Well-Led Schools

Only 57% of Australian school staff report that work positively affects their mental health, and 1 in 2 are currently experiencing burnout.

When I sat down to write the Staff Wellbeing Across Australia report, I originally set out to produce a concise 10-page summary. One hundred and ten pages later, the data made one thing undeniably clear: we cannot keep treating systemic workplace conditions as individual coping failures.

In this solo episode of the Well-Led Schools Podcast, I walk you through the key findings, surprising insights, and critical takeaways from our analysis of over 4,500 educators across ICSEA bands.

We move beyond broad national averages to examine the actual psychosocial hazards driving the erosion of morale in our schools, and more importantly, what staff are actually asking for to fix it.

In this episode, I share:
Why a short summary turned into an extensive national breakdown and the specific numbers that led to the deep dive into the state of staff wellbeing in each setting
How breaking data down by ICSEA bands reveals the true, nuanced reality of workplace stressors
Why resilience and wellbeing workshops and training ranked at the bottom of staff requests, and what educators actually want instead
An honest look at the demand, capacity, and leadership challenges in below average ICSEA secondary schools and specialist settings
Why 67% morale and 77% positive culture in one specific setting proves that workplace conditions are changeable
How moral injury and self-determination theory explain who is leaving the profession and why
How to take radical responsibility, conduct your own staff assessment, and use this report to drive meaningful change

LINKS AND RESOURCES
Read the full report: https://mailchi.mp/adriennehornby/band-report-full
Read the summary report: https://mailchi.mp/adriennehornby/band-report-summary

Connect with me via:
Website: adriennehornby.com.au
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/adrienne-hornby-a4126a205/
Email: hello@adriennehornby.com.au
School Partnerships: adriennehornby.com.au/school-partnerships/

Conditions in primary schools are more likely to be reported as positive according to our State of Staff Wellbeing in Australia report. Above-average ICSEA primary schools recorded the strongest results in the national dataset, with 67% of staff reporting high morale and 77% a positive culture. However, below-average ICSEA primary settings carry a very different load characterised by severe resourcing constraints, complex student behaviours and needs, and intense support demands.

But across every primary band, we see a common pattern where a school’s culture and overall wellbeing inevitably rise and fall with the person leading it. This leaves us with a critical systemic gap that is rarely funded, timetabled, or surveyed: who is holding the leaders?

This week I’m joined by Elsie Clelland, who spent more than thirty years in Western Australian education, including twenty as a principal across four primary schools and four very different regions. A Foundation principal of a brand-new school, WA Primary Principal of the Year, Harvard Fellow and former Executive Director, Elsie now works directly with school leaders through her consultancy, Flourishing Leadership, specialising in resilience first aid.

Elsie candidly shares what those twenty years cost her, unpacking how high visibility came at the expense of strategy and long hours, the warning signs she rationalised away, how unhelpful coping strategies crept in when no support structures were holding her, and how the fear of judgement prevented her from asking for help.

This conversation examines what it actually takes to build sustainable leadership practices while carrying heavy organisational weight.

IN THIS EPISODE:
Why highly relational leaders often default to being visible for everyone else, while neglecting their own capacity
How to release the unrealistic expectation of performing exceptionally across every domain at once
Why school leaders routinely run on empty, in ways they would never allow a car to run
What happens when unaddressed stress leads to hidden coping strategies and a culture of masking amongst principals
How practical boundaries actually work, and why advice like “just close your door” fails without context and self-management
How stepping off-site and giving yourself explicit permission to stop, reflect and seek support protects long-term leadership sustainability
The importance of establishing a trusted, peer network to debrief on challenges and who hears your real answer to “how are you going?”
Communicating boundaries to your community as a whole-school expectation, not a personal apology
How leveraging appreciative inquiry and highlighting existing wins helps protect staff morale and build organisational hope

“If anything in this episode raises something for you, support is available. Lifeline 13 11 14.

