators.

Australian education needs a change of mindset: moving beyond sectorised thinking. The problems and the solutions are very similar in all sectors so the differences between the sectors are more superficial than substantive. The variation in social capital inside schools demonstrates that simple resourcing, while important, is not going to fix intractable issues. A change of mindset is also needed. https://www.principalhealth.org/au/2018_AU_Final_Report.pdf

Importantly, these issues are not only experienced by our school leaders. The problems of violence at the hands of parents and students and crushing workloads affect all staff in our schools. Addressing workload is an ongoing struggle that the IEU is consistently trying to address for members through Enterprise Bargaining but the result of physical or emotional assaults on staff sadly, often present as a Workcover claim by the affected individual.

If you have a story that you are willing to share about your experiences in this regard email equiries@ieusa.org.au or call your organiser at the IEU office.