This weekend, second-level school principals hold their annual conference. Morale is low and many are frustrated by the impossible range of demands placed upon them. Kathryn Holmquist, Education Correspondent reports

Who would want to be a secondary school principal? The job involves constant paper-chasing, social work, staff relations and responsibility for legal and legislative issues as well as run-of-the mill problems such as getting the boiler fixed.

The principal may be squeezed between an inexperienced board of management and a staff divided by labour disputes. And then there are the parents, demanding that their children get services promised to them in legislation, but which remain pie in the sky due to lack of resources. Add to that the changing nature of Irish society and issues of equality in religion, gender, race, family status and disability and the result is a complex leadership challenge.

"It is, at times, the most frustrating job that you can ever imagine," says Mary McGlynn, director of the National Association of Principals and Deputy Principals (NAPD). She took up the director's post after 30 years at Mount Anville, where she was a teacher, deputy principal, and from 1990-1999, principal. Being a principal working with young women as they tussled with the big issues of their lives was fulfilling and a great joy, something McGlynn still misses.

In her new role, however, she has found that most principals are frustrated by the impossible demands placed on them. She says that principals take the job believing that their key role will be educational policy, supporting teachers and enabling teaching and learning. What they find is that they have to be accountants, administrators, lawyers, social workers and diplomats. Rarely do they get time to explore educational policy, discuss it with their teachers, and investigate new ways of learning.

In addition, principals are now being named as the responsible individuals in legislation on attendance and related issues. Considering the lack of resources for schools in terms of psychological support, the new People with Disabilities Bill cannot be fully implemented. Principals fear that parents' expectations are being raised by the legislation, and that they will be blamed when resources are not there to make aspirations reality.

"We have already been through a punishing period," says McGlynn, of the past three years since the substitution and supervision dispute began, only to be replaced by the Junior Cert science controversy.

In many schools this term, principals are dealing with a situation where TUI teachers are introducing the new Junior Cert science syllabus while ASTI teachers refuse to do so. This means that in some schools, a portion of students are doing the new syllabus while others are not. It's only a matter of time before students and parents start asking why.

This is only one of the industrial relations problems that principals have to deal with. The NAPD is by definition non-political and refuses to side with any union. Its job is to inform and encourage best practise in teaching and to keep schools running, despite conflict.

"The fact that schools did not close down during the dispute over substitution and supervision is a tribute to my colleagues who, in the face of relentless industrial action, did such a good job that the general public had no idea that there were major problems on the floor in schools," says McGlynn.

"Principals and deputy principals kept schools open at huge personal cost in terms of human relationships and the ongoing conflict from which problems inevitably arise. The principals had to bring in outside people to substitute and supervise and professional conflict resulted."

The major mistake was to lump substitution and supervision into the same package, McGlynn believes. Supervision by non-teachers in the schoolyard can work well, but substitution is another issue. Untrained people are unlikely to be able to keep second-level classes under control, much less teach them. Principals were alert to the implications of having well-meaning, although untrained, adults in charge of classrooms. It sometimes took five untrained people to do the work of two trained teachers, and principals had to constantly keep an eye on things.

When the dispute was over, principals and deputy principals expected recognition. They got compensation of €5,000 each per school (before tax) to be divided between the principal and deputy principal. It was a sum that the Joint Managerial Body described as "derisory" considering that principals had kept schools open for 12 months at the height of the conflict. Principals saw this as further evidence of the Department of Education and Science's lack of regard.

Morale plummeted, and continues to be at a low ebb. A principal's job is to lead parents, teachers and students. The purpose of school is not just to educate in the academic sense, but to form the values of individuals. Yet the values of school and of society are not necessarily the same, says Michael McCann, president of the NAPD. There are intrinsic moral contradictions in secondary education that make the leadership role difficult. For example, society wants schools to be inclusive and non-competitive, while the very nature of the Leaving Cert is competition.

This weekend in Galway, the NAPD will be talking about some of these issues at its conference, Creating the Inclusive School. Principals will consider how to implement legislation, such as the Equal Status Act 2000, as well a discussing the implications of the Education for Persons with Disabilities Bill 2003.

The education system had little statutory regulation before 1998, but the picture has changed dramatically in the past five years. While principals welcome the replacement of pious aspirations with legislation outlining the rights and entitlements of children, they are also experiencing a state of fear.

"What is extremely frightening is the concomitant statutory obligation being placed specifically on the principal in recent legislation," says McGlynn. "To my knowledge no other individual in any profession in the public or private sector is so singled out under statute. Is a 24-hour day envisaged to enable principals to fulfil these statutory requirements? Where are the support systems required on every level?"

The agenda of the NAPD is to make Government and boards of management realise that principals cannot implement the new legislation without support and resources. For example, the Education Welfare Act promised welfare officers who would help keep young people in school. Yet most schools do not have these welfare officers and, meanwhile, resource teachers are harder to get.

"Colleagues in other countries with long experience of statutory requirements warn of the dangers of excessive legislation and regulation," says McGlynn. "This is particularly reflected at school level where legislation can sap the life blood out of creativity and marginalize the focus on matters educational." There can be nothing more frustrating than being given the duty of care, by legislation, to offer children with special needs an optimal educational environment, while at the same time being denied the resources required to achieve this.

"There's an element of cynicism in Government that allows legislation to be enacted even though it cannot be implemented," McGlynn believes.

Again and again, the Government enacts legislation which cannot be followed through because no one has addressed the consequences. It's a situation that makes the principal's job one of the most frustrating in education.