School principals 'swamped by administrative responsibilities'

Admin work done by principals could include building management, procurement, safety officer duties, and digital facilities management. File picture: Danny Lawson/PA

Secondary school principals have warned they are spending around half their working day on administration work, severely undermining their ability to do other aspects of their jobs.

They say face-to-face time with pupils is reduced and their ability to respond to educational challenges is hampered due to the amount of time spent on admin work due to a demanding new quality framework.

According to the National Association of Principals and Deputy Principals, many feel they are unable to meet the required expectations due to an immense workload.

The Department of Education-run framework “Looking at Our School 2022” aims to provide an understanding of what effective learning, teaching, leadership, and management practices entail in the Irish school system.

The framework assesses school leadership under four domains:

• Leading Teaching and Learning; 
• Managing the organisation;
• Leading school development; 
• Building leadership capacity. 

Principals across the country feel the overwhelming amount of administration work forces them to spend large amounts of time ‘managing the organisation’ which is leading to shortfalls within the remaining three domains.

With over half of the principal’s time spent on administrative duties, less than one-third of working time is allocated to focus on leadership activities, and under a quarter of their time is left for student interaction and curriculum planning, arguably one of the most important domains.

National Association of Principals and Deputy Principals director, Paul Crone: '[M]any principals simply don’t have adequate time to support their students through leading and learning.' Picture: Linkedin

Many of these administrative tasks are not accounted for under the guidelines of the new framework.

Some of these tasks include building management, procurement, safety officer duties, CCTV and digital facilities management, along with financial management and recruitment as well as acting as Secretary to the Board of Management.

Director of the National Association of Principals and Deputy Principals Paul Crone feels an urgent change is needed in order to alleviate the workload of principals and allow time for them to focus on the wellbeing of students.

“Due to an overbearing administrative workload, many principals simply don’t have adequate time to support their students through leading and learning, many of whom are still coping with the fallout of the covid-19 pandemic and the challenges this produced both academically and socially," he said. 

“We are calling on the Minister for Education Norma Foley to immediately consider the implementation of an Administrative Officer post in post-primary schools across the country to enable principals be the leaders of learning that they want to be and need to be to better serve the needs of the wider school community, students, parents and teachers."

• These issues will be brought up at the annual NAPD symposium today, Tuesday, February 28, 2023 at the Crowne Plaza Hotel, Dublin Airport.