Last week CyberHound Director of Marketing and Communications, Tony Dempsey, had the privilege to attend and present at the Australian Principals’ Federation (APF) AGM Event in Melbourne on Thursday 13 October. 

The event featured keynote presentations from the Federal Education Minister, Senator the Hon. Simon Birmingham, the Victorian State Education Minister, the Hon. James Merlino MP and Professor Bill Lucas from the Mitchell Institute.

The APF is working extremely hard to support Primary and Secondary Principals across Australia – helping them be recognised for the extremely important role they play in our children’s education.

From the outside, it can be easy to mistake the role of ‘School Principal’ as a prestigious but detached position, built around task delegation and the occasional conversation with parents. This couldn’t be further from truth.

Being the Principal of a school is increasingly becoming a near-impossible task. There are a number of factors that contribute to this, but here are three important ones:

1. The evolution of the Principal’s role from ‘Headmaster’ to essentially the CEO of a business means they have to do much more than they would have done 20 or 30 years ago;
2. The general perception that Principals need to be ‘across everything’ means that unrealistic expectations are often placed on them, increasing their stress; and
3. The increased reliance schools place on technology opens up a range of challenges that didn’t exist 10 years ago and can be very difficult to manage. Just some of the issues schools face today include sexting, easier access to inappropriate content, cyberbullying, predatory behaviour and youth radicalisation.

CyberHound is proud to work alongside the APF to help further the fantastic work they are doing to support Principals across Australia in their very important roles.