28th January 2010 - Principals are forced to neglect priority work
- Last Updated: Thursday, 28 January 2010 12:03
'The 2-in-1 role of Teacher and School Leader has become a health and safety hazard and there is ample evidence to show that the sense of guilt, anxiety and stress is damaging to the physical and mental health of the Principal'. This is the alarming message conveyed by the National Director of the Irish Primary Principals' Network (IPPN), Mr Seán Cottrell, to almost 1,000 Primary Principals at the IPPN annual conference in Citywest Convention Centre today, Friday January 29th.
The IPPN Director advised Principals to focus on the 'must do' tasks and delegate or discard the non priority ones.' Learning to say no is a special skill many Principals have yet to acquire' continued Mr Cottrell.
One area identified by the IPPN Director that could potentially reduce workload and stress concerns for Teaching Principals would be to give them the option of taking on the Learning Support/ Resource Teaching role in their schools. Many Principals have built up considerable expertise in the area of Special Education and were the Minister to decide to give this initiative the green light, it would benefit a significant number of children with learning difficulties. Crucially, this would be cost neutral to the Exchequer.
ENDS
Principals, particularly Teaching Principals, don't get time to study the hundreds of Department circulars and reams of policy guidelines that are regularly dispatched to schools because their time is consumed by fundraising, scavenging for scarce resources and attending unnecessary meetings. As a consequence, some areas of high priority work may be neglected which adversely impacts on children's learning.
