NZEI Te Riu Roa launches campaign to improve support for school leaders

The government needs to urgently address the critical shortfall in support for the country’s primary school leaders or their health and wellbeing will continue to decline at an alarming rate, NZEI Te Riu Roa President Liam Rutherford has said.

The country’s largest education union has just launched its Te Ao Kei Tua campaign seeking to increase the number of teachers, administration and specialist support staff working alongside principals to ensure they continue to provide the best possible environment for our tamariki to learn and flourish.

The long-standing concerns that underlie Te Ao Kei Tua have only been reinforced by the recently completed annual Deakin University survey and an ERO report last December that shows a continuing decline of wellbeing and health amongst our primary school leaders because they do not have the support they require.

“Principals are required to do more and more while working at a much faster pace, which is leading to their job satisfaction diminishing and their health being affected,” Mr Rutherford said. “The fact that principals feel their wellbeing and health is continuing to decline is not good for themselves, their whanau, teachers or for our tamariki.

“Coupled with all of the stress of the continually changing nature of the pandemic and having to deal with the emergence of Omicron it’s no wonder they’re experiencing added pressure.”

The Deakin survey shows that principals believe their own health is only moderate, rating it on average at 62 (out of 100), nine points lower than the general population.

It also shows that stress stemming from the quantity of work has increased over the last five years, while almost 75 percent are working more than 55 hours per week. About 16 percent work more than 60 hours.

NZEI Te Riu Roa past president Lynda Stuart, who is the principal at May Road School in Auckland, said it was not unheard of for principals to be painting fences, making repairs to equipment and buildings, outfitting classrooms, managing numerous construction projects at any one time, cleaning toilets, and even occasionally driving the school bus.

“There is no typical day for a principal,” she said, adding they also spend time doing administration, coaching sports teams, mentoring other principals and teachers as well as being active and highly respected members of their wider communities.