There has been a push for tougher penalties for physical and verbal assaults against school principals after a second incident of abuse recently occurred in Western Australia.
The alleged attacks
The West Australian reported that the first attack occurred at a primary school in the Rockingham area of Western Australia. A parent and another adult allegedly repeatedly punched a female principal in the face and chest resulting in the principal taking extended leave from the school. A 26-year-old woman has been charged with disorderly behaviour in a public place in relation to the verbal abuse while investigations continue into the allegations of physical assault.
The Rockingham principal reported the assault to the Education Department only days before a second incident occurred. The second incident involved a principal from the Armadale area who reported being physically and verbally abused after he was pushed up against a wall and threatened by a parent.
Calls for mandatory jail terms
The Australian Principals Federation national president Ron Bamford told The Educator that given the frequency of these attacks, mandatory jail terms for people convicted of assaulting public officers, such as police officers, should extend to those who assault principals. Mr Bamford said that ‘principals are public officers and are seven times more likely than members of the public to be physically assaulted’.
This protection proposal would in theory only apply to government school principals as they are defined as ‘public officers’ under Western Australian law, being employed by the State. However the issue of principal protection exists in all schools.
Western Australia currently has legislation that allows principals to prohibit parents from coming on to a school site. We have previously written about similar legislation that exists in Queensland and a pattern of parent teacher bullying incidents in that State. However Mr Bamford’s concern is the lack of protection principals have when they leave the school gates.
Stephen Breen, president of the Western Australia Primary Principals’ Association (WAPPA) also commented that these incidents are just the ‘tip of the iceberg’ and that responses to threats against school principals and staff are too reactive, rather than proactive.
The effect of the abuse
Mr Breen has commented that there are a lower number of people who are putting their hands up to become a principal as a result of the difficult position they can be put in if they take the job. Managing administrative and educational outcomes as well as abusive parents can be too daunting for educators to volunteer for the position. The consequence of the disturbing trend of abusive parents is significant stress on school leaders as they attempt to navigate these conflicts.
Preliminary figures from the Australian Principal Health and Wellbeing Survey (Survey) reveal that one in 10 principals think about self-harm or have a low quality of life. While most of the school leaders surveyed experience the negative effects of under staffing and strenuous administrative burdens, the Survey shows that stress levels skyrocketed when there was conflict with staff and parents.
Leading the Survey is associate professor Philip Riley from the Australian Catholic University who told The Age that there had been a doubling of ‘red flag notifications’ since last year’s survey. These red flag warnings are generated when principals said they have felt like harming themselves in the past week or receive a low quality of life score.
Is mandatory sentencing the answer?
While some commentators such as Mr Bamford and Mr Breen would like tougher laws to apply to the verbal or physical assault of school principals, Acting Deputy Director General of the WA Education Department Lindsay Hale has said that the answer is closer to home. Parents and community members should be leading by example by acting respectfully and lawfully when dealing with school staff. Mr Hale did however stress that when incidents escalate to violence, like the Rockingham and Armadale attacks, the police need to be called.
The application of mandatory sentencing laws to assaults against principals can appear extreme, and it is unclear how imposing the harsher penalty for violent attacks will deter lower level verbal disagreements between school staff and parents. The incidents in Western Australia in August were extreme, and ‘particularly violent and nasty’ according to Mr Hale, so it may be that legislating against these sorts of attacks will only capture a small percentage of what are almost weekly incidents of parent teacher bullying across the country.
Each State and Territory’s education department provides guidance for schools on how to address and manage parents’ concerns and complaints effectively. All schools are required to have complaints or grievance handling policies and procedures in place for the purposes of registration. These should include specific guidance for staff and be circulated to parents and the school community explaining how complaints are managed – specifically those that become violent, abusive or physical.
