Working through the first year of the pandemic: a snapshot of Australian school leaders’ work roles and responsibilities and health and wellbeing during covid-19

Abstract

Over the last 18 months, the pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has had dramatic implications for education systems across the globe. At the peak of the crisis, 1.6 billion students from over 190 countries were out of school and over 100 million school leaders, teachers and other personnel had to contend with a new world of work in which schools were closed (UNESCO 2021). In Australia, state and territory governments have worked in consultation with one another and the federal government to respond to outbreaks. Historically, the governance of schooling has been a site of conflict for these authorities. In responding to the pandemic, periods of federal-state cooperation have been disrupted by disputes as federal authorities have attempted to intervene in matters that are the constitutional responsibility of states. State-level policymakers have introduced the measures and policy directives that determine how schools operate during the pandemic. In the early phase of the pandemic, all State governments enforced the closure of school buildings. Since then, state governments have introduced restrictions in response to outbreaks within their jurisdictions. Some states experienced heavy and prolonged restrictions and lockdowns (e.g. Victoria and NSW) and schools were closed on multiple occasions during 2020 and 2021. In other states, such as WA and South Australia there have been relatively few school closures. However, the COVID conditions were a cause of stress for the school leaders across the country. At the school level, Australian principals and school leaders were responsible for dealing with the disruption brought about by the pandemic and ensuring that policy directives were effectively implemented. The new circumstances brought about by the pandemic presented school leaders with new challenges and in some cases radically transformed the school leadership role. Research in other countries and contexts has shown that school leaders had to make highly complex decisions; deal with increased workload; lead in the context of rapidly changing guidelines and circumstances; and provide support to school communities that were coping with severe illness and death (Beauchamp et al. 2021; OECD 2021). School leaders also had to rapidly develop new sills in order to lead the transition to online learning (Arar et al. 2021).