Principal turnover up, study shows

AUCKLAND: School principals are getting older — and one in every eight are now quitting or moving schools each year.

A firsttime study of principal turnover by the Ministry of Education has found that the number of principals quitting or switching schools dropped sharply in the Global Financial Crisis, but had since crept up again to 15% in 2017 and 12% in 2018.

‘‘Of the principals leading schools in 2018, 88% were leading the same school in 2019,’’ the study said.

‘‘To put it another way, roughly one in eight schools saw a change of leadership in 2019.’’

The main reason for rising turnover since 2010 was that principals were getting older, in line with all teachers.

State and integrated school principals aged 65 and over had jumped from 3.9% in 2010 to 9.6% in 2019.

Consequently, the numbers aged 60 and over retiring each year had grown from 60 in 2010 to more than 110 in 2018.

Robin Staples, who retired as principal of Auckland’s Southern Cross Campus in April aged 69, said he committed to serve at least 10 years when he moved to the school 13 years ago, after serving 10 years before that as head of Hillary College.

‘‘I have always found in schools that you need to do a sizeable amount of time to make a difference,’’ he said.

He decided at the start of this year, before the Covid19 crisis, that it was time to step down.

‘‘I didn’t want to be a principal when I was 70,’’ he said.

‘‘In some of the higherdecile schools that might be OK, but I think particularly in decile 1 you need high energy.’’

In contrast, principals quitting before age 60 and not moving to another principal’s role plunged from 160180 a year from 200407 to just more than 100 in 2009, and had stayed about 100 a year ever since.

The numbers switching schools also declined in primary schools, from 6% in 2004 to 3% since 2008, and remained about 2% a year in secondary schools.

Principals had become slightly more likely to be nonEuropean — Maori up from 12.6% of principals in 2010 to 17.1% in 2019, Pasifika up from 1.2% to 2.4%, and Asians up from 0.5% to 0.8%.

The proportion of Maori principals (17%) was higher than the proportion of Maori teachers (13%), partly because Maorilanguage schools tended to be small.

However, principals from all minority groups were still underrepresented compared with domestic school pupils, who were 24.5% Maori, 13.5% Asian and 9.9% Pasifika.

Women now made up 57% of primary principals, up from 44% in 2005, and 37% of secondary principals, up from 31%.

Rototuna Senior High School principal Natasha Hemara, who was moving next term to lead Kamo High School, said noone had ‘‘targeted’’ the demographics of principals to achieve a better match with pupils.

She hoped that a new leadership centre planned within the Teaching Council would focus on the issue. — The New Zealand Herald