Australia’s school leaders may be experiencing high levels of stress, burnout and violence, but most of them still love what they do.
A new OECD analysis of 2024 Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) data has found that 95% of Australian Principals are satisfied with their jobs, in line with the OECD average of 94%. This is despite 79% reporting experiencing stress “quite a bit” or “a lot”, well above the 61% OECD average.
A paradox shared across the globe
Nardos Tesfay, an analyst at the OECD’s Education and Skills Directorate, said Australia is not alone in combining high job satisfaction with high stress.
“In Bulgaria, the Flemish Community of Belgium, Hungary, Italy and Portugal, more than 80% of Principals report substantial stress alongside high job satisfaction,” Tesfay told The Educator. “Principals can value their work while finding its demands difficult to sustain. Some stress is natural in a role carrying significant responsibility, and the report acknowledges that a certain level can be motivating.”
Read more: Job satisfaction key to principal wellbeing and retention – report
However, the report found that excessive demands are leaving less time for the leadership support that teachers value.
In Australia, the main sources of stress named by Principals are staff absences, student behaviour, changing requirements from authorities and parent concerns. Across the OECD, excessive administrative work is the most reported, cited by 68% of Principals on average.
Andy Mison, president of the Australian Secondary Principals’ Association (ASPA), said several of these stressors are “acute” in Australia.
“Workforce shortages mean Principals spend more time managing absences, and many secondary teachers teach some or all of their subjects out of field,” Mison told The Educator. “Requirements come from several layers of government and change often, and each change falls to the Principal to interpret and implement.”
Mison said public schools carry the heaviest relief load.
“The commitment is still there, with high percentages of Principals reporting job satisfaction,” he said. “The stress comes from the conditions around the role.”
Tesfay said one practical takeaway from a recent global webinar on the report was for systems to rethink the structure of the Principal’s role: specifically what Principals must handle themselves, what can be simplified or shared, and what extra support they need.
“Sustaining motivation also means attending to the wider conditions of the job,” she said. “Principals report higher job satisfaction when they face fewer material resource constraints and are satisfied with their pay and other employment terms.”
Tesfay said Lithuania offers an example of addressing these conditions together.
“Policy changes combined salary increases with improvements in benefits and working conditions,” she said. “Salary satisfaction rose by 55 percentage points between 2018 and 2024. It illustrates a broader approach to supporting Principals and keeping them motivated.”
Mind the gap in the staffroom
Another key finding from the OECD’s analysis was that nearly all Australian Principals (95%) say staff have a chance to help shape school decisions, yet only 70% of teachers agree their Principal encourages everyone to have a say.
Tesfay said the gap is not as surprising as it looks.
“Some disconnect is expected. The questions capture different perspectives, and the share of Principals cannot be compared directly with the share of teachers,” she said. “Social-desirability bias may also lead Principals to report a more positive picture of their own practice.”
Nor, Tesfay added, is the gap a uniquely Australian phenomenon.
“Internationally, 98% of Principals report opportunities for staff participation, while 78% of teachers say their Principal encourages all staff to have a say on important decisions,” she said. “The practical question is how formal opportunities translate into meaningful participation.”
TALIS finds that teachers who report stronger teacher leadership, including teachers leading their own professional growth and collaborative activities, also tend to rate their Principals’ leadership more positively.
“As discussed in the global webinar, meaningful participation requires trust, time for development, and authority for teachers to lead their professional learning and support colleagues. This also connects with retention intentions,” she said.
“In almost two-thirds of education systems, teachers who rate their Principals’ relational leadership more highly are less likely to intend to leave teaching within five years, excluding retirement.”
Still, Tesfay was careful not to overstate the link.
“This does not establish that closing the participation gap would reduce departures, but it reinforces the importance of paying attention to whether teachers feel included and supported, and experience trust and positive professional relationships.”
Is it time, or is it skill?
