I thank members for their time. I understand they have a copy of a number of documents which we have produced but I will focus on the one-page document, in yellow, which is a synopsis of our overall presentation and captures the essence of the documentation. I will go through it briefly to allow for the optimum amount of questions afterwards, which may be more useful.
I will talk about the issue, the problems, the solutions and the benefits. Many members will be aware from previous presentations by IPPN on other issues that we are a professional body for school principals. We are not a trade union and do not have an industrial relations remit. We have been established since 2000 and have a membership of approximately 97% of all primary school principals and deputies in the country.
The issue is the challenge of recruiting and retaining school principals at primary level. Evidence shows there is a crisis in so far as application rates for principalship have decreased radically in the past ten years and appear to continue so to do. Many members will be parents of children who have been through the school system and will be aware of the importance of leadership in any organisation, but particularly in a school, and of the need for well-motivated, enthusiastic, competent principals to lead modern schools, given the challenges with regard to special needs, alleviating disadvantage, dealing with issues relating to new Irish children and their language needs and the national importance of a competitive economy based on a fine education system.
However, the evidence, gained by extensive research, indicates that all is not well with the health of school leadership in terms of its attractiveness as a role. In the past ten years the rates of application have declined from approximately 5.9 applications per vacancy in 1996 to as few as 2.3 applications per vacancy last year. This hides the reality in small schools, where principals are also required to teach and where the average is well below 2.3. In many cases, teaching principalships attract one applicant and that is sometimes after repeated advertising.
The increased level of retirement of teachers and principals, in particular the growing trend of principals seeking early retirement, and the current high age profile of principals, with 45% aged 50 or over, as well as the low application rates, suggest a timebomb leading to schools being left without principals or with principals who have been encouraged or even browbeaten to apply because a school needs one. In such cases a school focuses on one teacher to ensure it can at least open in September with a leader.
Several factors discourage people from considering school leadership as a career-promotion prospect. We have highlighted five of the key issues. The first and most important is that teachers consider the role of principal to be undoable. They observe the current principal as bogged down in administration, doing everything other than teaching and learning. Society has growing needs for accountability, rightly so, but has not put the capacity into schools to deliver that accountability. Principals are getting drawn into a fog of non-educational work. Teachers, especially good ones, do not want to wind up in such a role but remain at what they do best, what they have chosen to be.
Slightly more than seven out of ten principals are full-time teaching principals with a small number of days for administration during a year. Most young teachers are simply not willing to take on this role because they view the duality of the role and the simultaneous demands of being principal and teacher throughout a school day as making it impossible to do the job. Teaching principals, of which I have been one for six years, attribute poor quality teaching to the inability to devote one's full energies to the role.
In a recent survey, 45% of school principals reported that they did not have an office from which to work but work from a desk in a classroom, such is still, unfortunately, the poor level of infrastructure in schools. Some 75% reported that they either had a part-time or no secretary and that figure almost exactly correlated to the number of teaching principals, the ones who most needed a secretary. Because grant aid for hiring school secretaries and caretakers is based on school size the very schools that most need it are punished for their smallness.
Teachers are not willing to take on a role which is underresourced, over-demanded and lacking the impression of a job which can be done and which will give satisfaction. There is no programme in this country for nurturing, identifying and encouraging young teachers to get into a leadership chain. There is an in-school management system but, unfortunately, the evidence shows that teachers who have in-school management positions, such as special duties teacher or assistant or deputy principal, are less likely to apply for principalship than those who have no promoted posts. This is contrary to most other countries, where in-school management positions would be the stepping stone towards principalship.
The reason for this is twofold. First, these people see the role of principal as more closely allied to middle management than that of teachers and they are more aware of the impossibility of balancing job satisfaction, lifestyle and functionality. The second factor is probably more noticeable, as the reward structure, currently based on an allowance for principalship on top of a basic teaching salary, does not allow for a proper career path from one rank to another, as would occur in most other public sector roles. Many deputy principals would lose salary benefits if they applied for a principalship in a smaller school, which is contrary to what happens in most other countries we have researched.
