00:01A new survey has revealed an alarming rise in threats and violence against school principals.
00:09Australian Catholic University has been tracking the data for 15 years, talking to thousands of school leaders.
00:16And most recently, more than half of Queensland principals experienced physical violence, a big jump from 2011 when it was
00:2628%.
00:27Really distressing stories where people have actually had physical violence in the form of people bringing implements in and physically
00:36threatening them with things like crowbars.
00:38These are just reprehensible behaviours.
00:4061% reported receiving threats, up from 37% 15 years ago.
00:47The main perpetrators, according to the ACU, are students and parents.
00:53Parents coming, intimidating, standing over them, bashing their desk, you know, thumping the front reception, which you wouldn't do if
01:02you went in and you got a bad coffee at your local cafe.
01:05Perhaps no surprise then that more than half of school leaders nationally seriously considered leaving their jobs.
01:12On average, principals say they work a 54 hour week.
01:16The workload and stress increasing their risk of burnout.
01:2054 hours is considered dangerous on the OECD data, so what we'd love to see is that that actually reduces
01:27down.
01:27The state government spending $45 million a year on a program designed to help principals improve school behaviour.
01:35While 140 workplace health and safety officers are being deployed to stamp out violence and ease workloads.
01:45We'd love to hear from the Australian community so the budget was open to another colleague,
Comments