You’d be hard pressed to find a Principal who thinks literacy, wellbeing or attendance don’t matter. The problem is they rarely arrive on their own. A new reporting requirement lands, another framework follows close behind, and whatever came before never quite goes away.
After a while, running a school starts to feel like rolling out everyone else’s plans.
When Principals burn out, the blame usually falls on excessive workloads, but one leadership expert says that’s only half the story, and it’s not something a better calendar is going to fix.
For more than two decades, Lee Crockett has worked alongside Principals, leadership teams and education systems in Australia and internationally on how they lead through growing complexity.
“These are highly capable, deeply committed people leading through an increasingly complex mix of student learning, staff wellbeing, community expectations, compliance, culture and continuous improvement,” Crockett told The Educator.
“My work begins with their experience. Together, we examine where pressure is occurring, identify what is creating it, and develop practices that restore clarity, strengthen professional judgement and build the capacity to act with purpose.”
Crockett said that as his experience accumulates and particular ideas prove effective across different clients and contexts, he writes to make that learning available to a broader audience.
“Each book grows from what leaders are experiencing, what we discover together, and what consistently helps,” he said, adding that this is how his latest leadership paper ‘The Sustainability Myth’ emerged.
In the paper, Crockett argues that “strategic compliance” can help Principals protect what matters most for their communities without walking away from the accountability systems expect of them.
“[The Sustainability Myth] grew from conversations with capable leaders who were becoming more effective while finding leadership increasingly difficult to sustain. It explores the conditions that allow them to protect professional judgement, attention and purpose when everything is presented as a priority.”
The paper argues that ‘Strategic Compliance’ is not defiance dressed up as leadership. Yet when a Principal adapts or sets aside a mandated initiative, regional directors may see it differently.
Crockett said almost every initiative has merit, but leadership determines its place.
“A new priority may address a genuine need and draw upon persuasive evidence,” he said. “Its place within a school depends on a larger set of considerations. Does it address an evidenced need in this community? Is the timing right? What existing work will it strengthen, duplicate or displace?”
Crockett said these questions move the conversation from ‘Is this a good initiative?’ to ‘Does this belong here now?’.
The case for “yes, but our way”
“One regional secondary school I worked with was directed to implement a new student engagement framework,” he said, recalling that the Principal supported its purpose, while recognising that the school had spent several years developing an integrated mentoring and restorative-practice approach.
“Attendance, behaviour referrals and student feedback were all moving positively. The existing work had credibility with staff, coherence across the school and growing trust within the community.”
Crockett said the Principal mapped the new framework against the school’s existing approach, identifying the real gaps, adopting what would strengthen the work and meeting the reporting requirements. She also gathered evidence that the intended outcomes were already being served, then gave the regional director a clear rationale and specific measures the school could be held accountable against.
“Her position was straightforward: ‘We share the intent. Here is the evidence. Here is what our community needs. Here is the pathway that will serve the purpose most effectively, and here is how we will measure its impact,’” he said. “That is Strategic Compliance. It makes professional judgement visible by connecting system intent, local evidence, community need and measurable impact.”
Crockett said the regional director gained confidence that the purpose would be served.
“The school retained coherence, capacity and staff ownership,” he said. “Most importantly, the students continued to experience an approach that was working and becoming stronger.”
Where judgement ends and cherry-picking begins
With several states now mandating explicit, systematic phonics, some critics may worry that Strategic Compliance hands schools a convenient excuse to sidestep evidence they don’t like. Crockett, however, draws a clear line between sound professional judgement and simple cherry-picking.
“Professional judgement earns its authority through evidence, transparency, contextual intelligence and accountability for impact,” he said.
“In the case of phonics, the evidence establishes explicit, systematic instruction as an essential component of learning to read. Professional judgement guides how that evidence is translated into successful practice for particular students, teachers and communities.”
Crockett said leaders must consider the programme or resources they use, the expertise already present among staff, the professional learning required, the needs revealed by student data, and the way phonics connects with the school’s broader literacy approach.
