The 2015 Australian Principal Occupational Health, Safety and Wellbeing Survey (Survey) has been released and it reveals that more than one-in-three principals surveyed has experienced physical violence whilst at work this year.

The results from this year’s Survey show an overall decrease in the safety and wellbeing of principals, with some states experiencing a significant spike in instances of bullying, violence and burnouts.

The Survey’s key findings

The Survey has been collecting data for five years now, with a report (the Report) published each year. This year’s Report focuses on a number of key areas relating to the overall occupational health, safety and wellbeing of principals and assistant or deputy principals. The following are a collection of the most significant findings:

• the average level of experience of school leaders has dropped during the life of the survey as many principals reach retirement;
• the average number of working hours has increased with 76% of principals working 51-56 hours a week, and 25% working 61-65 hours;
• during school holidays 39% of principals worked upwards of 25 hours a week – a decrease from 2011;
• salaries range from $50,000-$160,000 with a disproportionate number of women in consistently lower paid roles during the last five years of the survey;
• principals experience high levels of emotional demands and emotional labour when compared to the general population and the greatest stress for school leaders in every state is the sheer quantity of work;
• ‘red flag’ responses (thoughts of self-harm and/or lower than the mean quality of life scores) were double the rate of previous years; and
• adult-adult bullying was 4.3 times higher for school leaders when compared to the general population, threats of violence were 5.3 times higher and actual violence 8 times higher than the general population.

From these findings, the Report has warned that the increasing pressures, stress, threats and violence are unsurprisingly taking their toll on the nation’s schools’ leaders and as a result principal turnover is becoming more frequent with positions harder to fill. Without change or action, the Report warns that this trend could hinder the future of our national education system.

A rise in threats and physical violence

More than one-in three principals reported experiencing physical violence in the last year, and the Report revealed that parents were the worst offenders. When it comes to bullying and threats being made against school leaders, parents make up 42% of reported bullies and 41% of threat-makers towards principals.

While states like South Australia and Queensland have seen a decrease in threats of and actual violence, other jurisdictions such as NSW, the Northern Territory, Tasmania and the ACT experienced increases in offensive behaviour including gossip and slander, physical violence, bullying and threats of violence. One of the most concerning figures is that 60% of Tasmanian principals surveyed received violent threats this year, which equates to three-in-five Tasmanian principals. Terry Polglase of the Tasmanian Education Union told ABC Hobart that the figures were worrying and ‘there is a concerning trend, our rate of increase of assaults is the greatest of other states.’

Teachers experience shocking violence

Of course, it is not just principals and other school leaders who experience violent threats and physical attacks. Teachers ‘on the front line’ in states such as Victoria and Tasmania have been reporting not only an increase of violence in schools but also an escalation in violent behaviour.

The Herald Sun recently reported that over 840 attacks or threatened acts of violence against teachers have been recorded by the Victorian Education Department’s incident reporting and hazard management system, eduSafe, in the past three and a half years. The article reports on a number of recent incidents in Victorian schools which have seen teachers, aides, principals, vice-principals and even office and support staff, stabbed, kicked, punched, bitten, scratched, choked and spat on.

Violence in Victorian schools is also said to be escalating in severity with reports of students hitting teachers and staff with a variety of weapons including rocks, bottles, pieces of wood, computers and bats. Of the 840 attacks, 105 educators required medical triage with more than half needing an ambulance, hospital bed or surgery to treat injuries.

Recommendations 

Approximately 40% of all principals in the country have now been surveyed. The Chief Investigator of the survey, Associate Professor Philip Riley from the Australian Catholic University has compiled the past five years of findings to develop seven recommendations in response to trends identified from the data collection. The recommendations focus on:

• Federal and State Governments adopting a whole-government approach to education budgets and to avoid short-term fixes;
• employers reducing job demands or increasing resources to cope with increased work load;
• education associations and key stakeholders collaborating to inform and give ‘on the ground’ direction to education policy;
• the community supporting local schools and stopping the offensive behaviour;
• schools increasing trust and collaboration between staff members and across schools;
• individual educators respectfully speaking up when faced with moral harassment and taking responsibility for work-life balance; and
• the research community providing better longitudinal evidence of the differential impact of all influences on education to provide better insight into effective policies and procedures.

What should schools do?

Mr Polglase has stated that the Tasmanian Education Union needs ‘to look at what’s going on in our support of the schools, the [budget] cuts that occurred last year, you know when you take two teachers out of the schools, you put principals on classes and have them having less time to deal with issues, meet with parents and so on, you know, people get angry.’ So when school staff are victims of circumstance, what can be done to break this concerning trend? Although there have been calls, both in Victoria and Western Australia, for tougher penalties for both students and parents for offensive behaviour towards school staff, there are other steps that schools can take to relieve some of the stress and concern felt by staff.

All schools should have behaviour management policies that emphasise the preventative management of student behaviour rather than merely stating disciplinary consequences for unsatisfactory or offensive behaviour. Also a critical element of these types of policies is not just having them in place, but communicating them to all members of the school community and implementing them when situations of violent or offensive behaviour arise.

A zero tolerance policy for abusive or offensive parent behaviour should also be communicated to the school community with a message that states that schools will not hesitate to contact the authorities where staff members feel that their safety is at risk.

Staff who are subjected to violence from students should also be made aware of their entitlements to workers’ compensation under their state or territories’ WorkSafe regime, and a report of the incident should be recorded in the school’s incident register. Counselling services and ongoing support should also be made readily available to all staff affected by these incidents.

Schools owe a duty of care to their students but also to their employees and need to make it clear that this kind of offensive and violent behaviour will not be tolerated in the school environment.