Sir, – This week Carl O’Brien drew our attention to the thousands of children left with unqualified teachers amid the current staffing crisis in primary schools (“Thousands of children left with unqualified teachers amid staffing ‘crisis’”, News, October 21st) and highlighted the ongoing plight of the teacher supply crisis in post-primary schools (“Teacher supply crisis: ‘There are times when we’ve had no applications for vacant positions’”, Education, October 21st).
Yet, in the recent education budget, the crisis in teacher retention and recruitment was completely and inexplicably ignored by the Minister for Education.
The situation will in fact be exacerbated by the required release of 768 teachers from the classroom to train to be the new special education teachers which has been provided for in the education budget.
Some measures in the budget may have merit, such as the expansion of the free books scheme, but initiatives like this, combined with the ongoing requirements of curricular reform and the relentless demands of Department of Education policies and directives, place a huge additional administrative burden on schools and school leaders.
One of the Minister’s greatest failures in the budget was that she refused to recognise the urgent need for increased supports for school leadership. There was no provision for reducing administrative workloads, no new funding for additional deputy principals and no specific measures to address the growing strain on school leaders who are struggling to manage under-resourced systems.
Earlier this year, in an Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) study on voluntary secondary schools, school leaders highlighted the considerable demands being placed on them across the multiplicity of roles they play – administrative, financial, human resources, industrial relations, infrastructural and the need for greater administrative and leadership supports.
The joint pre-budget submission this year from the three post-primary management bodies established a definitive case for school leadership capacity enhancement. Enhancing deputy principal allocation is a key enabling measure for this.
Yet the Minister is ignoring this issue and no additional support at all has been provided for school leaders, despite the looming crisis in the sustainability of the current school leadership model and in spite of the number of authoritative reports currently stacking up on her desk starkly illustrating this.
The most recent of these reports is the longitudinal study, Irish Post-Primary School Leaders’ Health and Wellbeing: A Three-Year National Study. This found that school leaders are facing high levels of stress and burnout.
The study collected data from over 600 school leaders between 2022 and 2024 and gives an alarming insight into the pressures faced by principals and deputy principals.
Disturbingly, the report illustrates the scale of workplace violence in schools, including bullying and threats facing principals and deputies.
Female school leaders are particularly affected, with reported cases of physical and cyberbullying showing marked increases over the past three years.
The report showed that 38 per cent of female respondents faced bullying, 17 per cent faced cyber bullying, 18 per cent had experienced threats of violence, and 15 per cent reported actual physical violence, double the rate of physical violence of 7 per cent faced by male principals. These are shocking statistics and the lack of comment from various quarters is even more outrageous and a disgrace.
Nearly 45 per cent of school leaders reported experiencing high to severe levels of burnout, while stress levels were higher than those of the general workforce.
The results of this report and others are appalling but are not new to nor contested by the Minister.
Instead, she and her department have adopted a “head in the sand” mentality regarding the issue.
What is even more baffling is how she thinks she is going to get the big-ticket items like senior cycle reform across the line without strong, sustainable and supported school leadership. The education system relies heavily on school leaders to implement change and mandated reform, at both school and system levels.
Many school leaders currently feel abandoned or at sea, with little or no serious representation.
The management bodies are clear that their brief is to promote and represent their schools and in particular to assist the boards of management of their schools in carrying out their duties.
The teacher unions are conflicted. Many principals and deputies are members of the teacher unions yet feel unrepresented by them.
Who could blame them? It is a daft scenario to think that teachers and school managers can be part of the same union and yet that there would be no conflicts of interest. Maybe it is time for robust representation of Principals and Deputies on the Unions Standing Committees.
The National Association of Principals and Deputy Principals (NAPD), while doing a lot of good work, are nevertheless partially funded by the Department of Education and can’t be seen to be too critical.
Therefore, they inevitably have to make do with a few crumbs thrown from the table.
School leadership is a critical part of the investment formula for our schools yet has been neglected for many years. The recent budget was a huge missed opportunity to address this. A crisis is looming.
It is time for a number of agencies to step up to the plate. – Yours, etc,
JOHN McHUGH,
Principal,
Ardscoil Rís,
Dublin 9.