School principals are facing growing pressure as social media scrutiny, formal complaints and demands for documentation reshape relationships between schools and parents, new Griffith University research has found.
The study, based on interviews with 14 Australian primary school leaders in Queensland and New South Wales, examined the changing emotional and ethical demands of school leadership.
Lead author Dr Carolyn Wade, from Griffith Institute of Educational Research, said school leaders were increasingly required to demonstrate, document and defend the care they provided to students and families.
“School leaders are finding that care is no longer just about the relationship they have with a parent or family; increasingly, they have to demonstrate, document and defend that care,” Dr Wade said.
The research found parents can communicate and mobilise through digital networks, while school leaders remain bound by professional obligations, including confidentiality and privacy requirements.
According to the study, disagreements can quickly become formal complaints, requiring school leaders to gather evidence, write reports and involve HR or senior administrators.
As a result, leaders reported documenting more of their everyday interactions with parents, including positive interactions, because they could not know whether a conversation might later become the subject of a complaint.
“The irony is that systems designed to protect fairness can sometimes make genuine relationships harder to maintain,” Dr Wade said.
Digital pressure
School leaders interviewed for the research described parent Facebook groups, WhatsApp chats, TikTok videos and online reviews as spaces where school decisions could be rapidly discussed, reframed and judged by audiences beyond the original interaction.
One principal described a situation that began with angry comments on Facebook and escalated within a day into discussion of a protest at the school gate.
The principal said the protest was organised through a parent Facebook group after the school refused to change its rules.
The research found that school leaders were responding by attempting to establish greater control over their time and emotional energy. Strategies included switching off notifications, avoiding social media and establishing clearer working hours.
Co-author Natalie Thackwell, a lecturer in Griffith University’s School of Education and Professional Studies, said such boundaries should not be interpreted as a reduction in care.
“Setting boundaries is actually a way of protecting the capacity to care,” Ms Thackwell said.
“If leaders are expected to be constantly available, constantly responsive and constantly prepared to defend themselves, there is a real risk that the relational side of education gets squeezed out.”
Dr Wade said parent engagement remained important, but the emotional and ethical work involved in maintaining relationships between schools and families needed to be recognised.
The research paper, From call-out to complaint: the care work of school leaders in asymmetrical educational relations, has been published in the International Journal of Leadership in Education.