Recently my interest was piqued in the wake of the Auckland floods and Cyclone Gabrielle, when Prime Minister Chris Hipkins reportedly said, “I was looking out the window for a plague of locusts.”
His comment strikes a chord with principals who have been leading schools through the past three years of extraordinary change.
Leading in a time and crisis and challenge takes a toll.
The burden of responsibility experienced by school leaders is significant. These are leaders who are responding to the build-back from Covid-19 with typical grit.
Schooling has always been a litmus test for broader societal health, and the metrics from the 2021 General Social Survey showed that New Zealanders’ overall mental well-being has declined since 2018. The data showed a significant increase in the proportion of people with poor mental well-being, increasing from 22% in 2018 to 28% in 2021.
Principals lack systemic peer support
Principals will not easily self-identify as a group under pressure, but they are not immune. The isolation principals experience within our atomised schooling system means that undue pressure is experienced in the workplace, and they have little systemic peer support.
Big system changes to better support principals will take time.
The rejection of Bali Haque’s Tomorrow’s Schools Review proposal to develop an Education Service Agency (ESA) to employ principals and act as a middle entity between the Ministry of Education and Boards of Trustees, was an opportunity missed. Our schooling system would be better served by greater coherence and less unnecessary duplication. The ESA proposal had the potential to be an effective employer of principals and a powerful advocate for the conditions of schooling necessary to ensure principals are well-supported and adequately resourced to meet students’ needs.
However, the sector dismissed the ESA proposal, and it was ultimately not supported by Chris Hipkins as Education Minister in his final Ministerial Recommendations of Tomorrow’s Schools Review.
Consequently, each principal continues to bear responsibility for their own well-being and their own professional learning. The recent New Zealand Educational Institute’s announcement signalling primary and school principals’ votes not to undertake additional school activities from 24 April 2023 until Friday 30 June is a clear sign that change is paramount.
Our national system of education has no planned systemic structure to grow, develop, and nurture school leaders. Principals continue to be served by a pick-n-mix marketplace. The power of the consumer to choose from a wide range of offerings usurps the establishment of a determined curriculum of training and development reflecting a powerful Aotearoa New Zealand-centric vision for leadership.
With the provision of well-being funds ring-fenced in several of the newly settled Principal Collective Agreements, we finally see the government recognising the need to support principals’ well-being.
However, there is no substitute for every principal to activate their own personal well-being curriculum.
Personal well-being strategies and rituals
I have always been a glass-half-full person. I believe implicitly in the essential beauty of life and the joy of living well. I tend to have a realistic perspective on the things that cause stress, such as work. However, I am not immune to the impact of a busy life and lately, the impact of ill health on people I know and love.
There are many ways to respond to such stress.
Taking notice of the world around is one of the Mental Health Foundations’ 5 Ways to Well-being. Whether experiencing stress or not, I tend to take notice and celebrate small things that I can savour and that bring me joy, a natural antidote to stress. It could be enjoying a simple cup of coffee, a short walk in the sun, a piece of music that triggers a positive memory, or my favourite mental health strategy, walking.
I walk every day, around 4-5kms. This usually takes me 45min and usually in the early morning. It is an investment that pays dividends. Not only am I the fittest I have been for ages, but the real benefit of clearing my mind and focusing on being present in the world helps me start my day with calmness and clarity of purpose.
Every principal has the capacity to work up well-being strategies that are personal to the individual. I encourage you to avoid overcomplicating well-being and identify the little daily acts that you can build into rituals that will give your mind and body the space to reenergise as you go about your work. The power to positively impact well-being lies in the hands of principals themselves.
We’re building systemic support
This year Tui Tuia | Learning Circle will launch a National Centre for Educational Leadership, a coherent systemic structure to grow, develop, and nurture school leaders including their well-being. The broader challenge of building powerful professional learning for principals that is rigorous and defensible now presents as an opportunity.
Principals must be better connected to each other and be better supported. There is no more important next step than resolving the professional isolation of principals.