The solutions to these problems are well researched and thought out in that they correlate with what is happening in other countries. This problem is not unique to Ireland. What is unique is the failure of the system to address the issue at a macro level. The main solution is to introduce a principal's contract, which would enable teachers take a leadership role for a set length of time without it becoming a career incarceration. Currently, people cannot step down from the role without suffering financially or career-wise. A set contract also enables renewal of leadership and gives more teachers the opportunity to be leaders in their schools.
There must be a systematic programme to identify, encourage and nurture young teachers on the notion that leadership is achievable, and the issue is not just considered when a principal resigns or retires. There should be a programme of development towards leadership, which is the case in the UK where the shortage of school principals is being tackled.
There should be acknowledgement that the current board of management structure is largely ineffective. As we have discussed with this committee before, the issues surrounding school governance, the volunteer nature and the goodwill expressed by board of management members are excellent in theory but they do not fit the management needs of schools. The functions of boards of management are being devolved more to principals as they, perhaps, have the most knowledge, expertise, time and opportunity to effect the role of the board of management.
The handing over of chairpersonship of boards from the clergy to lay members of the community has not enhanced operations, and many would argue it has worsened the situation. Lay members tend to be in employment positions that would render them less available to schools at key times.
There must be proper administrative and caretaking facilities put in place for all schools, with particular priority for smaller schools. It is untenable for principals to carry out functions they do not have the skills for and for which they are not paid. More importantly, these functions are a distraction from key functions, such as teaching in the case of those who are full-time teachers, and being leaders and managers of the quality of teaching and learning in schools in the case of those who are administrative principals. That is what leadership in a school should be about and what is evident in most developed economies in the world. There is a recognised value of importance on the quality of education right from primary level.
Another part of the solution would be a systematic change in the way principalship is rewarded. There should be a separate salary structure allowing for a career path where there is a space between the different salary ranks within schools. Young teachers in particular, having had six, seven or eight years' experience as a classroom teacher, could look forward to the benefits of promotion. Finance is not the only motivating factor for promotion with public servants, but it needs to exist in parallel with other expectations. If there is no financial attraction or if there is a financial barrier, it will impede all other motivations. It is not tenable to have an environment where it is financially punitive for a teacher to seek promotion to a key role in the school.
The benefits are clear. If we address this problem as a system, taking in principals' associations, trade unions, management bodies and the Department of Education and Science, we will have more teachers, especially high-quality teachers, applying for school leadership. The quality issue will become evident very soon. If we continue to see a fall in the numbers of teachers applying for principalship, the pool of quality talent available for these positions will inevitably become shallower, which will have consequences for the quality of learning in schools.
A document we have presented to the committee written by Professor Michael Fullan, an expert in change management and educational leadership internationally, has identified more than coherently the link between quality leadership and learning in schools. He commented on and referred to other international research showing that where such a link is broken, the quality of learning slips eventually, although not immediately. The revised primary curriculum is world class but complex, and it requires a team delivery. Individual teachers do not themselves interpret it. Every team requires a leader, and without strong education leadership based on vision, passion and commitment, the revised curriculum would be unsustainable in primary schools.
The key benefit from a Government perspective is that education policy cannot be implemented without an effective leader on the ground on matters such as disadvantage, literacy, numeracy, immigrants, the Traveller community, special needs and other key areas adding challenges to the education system. The nightmare scenario would be that in three or four years, we would have hundreds of schools with caretaker principals, acting principals or principals who do not want the job but were forced into taking it. That would not be beneficial to anybody, particularly children and their parents.
This is a matter of national concern and it is very important to the future of this country. If we know in advance this is evidence of a problem and an emerging crisis, we all have an obligation to increase our awareness and consider what action we can take to address the issue. I include my organisation in that. I do not want questions being asked in five years' time whether this problem was known about today, who knew about it and the action taken. It would be difficult to explain to parents the reason they are being asked to enrol their children in schools at a time when there is a great shortage of principals to lead those schools, although the population is growing.
We would be glad to take questions at this stage and we could refer to other documentation when answering.