“Strong literacy instruction brings phonics together with oral language, vocabulary, fluency, comprehension, knowledge and meaningful experiences with texts,” he said. “The line is clear: responsible adaptation preserves the active ingredients of the evidence while strengthening their fit with the context.”
Crockett said a Principal should be able to explain what the evidence establishes, which elements require fidelity, where contextual adaptation will improve implementation, how student progress will be measured, and what results will prompt a change in approach.
“Making that reasoning visible allows staff, system leaders and the community to examine it, strengthen it and hold the school accountable,” he said. “Evidence gives us essential knowledge about effective practice.”
Crockett said context is what reveals what successful implementation will demand in a particular school.
“Professional judgement brings those forms of knowledge together in service of every learner.”
It’s not always about the workload
Crockett has developed a ‘pressure gauge’, a tool designed to help leaders pinpoint where their strain is really coming from. For Principals who feel overwhelmed, he says, the cause is rarely as simple as having too much on their plate.
“Two Principals can carry a similar volume of work and experience it very differently because pressure has more than one source,” he said. “Workload pressure is experienced as volume: meetings, emails, reports, deadlines and operational demands.”
Crockett said complexity pressure comes from the interdependence within the work.
“A staffing decision can involve student need, staff wellbeing, industrial requirements, budgets, community expectations and long-term cultural consequences,” he said. “Judgement pressure is experienced as constraint. It appears when leaders remain responsible for outcomes while their capacity to interpret, prioritise, sequence and adapt becomes progressively narrower.”
Crockett said he listens for a shift in language.
“A leader carrying workload pressure often asks, ‘How can I get all of this done?’ A leader carrying judgement pressure says, ‘I can see what this community needs, and I cannot create the space to respond,’” he said. “Their frustration comes from the growing distance between professional responsibility and professional discretion.”
Crockett said one question often reveals the source.
“If we removed 20 per cent of the tasks tomorrow, what would still make the role difficult? The answer reveals what remains after volume is reduced,” he said. “If the leader returns to the inability to sequence, adapt or prioritise, judgement pressure is dominant.”
Crockett said the first practice he would offer is simple.
“Begin with the school before beginning with the system. Walk through the learning spaces. Speak with students and staff. Notice what people need and what the community is trying to become,” he said. “Then name one thing that must be protected that day and one trade-off that needs to be made visible.”
Crockett said this reconnects leadership attention with place and purpose.
“Read the context, identify what matters, make the choice visible, and act intentionally,” he said. “Capacity addresses workload pressure. Coherence addresses complexity pressure. Professional space addresses judgement pressure. Accurate diagnosis directs energy towards the conditions that will genuinely help.”
A message for those at the top
Crockett acknowledges that Principals can only do so much when the pressure begins higher up.
“If I had the chance to sit down with a Department Secretary or Education Minister, I would ask them to stop prescribing a single pathway for every school and begin designing initiatives around shared outcomes and professional judgement,” he said.
“A one-size-fits-all initiative works perfectly until it encounters an actual school… then it meets a particular community, an existing improvement agenda, different levels of staff capacity and trust, and learners whose needs extend beyond the assumptions of a central implementation plan.”
Crockett said systems can define the intent, identify the outcome that must improve, explain the evidence informing the direction, and establish the principles and obligations every school must honour.
“They can provide strong frameworks, practical resources, implementation support and possible pathways,” he said.
“Schools can then determine how that intent will be realised in their context. Their responsibility is to make their reasoning visible, demonstrate how evidence informed their decisions, monitor the impact and adjust their approach as new information emerges.”
Every new initiative, Crockett argues, needs a displacement statement: What will this replace, pause or integrate? What additional capacity will support it? Where can leaders exercise discretion over timing, sequencing and implementation?
“School overload accumulates through a succession of reasonable initiatives, each carrying merit when viewed alone. A displacement statement requires the system to consider the whole and make an honest decision about priorities before the initiative reaches the school gate,” he said.
Crockett said the destination must be clarified.
“Offer well-supported routes. Establish the guardrails. Decide what the new work will displace. Then trust school leaders to navigate the terrain they know,” he said. “That is intelligent accountability, designed for real schools.”