This is my second year in the role of teaching principal – I’m currently acting principal in my school (4 classes) and there is little about the job so far that would entice me to continue in the role if my principal were to decide not to return to the role.
There is no job description – I’m teacher, principal, board member, administrator, accountant, health and safety coordinator, psychologist, nurse, engineer, it technician, mediator… and many more roles all at once – whatever is needed, I have to be it. All learning is on the job with minimal training – Misneach is great to pick others brains and to network and to know you’re not alone in the crazy stressful nature of the role but not so practical on the what you do when the plumbing backs up and the internet goes down and the million and one everyday challenges principals experience.
My first year was busy, this last year was insane! Initiative after initiative, new SNA appointments allocation procedures from NCSE, new SET allocation model, new primary language curriculum, critical incident planning, attendance strategies, posts of responsibility policy changes, child protection changes, data protection changes, school self evaluation reintroduction, and on and on. I’ve been running to stay still and slowly losing my mind from stress.
The circular on in school management is all well and good but when the deputy principal and AP2 get only a pittance extra it’s not right to burden them with another twenty jobs each even if it could ease my list of jobs to do a little bit.
The money for teaching principal in a 4 teacher school is a joke – for less than €5000 extra take home after all the taxes and levies I have all the extra responsibilities, stress and headaches and the knowledge that if anything goes wrong it’s on my head. It’s wrong that I should earn less than a deputy principal in a bigger school who ultimately doesn’t have the responsibility on their shoulders that the I have.
My summer has been spent in and out of school getting work done to keep the admin side up and running, sorting repairs, interviewing and appointing an SNA and lots of small but essential jobs that inevitably fall on nobody else. I’m tired. I need an actual holiday but at this stage that can only happen if I’m out of the country. I’m worn out from initiatives. I’m worn out from fighting for my pupils to access SET teaching, access SNA support, access assessments through the HSE, access CAMHS support, from trying to support pupils on waiting lists to access urgent supports they need and support their families because nobody else seems to be. I’m tired of having the goalposts constantly shifting and having to reinvent the wheel on policy after policy…. I’m sick of doing everything in my time – my evenings, my weekends, my holidays because the admin days allocated don’t go anyway towards the time actually needed to run a school.
This job is not worth the pittance extra I earn. I’m doing a damn good job of it but the way the system is set up right now, no way will I look to continue in a principal role as anything other than acting principal – at least I have the ability to step down right now once this job has fully broken me.
Something has to give – to this point it seems to be the health and wellbeing of principals but this is not sustainable. This needs to change and soon!