Principals are forced to neglect priority work

‘The 2-in-1 role of Teacher and School Leader has become a health and safety hazard and there is ample evidence to show that the sense of guilt, anxiety and stress is damaging to the physical and mental health of the Principal’. This is the alarming message conveyed by the National Director of the Irish Primary Principals’ Network (IPPN), Mr Seán Cottrell, to almost 1,000 Primary Principals at the IPPN annual conference in Citywest Convention Centre today, Friday January 29th.

Principals, particularly Teaching Principals, don’t get time to study the hundreds of Department circulars and reams of policy guidelines that are regularly dispatched to schools because their time is consumed by fundraising, scavenging for scarce resources and attending unnecessary meetings. As a consequence, some areas of high priority work may be neglected which adversely impacts on children’s learning. The IPPN Director advised Principals to focus on the ‘must do’ tasks and delegate or discard the non priority ones.’ Learning to say no is a special skill many Principals have yet to acquire’ continued Mr Cottrell.

One area identified by the IPPN Director that could potentially reduce workload and stress concerns for Teaching Principals would be to give them the option of taking on the Learning Support/ Resource Teaching role in their schools. Many Principals have built up considerable expertise in the area of Special Education and were the Minister to decide to give this initiative the green light, it would benefit a significant number of children with learning difficulties. Crucially, this would be cost neutral to the Exchequer.

Excerpt from Seán Cottrell speech
Principals’ Workload

At the first Principals’ conference in Cork in 1994, concern was expressed about the excessive workload being handled by school leaders. In the intervening 16 years, swathes of legislation, reams of policy guidelines and hundreds of Department circulars have been dispatched to schools. The reality is many of you don’t get time to study all of these documents. Your time is consumed scavenging for scarce professional supports for children with special needs, fundraising to cover operational costs, coping with a relentless growth in bureaucracy and attending a ridiculous schedule of meetings. That’s if you are lucky enough to avoid a Section 29 or a post of responsibility appeal. You are Superman or Wonderwoman and you are expected to be and do all things for all people. Additional responsibilities are continuously added to the leadership role of Principal without any realistic means to delegate tasks to In-school Management or Board of Management. Because of this, other important matters may be neglected. A major concern now arises from the recent union work-to-rule directive. This directive unfairly places Principals in an invidious position where we are torn between our leadership responsibility to deliver a service that parents and children are entitled to and a directive that will inevitably reduce the quality of that service. I thought Principals were members of that same union? Each year when IPPN presents at the LDS Misneach programme for newly-appointed Principals, we speak about defining your role as Principal in the context of your school. We examine the five defined groups of people with whom you interact, and within each group, we focus on those things the Principal must do, those things the Principal should delegate and the many things that should be discarded. Most of us are long enough in this game to know that constant change is the reality for Principals. Prioritizing and being able to say no are two special skills that Principals have to acquire.

I firmly believe that unless you have experienced the role of Teaching Principal, you simply cannot appreciate how challenging it is to be the leader of a school community and at the same time, a fulltime class teacher. This 2in1 role has become a health & safety issue. If a risk assessment were to be carried out on the role of a Teaching Principal, I am certain that among others, it would identify one key threat – i.e. the risk to the health and welfare of the Teaching Principal. There is ample evidence to show that the guilt, anxiety and stress, which is par for the course for every Teaching Principal, is damaging to their mental and physical health. This issue will become a key focus of research for IPPN.