Does it take a superhuman to be a primary school principal in Aotearoa? Dr Tracey Carlyon & J Clark McPhillips | 22 November 2024 Over twenty years ago it was suggested that in order to cope with the demands of the role, school principals needed to be almost “superhuman”. Unfortunately, this suggestion remains relevant today. While the expectations and workload of primary school principals has been given constant attention in Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia, it seems there has been little change. Our system of self-managing schools requires primary school principals to work dual roles – CEOs of their boards of trustees and leaders of learning in their schools. In order to lead their school in the twenty-first century the Educational Leadership Model (ELM) states that school leaders require knowledge and skills with respect to: systems, partnership and pedagogy. Yet, in reality these expectations continue to put primary school principals under pressure that requires them to work long hours in order to manage the workload, its complexities, and tensions between dual roles. Our Research This blog post presents recent research in which we explored the role of primary school principals. Data was gathered between August-December 2023 from semi-structured in-depth interviews with nine primary school principals from across Aotearoa New Zealand. The principals were diverse in terms of gender, age, ethnicity, time served as a principal, school roll size, and the geographical location of school. We were interested in learning more about how the principals perceived their role and the challenges they were experiencing at the time. From the interviews it was evident that the school principals all enjoyed their role and were passionate about being leaders of learning. They considered it their responsibility to support students’ and staff well-being and to provide an environment where leadership capability could be developed. However, the following challenges, common to all the principals, were repeatedly raised in the interviews: The relentless pace and cost of compliance Inequities in resourcing, funding, and salaries Societal shifts and changing expectations The relentless pace and cost of compliance “You feel like you are always behind the 8-ball…something comes out and you’ve got to implement it … change is coming faster than it did … there’s just so much on your plate now.” While the principals in the study understood the need for regulations, the challenge to meet compliance was exacerbated by a lack of clarity and rationale, unrealistic expectations, and the time involved. One principal described this as “relentless expectations [as]the Ministry of Education that really should be the body to support. But it seems to be working against us.” Another principal drew attention to the “phenomenal amount of paperwork” required to meet health and safety requirements for school camps, which jeopardised such activities from occurring. A further observation, reflective of all the principals, was that “property is a huge barrier. And we’ve got a property manager … that’s a huge part of our board meeting is property, every month, more than talking about learning or anything. It’s property.” The constant communication from the Ministry of Education (MoE) relating to compliance was highlighted by all the principals such as in the following comment: “The emails are just a nightmare. It’s nonstop. And I try to answer all my emails. I can’t. I try to, but I inevitably miss out on something, and I feel bad, but there’s just so many emails coming in, that’s relentless.” Inequities in resourcing, funding, and salaries “Simple things like a principal in a smaller school can get paid significantly less than a DP in a large school.” Inequities raised by a number of principals included some schools having the capacity to draw on international students for additional resourcing. One principal explained that valuable resources, such as support staff, are sometimes difficult to fund and their school “can only really afford four teacher aides. We probably need six.” Another principal commented “It has become a lot harder to access money, especially around children with special needs, or they’re very limited on the ORS funding.” Attention was also drawn to the “huge amount of red tape” required to access funding from the MoE for specific projects and when trying to access support, “there’s no answer … nobody knows within the Ministry.” Societal shifts and changing expectations Shifts in society which impact on principals included the influence of social media and the digital world, working families, poverty, crime, trauma, tragedy, addictions, and the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. One principal explained, “every weekend I’m dealing with family harm, notifications from the police, it’s all those things.” While less attention was given to Covid-19 in the interviews than we had anticipated, it was evident that the school leader’s role grew and changed during this time. “The complexity of [children’s]needs coming into schools these days is much greater than it was.” “We’ve got a whole new generation of kids coming through. We’ve got a whole new generation of parents coming through. There’s still anxiety in the community. There are still kids that don’t come to school every day. COVID families still suffering from issues, people with more anxiety, kids that seem to be more anxious.” Something needs to change It seems little has happened in the twenty years since Upsall identified the superhuman expectations of school principals. Our research highlighted the significant challenges principals continue to face, particularly around balancing the tension between the dual roles of CEO and leader of learning. It is clear something needs to change. Greater attention is required to ensure support for school principals to meet their priorities is adequate, targeted, and timely. In addition, it is critical that initiatives such as Kāhui Ako continue, as they have been shown to offer principals opportunities to develop a collaborative and collegial voice. If you wish to read more about our research please refer to our chapter in Effective Leadership in early childhood services and primary school education in Aotearoa New Zealand
