The principal isn't the problem. The role is.

The Australian Principal Occupational Health, Safety and Wellbeing Survey has tracked principals for fifteen years. Its 2025 data, released in March, is stark. Principals average 53.9 hours a week. 54.4 per cent seriously considered leaving. Physical violence against principals rose from 27.3 per cent in 2011 to 47.8 per cent. Lost productivity runs to about $25,495 per principal each year.

Look at what principals rank as their top two sources of stress: the sheer quantity of work, and lack of time to focus on teaching and learning. Not students. Not parents. The shape of the work itself.

The insurers see the same thing from the other end. Aon's 2026 survey of 306 independent schools found serious mental health claims average 35.7 weeks off work and $67,400, against 7.4 weeks and $16,300 for other serious claims.

Elliott Jaques, whose requisite organisation work shaped how many large companies design roles, made a simple observation. Organisations hold together when the accountability in a role matches the authority to discharge it. When the two drift apart, people absorb the gap personally, and no amount of capability closes it for long.

Schools are drifting fast. AITSL's red tape review found principals feel compelled to take on every responsibility directed at them, because delegation frameworks in legislation are unclear. New laws increasingly name the head personally: Queensland's Reportable Conduct Scheme sets deadlines and a fine for the head of the organisation, not the school.

So accountability is concentrating in one role, while the authority and the instruments to discharge it stay scattered. They sit in a business manager's spreadsheet, a deputy's inbox and a board's annual calendar. In requisite terms, that's a role designed to fail, filled by people who mostly don't.

The second stressor tells the same story. "Lack of time to focus on teaching and learning" is role displacement: the work the role exists for, crowded out by work it was never scoped for.

An integral lens asks you to look at any problem from four sides. What a person experiences inside. What they do. What a group shares and means. And the systems and structures everyone works within.

The support in the first row matters, and I'd never argue against it. But it treats the response. The input sits in the last row, and that's where almost nobody is working.

Victoria's psychological health regulations took effect on 1 December 2025 with no transition period. Employers must eliminate psychosocial risks or, where they can't, reduce them by changing work design, systems and management practices.

Read that closely. The regulation puts the control in the design of work, not in the individual's capacity to cope. For a board, that's a quiet but significant reframe. A principal's workload isn't a private wellbeing matter. It's a hazard the employer has to control, and for the principal, the board is the employer.

Aon found only 61 per cent of schools have clear accountability lines for psychosocial risk. The question for the other four in ten is uncomfortable but simple: who owns the risk sitting in the head's office?

Change the inputs, then watch what changes in the response.

1. Map the head's accountabilities against their actual authority to delegate. Where they don't match, redesign the delegation, not the person.
2. Name an owner for every psychosocial hazard on the register, including the load on the head.
3. Count the inputs: obligations, reports and approvals landing on the head each term, tracked beside the wellbeing survey.
4. Find the duplicated reporting AITSL identified and design it out rather than staffing it.
5. Compare the role description with what actually fills the week, and treat the gap as a design defect.

Emeritus Professor Philip Riley of ACU calls the principal "the canary in the coal mine". It's the right image. When the canary struggles, nobody sends it on a resilience course. You fix the air.

Pete Holliday is a master executive coach and co-founder of EthosOne. He spent a decade advising ASX and S&P listed companies including BHP and Walmart on transformation, and studied organisational psychology with postgraduate work in adult development and human complexity.

Every date and figure above was checked against these sources on 1 October 2026.

• Australian Catholic University: Violence against principals nearly doubles in 15 years as workload soars
• The Educator: Mental health crisis in independent schools is now a board-level risk
• Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership: Review to reduce red tape for teachers and school leaders
• Queensland Family and Child Commission: What is the Reportable Conduct Scheme
• Premier of Victoria: New regulations start today to protect workers