The latest national snapshot of Australia’s teaching workforce shows more than one-third of teachers intend to quit before retirement, citing unmanageable workload, poor work-life balance and growing work-related stress as their top stressors.
Those carrying the heaviest workloads are school leaders, who work a medium of 56 hours a week during term. Complicating matters, schools are workplaces under Australia’s psychosocial regulations, too, and the people expected to notice who is struggling are often stretched themselves.
In late October 2026, Rise & Thrive Global’s Psychosocial Safety Fellowship began live classes designed for exactly those people.
The classes train school wellbeing officers, teachers and principals as coaches through an ICF-accredited pathway, so they have the skills for the conversations most of us avoid, with colleagues and for themselves.
The real drain on a Principal’s week
Dr Catherine Plano is the founder of Rise & Thrive Global, one of only two ICF-accredited coaching programmes worldwide specialising in positive psychology. She says the Fellowship was designed to fit around a school leader’s working week, not add to it.
"The question is not whether a Principal has time for coaching; it is how much time they are already losing to conversations that go nowhere," Dr Plano told The Educator. "ACU's national survey has shown the same two top stressors every year since 2011: the sheer quantity of work, and no time to focus on teaching and learning."
Dr Plano said much of that load is people.
"Monash research on principals' emotional labour found many feel ill-equipped for exactly these conversations," she said. "The Fellowship asks for two hours a week, in live evening classes built around the school day. What Principals gain is the ability to have the real conversation the first time, which gives time back."
Leaders are the system staff see every day
Principals’ associations in Australia have long argued wellbeing is a structural issue, not something fixed by asking individuals to cope better. Dr Plano agrees workload reform must come first, but says it shouldn’t be the only answer.
"ACU's lead researcher, Professor Theresa Dicke, has said the greatest opportunity for change is recognising Principal wellbeing as a system responsibility, not an individual one," Dr Plano said, adding that "coaching is not a coping skill handed to exhausted staff". "Under Australia's psychosocial safety laws, how leaders lead is now part of the system: schools must identify and control hazards such as workload, conflict and poor culture, in consultation with staff."
Dr Plano said leaders are the part of that system people experience every day.
"We are equipping the people who set the conditions to change them, and every Fellow contributes to our research, so the evidence flows back to decision makers."
The question nobody answers honestly
Honesty can be hard to come by when the person asking “How are you really going?” is the Principal or line manager. Dr Plano says creating psychological safety in those conversations is central to the Fellowship.
"People do not hold back because they do not care. They hold back because they are afraid of being seen as incompetent," she said. "Monash researchers found teachers are experiencing more than burnout: demoralisation, the sense that they cannot do their job to the standard they hold themselves to."
Dr Plano said admitting that to the person who shapes one’s career can feel dangerous, which is why safety cannot simply be announce and must be demonstrated.
"Our Fellows learn to go first, to say 'this term has been hard for me too,'" Dr Plano said. "When a leader is honest about their own struggle, the truth stops being a risk. Trust is then built on what happens next: confidentiality, no judgement and real follow-through."
Principalship can be a lonely job, and for leaders expected to hold everyone else together, speaking up about their own wellbeing can feel like an admission of weakness. Dr Plano says breaking that silence is often where the real shift begins.
"Professor Philip Riley calls the Principal the canary in the coal mine, yet Principals are expected to be the steadiest person in the building," she said. "ACU's 2025 data shows nearly half experienced physical violence at work and more than half seriously considered leaving, yet they still report strong commitment."
Dr Plano said that commitment is part of the problem, as it masks the risk.
"Many have built their identity on holding everyone else, so admitting they are struggling feels like failing," she said. "When they do speak, something shifts."
Subsequently, Principals, and their staff, stop spending energy pretending, Dr Plano said.
"Vulnerability in a leader is not weakness. It is permission for everyone else to be human."