Work-to-rule directive puts Principals in impossible position

The recent work-to-rule directive places Principals in over 3,500 schools in an impossible situation, states Mr Seán Cottrell, National Director of the Irish Primary Principals’ Network (IPPN) in his keynote address to 1,000 Principals at the annual IPPN conference in Citywest Hotel, Dublin today Friday 29th January.

Principals have onerous legal and statutory responsibilities and are accountable for their duty of care to children.  Some recent work to rule directives could result in principals having to make hard choices between their legal responsibility or care of children and a union 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’, stated Mr Cottrell.

The Director went on to say that additional responsibilities continuously added to the leadership role of the Principal is unsustainable as there is no realistic means to delegate tasks to middle management or Boards of Management. Principals are caught between their legislative responsibilities and their membership of a union which leaves them subject to directives. There is an added complexity for Principals who are also class teachers.

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 and 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 risk -the threat 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.