Departments should also provide schools with business managers, digital administration systems, and decision-support tools to reduce cognitive complexity, according to new research.

The ACU study’s lead researcher Professor Jiesi Guo and PhD candidate Danling Huang, from the university’s Institute for Positive Psychology and Education, say their actionable insights can enhance principal retention by strengthening psychological connection to the workplace and managing cognitive workload.

They say professional development should also move beyond compliance-based training and instead focus on long-term growth, leadership, efficacy and building a sense of meaning at work.

“It’s clear feel that some [of the principals in the study] feel that they are supported within their school, their teachers and their staff, but then when it comes to things like offensive behaviour that they experience, they don’t seem to be able to manage them because of systemic constraints,” Huang tells EducationHQ.

“They’ve indicated that because of the systemic constraints, they feel very stressed and it feels like the system is not on their side.”

Huang says from survey comments left by principals, it’s clear that while some schools have business managers and have set up effective digital admin systems, it’s really only a small amount.

“Most of the time, it’s because of the systemic constraints that they can’t do a lot of things that the school wants to do.

“I would say it’s not particularly promising.”

The researchers used machine learning techniques to analyse data from 1630 Australian principals over two years and identified workplace commitment, job satisfaction, and cognitive demands as the strongest predictors of principals’ intention to leave.

The team, which also included Dr Jinran Wu, Hamed Mogouie, and Professor Theresa Dicke, found principal turnover reflects complex interactions between individual and systemic factors rather than any single cause.

The study builds on earlier work from ACU’s principal wellbeing team by incorporating random effects to account for differences across states and education systems to deliver more accurate predictions than traditional statistical approaches.

The term ‘game-changer’ is much overused these days, however AI’s integration into education research is proving to be just that.

The researchers suggest system-wide support, including national or state-funded principal wellbeing programs, structured mentoring networks, and policies that promote flexible work arrangements to ease work-family conflict.

Each year ACU’s annual Principal Occupational Health, Safety and Wellbeing Survey provides a highly regarded snapshot, however gathering the data has long proven a headache for researchers, given the sheer amount they need to trawl through.

“It’s such a big project that it involves so many measured instruments, and we have always had issues in analysing large datasets, because there are so many factors,” Huang says.

“We haven’t a good way to analyse complex data, but with AI and the machine learning skills of the team, we now can.

“By using machine learning we can detect more accurately what factors actually lead to the principal turnover intention.”

That data suggest that up to 50 per cent of Australian principals will leave the profession before reaching retirement age.

The researchers say system-wide support, national or state-funded wellbeing programs, structured mentoring networks and policies that promote flexible work arrangement will help to restore work-family balance.

“… many states are doing it already. For example, Victoria has been implementing what they call ‘school community safety orders’,” Huang says.

“We are partnering with them and we’ve done a report based on their data, and it seems like the community safety orders did have a positive impact on the principal’s wellbeing.

“… the principals have indicated that they support this and they want the system to continue.”

The researchers also recommend leadership coaching and mentoring to help principals build self-efficacy and develop more adaptive coping strategies.

Using regular feedback cycles, staff recognition, and shared goal setting can strengthen a sense of purpose.

Formerly a languages teacher before entering academia and working on her PhD, Huang’s research largely involves teachers, their wellbeing and self-efficacy and their impact on student outcomes as well as their motivational factors with their teaching practice.

Despite what appears to be a challenging outlook for principals, she says for most there is great reason for optimism.

“From years of the data we’ve seen, the stress and also the demands are always there, but one good thing we’ve seen from the principal data is that most of them are highly resilient.

“With regards to their turnover intentions, if we dive deeper, we will find out that some of them might indicate that they want to leave their current job, but that they would stay in the education sector, or might move to another school.

“So they still love their job, basically, it’s just maybe the environment they are in at the moment is not great for them and that’s why they want the change.

“Most principals love their job … so, yeah, I would be very positive about the future.”

This year’s Principal’s Health and Wellbeing Report celebrates 15 years of data collection. It’s out on March 3O.