School Spirit

I read an article today in the current edition of the Herald Sun talking about the number of women now in principal positions in Victorian government schools. Seems that, for the first time, more than half of the principals in Victorian government schools are now female. Well, to be totally precise, 50.9% of them are female. So, yes, there are more female principals than male principals, but it’s pretty close, eh?

I suppose the article jumped out at me today for two reasons. Firstly, we’ve had a change of principal ourselves for this year, and yes, she’s a woman and she’s replaced the man who held the job for 13 years before her after his retirement. That’s all well and good, but to be honest, I’d never really thought about the gender change in the role until this article popped up in the paper. Which probably leads on to the second reason this article popped out at me anyway.

It never even occurred to me that people would keep track of the balance of men and women in principal roles! Yet another apparently important statistic about the profession I was blissfully unaware of! Why hadn’t I thought about it before, I was thinking to myself. Because, I replied with a shrug (I shrug a lot at stuff like this), there’s a bucketful of other things I need to concentrate on first, eh?

It’s good news that there’s real balance in the roles now, don’t get me wrong. From my own point of view, if there’s a woman or a man in the principal and leadership roles at this stage, it makes no matter provided it isn’t me! I was asked the other week by our principal if I was interested in leadership opportunities and various related options in the near future and I pretty well laughed and implies ‘you’ve gotta be kidding me!’ Knowing how I organise my room, my kids and myself, I know I’m better suited in the classroom with 25 kids rather than organising 350!

I can’t see the top of my desk already after four weeks! I’d lose my office if I was a principal!

The other little statistic that slightly surprised me was the balance of female and male teachers in the state. I know it’s imbalanced, but I was surprised the percentage was still as high as it apparently is. One in five teachers are male. I thought it would have been lower. Again, this is from my own experiences, which involve two schools in one country town, not 1500 government schools across the entire state! We’ve got four males on staff (all classroom teachers) out of a collection of 16 grades and three specialists.

Hey… that’s four out of 19… which is pretty well one out of five. Hmm… guess I shouldn’t have been surprised after all!