For Mison, the participation gap is part of a broader pattern. In a recent piece responding to the OECD’s findings, he noted that while Australian teachers rate their Principals highly as instructional leaders, relational practice is where the results fall short.
Just 67% of Australian teachers say their principal provides useful feedback, against an OECD average of 77%. Mison has put the relational gap down to time and capacity, but could a skills gap also be at play?
He said the answer lies mainly in time and the contemporary complexity of the role.
“Principals need highly developed relational skills to do the job at all,” Mison told The Educator. “Managing positive relationships with students, parents, staff, community, various agencies, bureaucrats, health services practitioners, trade contractors, etc. is core to the role.”
What limits feedback is the volume of demands on their day, Mison said.
“Only 45% of Australian Principals reported observing teaching often or very often in the previous year,” he said, adding that practice also varies widely.
“Systems, unions and schools can hold different expectations about observation, feedback and how teams operate, which can affect both perceptions and lived experience of how Principals work.”
Mison cautioned against generalisations, saying what works in one context may not be the best fit in another.
“School size and context can be a factor too. In large secondary schools, deputy Principals and supervising teachers are more likely to handle most day-to-day professional conversations with individual teachers, and TALIS found Principals in smaller schools are generally rated more positively,” he said. “Teachers’ ratings of their principal’s feedback measure the principal personally.”
Mison said in larger schools, much of that feedback comes from other leaders, so the 67% may partly reflect how large schools are structured.
“I’m sure there will be some Principals for whom this ‘skill’ could improve, but they consistently reflect that they want to spend more time leading teaching and learning, and working relationally with their teachers is a key part of that.”
The conversation many teachers are missing
The OECD’s analysis also found that valued Principals tend to observe lessons and give teachers feedback. Yet just 40% of Australian Principals regularly provide feedback after observing a class, compared with 56% across the OECD. Tesfay said time is part of the picture, but not all of it.
“In Australia, nearly 30% of Principals, close to the OECD average, report that insufficient time for instructional leadership hinders their school’s capacity to provide quality instruction,” she said. “This sits alongside the wider finding on administrative overload.”
Preparation matters too, Tesfay noted.
“Principals whose formal education or training included instructional leadership are more likely to engage in instructional leadership practices, on average,” she said. “Freeing up time therefore needs to go alongside preparing Principals to use valued leadership practices such as observing classrooms and providing teacher feedback.”
The report pointed to Spain and Latvia, where classroom observation by Principals rose by more than 20 percentage points between 2018 and 2024.
“Latvia’s guidelines include classroom observation and teacher feedback among the indicators used to evaluate Principals. Spain has also made instructional leadership a clearer part of Principals’ responsibilities,” Tesfay said. “Frequent observation increased substantially in both systems between 2018 and 2024. These policy reforms may help explain the increases.”
The aim, she said, is to create space for classroom observation and the conversations that follow, which research cited in the report identifies as particularly valuable.
“These conversations can help teachers identify strengths, discuss areas for improvement and shape their professional learning.”
The one lever worth pulling first
In his recent piece, Mison argued that retention efforts should “treat principal capacity as a workforce instrument in its own right”.
The piece outlined five measures: less red tape, funded relief and replacement capacity for staff in public schools, national reporting of principal workload and stress, supervision and recovery leave treated as retention policy and, above all, a greater say for Principals in policy design.
Asked which of the five measures he would urge education ministers to fund if they could back only one in the next budget cycle, Mison said he would pick relief and replacement capacity, and broaden it.
“Schools need capacity to employ a wider range of paraprofessionals who can take on supervision duties and lead programs that do not require a teacher,” he said. “That frees teachers’ time for teaching, eases the constant pressure to find relief staff and gives Principals room to lead learning.”
Mison said the OECD makes a similar point in its ‘Education at a Glance 2026’ report, which found the greater use of specialised support staff can help teachers spend more of their time where their expertise adds most value.
“Recruitment remains necessary, but new teachers join the same conditions now straining our experienced teachers,” Mison said.
“Better-resourced schools help keep both.”