More than 80 per cent of Australian principals have experienced critical incidents in their schools, including violent security threats, mental health crises, suicide attempts and medical emergencies, new Australian Catholic University (ACU) research shows.
And most school leaders feel the frequency of critical incidents – serious, significant and unexpected events that threaten the normal school environment – is increasing.
School leaders have described the toll of dealing with the largely “high” or “extreme” severity critical incidents as leaving them feeling weighed down, stressed, anxious, unsafe, unsupported, burnt out, and struggling.
Study Chief Investigator Associate Professor Theresa Dicke, of ACU’s Institute for Positive Psychology and Education (IPPE) says the Understanding School Incidents: Empowering School Leaders report research painted an alarming picture.
“The data and comments from school leaders highlight serious and significant fears about the increasing nature and severity of critical incidents in schools and the ongoing capacity of burdened school leaders to continue to have the resilience to deal with them,” Dicke says.
Survey results
The Understanding Critical Incidents: Empowering Australian School Leaders report, based on survey data from 351 Australian principals, found:
Separate data from ACU’s most recent annual Principals Health & Wellbeing Survey also showed almost 74 per cent of 1878 respondents experienced a critical incident, most commonly violence and security threats (43.9 per cent), student and community deaths (14.9 per cent), suicides or suicidal threats (12.6 per cent), and medical emergencies (10.3 per cent).
Fellow study Chief Investigator and former school principal Dr Paul Kidson, of ACU’s School of Education (SoE), said school leaders reported that factors including poor mental health, parental abuse, Covid-19 fallout, social media, and worsening community attitudes towards school staff had contributed to critical incidents.
“While 42.3 per cent of participants felt they coped ‘very well’ or ‘extremely well’ with each of these critical incidents, this resilience masks the true picture,” he says.
“School leaders also reported that too many incidents are not only severe, but that they feel under-prepared, under-supported, and under pressure to deal with them in highly stressful urgent atmospheres.”
Associate Professor Dicke says the research, funded by the Principals Australia Research Foundation,
emphasised the need for better support systems to help school leaders manage critical incidents. She called on all state and territory governments to act, including adopting key recommendations from the report.
“School leaders have been emphatic in calling for changes and improvements to better support school leaders in managing critical incidents, both during and afterwards,” she said. “But they cannot do it alone. They need significant systemic support to create meaningful change.”
Key recommendations from the research, which was also conducted by Professor Herb Marsh and Dr Chloe Gordon, of IPPE, and Professor Amanda Telford, of the SoE, include having a standardised incident response roadmap, in-house psychological support, improved communication with emergency services, better training, more timely assistance, and time off without stigma for school leaders after critical incidents.
Conducted in partnership with the Tasmanian Principals Association (TPA), the research also put a spotlight on that state, finding 85 per cent of school leaders had experienced at least one critical incident, while more than half had experienced two or more.
The most common incidents reported by Tasmanian school leaders were security threats (28 per cent), suicidal threats or attempts (16 per cent), medical emergencies (12 per cent), bullying (11 per cent), and mental health crises (8 per cent).
Nearly three-quarters of Tasmanian school leaders (72.3 per cent) ranked incident severity as “high” or
“extreme”, while 56.6 per cent rated themselves as “not prepared” or only “somewhat prepared” to handle incidents.
The ACU researchers backed the TPA in its advocacy for systemic improvements to deal with the higher prevalence of security threats and mental health incidents faced by Tasmanian school leaders, including implementing better training and a triage system for post-incident support.
School leaders speak out
Some of the more interesting quotes from school leaders captured in the report:
