School principals are experiencing huge levels of stress because of an increasing workload, lack of support and new demands from parents, pupils and the community, a leading psychologist has said.
Dr Maureen Gaffney said the teaching profession, including principals, was in "a very demoralised state", finding it increasingly hard to provide a service.
She was speaking at the national conference of the Irish Primary Principals Network (IPPN) which took place over the weekend. Dr Gaffney is chairwoman of the National Economic and Social Forum.
She said challenges facing principals also faced the general teaching force. These included the demanding nature of the job, with principals in particular expected to "give themselves constantly to a very extended school community".
She also said they faced an "increasing workload" because of legislation and Department of Education circulars "without adequate support services".
Despite these difficulties, the profession had no choice but to adapt to new demands and schools would have to deliver their services in "more streamlined ways". Competition between schools would intensify and schools would have to learn to serve "increasingly sophisticated pupils" and "time-pressured parents".
"How much time are schools spending devising new strategies for dealing with the radically changing environment in which they work?" she asked.
"The teaching profession, I believe, is in a very demoralised state, and that is not a good place to be as you face the revolution ahead. Left untended, it puts you in some danger of having changes forced upon you, changes that may not serve you as a profession nor the general society well, unless you are proactive in changing yourselves."
Principals needed to come up with a future vision for their schools. "Perhaps I missed it, but I cannot remember the last time I heard anybody in the public arena articulating an arresting vision of what a modern school should be doing," she said.
"Instead, the public discourse seems to be riveted to `how to do it' debates about policies and problems, and, important though those are, they are not the whole picture."
Teachers tended to say they were not the same as "free marketeers", that they provided more than a good service. But they had to stay as "competitive and relevant as businesses", but also retain a bedrock of trustworthiness.
"The main point of my presentation today is that schools and teachers can either condemn themselves to an endless cycle of reacting to this uniquely high-pressure, high-change environment, or they can take charge of it. I believe you should do the latter."