Connect with Elsie: 
Website: flourishingleadership.com.au/ 
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/elsie-clelland-4806222b1/

Connect with Adrienne:
Website: adriennehornby.com.au
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/adrienne-hornby-a4126a205

Staff in below-average ICSEA secondary schools reported the toughest conditions in the State of Staff Wellbeing in Australia report, with poor leader-staff communication at an average of 71%, staff shortages at 63%, and lack of trust amongst staff sitting at 58%.

The data tells a clear story of stacking stressors, incivility and leadership churn. In these complex environments, capable leaders are constantly being pulled into reactive mode, away from what their school needs most: relational connections.

But I am reluctant to encourage these leaders to “be more relational,” as the complexities in these schools make that part of the job more challenging. Instead, I want to explore real, practical ways to build relationships and trust amidst strain.

This week, as part of our Band 1H spotlight, I am joined by Sue Chandler, educational consultant, mediator and author of The Relational School.

Drawing on over three decades of experience across teaching, counselling, school leadership and conflict resolution, Sue partners with schools to design relational frameworks and build cultures where both wellbeing and engagement can thrive.

Together, we unpack why a relational culture in complex schools is part of the core infrastructure that everything else depends on. We explore why real cultural change doesn’t live in a wellness workshop, but in the small, repeated organisational moves leaders make every day.

IN THIS EPISODE
Why Sue rejects the term “behaviour management”, and what shifting “behaviour development” actually asks of school leaders
Why relying solely on restorative practice arrives too late if we fail to proactively solve the underlying problems driving behaviour
How staff exhaustion is directly fueled by bolting relational approaches onto fundamentally compliance-based systems
How to find the sweet spot by balancing high relationships with high accountability, rather than trading one for the other
Why the exact same relational skills must be applied consistently across students, staff and parents to build true whole-school alignment
How to build relational culture into a school’s architecture so it survives leadership churn and system disruption

About Sue Chandler
Sue Chandler is an education consultant and author of The Relational School. She works with schools across Australia to help leaders build cultures where relationships, professional thinking and organisational systems work together to support both staff and students. Sue is passionate about helping schools move beyond behaviour management towards lasting cultural transformation.

Connect with Sue Chandler:
Website: www.transformativeschools.com.au 
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/suechandler/
Email: sue@transformativeschools.com.au 

Connect with me via:
Website: adriennehornby.com.au
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/adrienne-hornby-a4126a205/
School Partnerships: adriennehornby.com.au/school-partnerships/

Most schools have spent years working on staff wellbeing. They’ve written policies and frameworks, funded programs, and scheduled wellbeing days. And yet the workers' compensation data reports that education now sits among the worst-performing sectors in the country for psychological injury claims, alongside healthcare and first responders.

In this episode, I sit down with Jason van Schie, organisational psychologist and founder of FlourishDx, to unpack why. Jason has worked in psychosocial risk management since 2007, in his words “before it became cool,” and he is one of the clearest voices in the country on what it takes to create work that is genuinely good for people - for staff’s wellbeing and efficacy, and the greater good of the school community.

Together, we name the shift schools are being asked to make from an ad-hoc wellbeing model (yoga, free coffee, the occasional wellbeing day) to a systems lens that looks at the design and conditions of the work itself. We dig into why prevention has to come before the wellbeing layer, why broad consultation and leader commitment are the heartbeat of the process, and why you cannot manage psychosocial risk without measuring it.

If you have ever run a staff survey and watched nothing change, or rolled out a wellbeing program that landed flat, this conversation explains what was missing and what to do instead.

Guest Resources
Flourish DX Academy  ISO 45003 Foundations Course: https://www.45003.org/enroll/1423388 
Psych Health and Safety Podcast: https://www.psychhealthandsafety.com/ 
PHSCON — Psych Health and Safety Conference: 8-9 September 2026, Hyatt Regency Sydney https://psychhealthandsafetyconference.com/ 

Connect with Jason van Schie
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonvanschie/ 
Website: https://flourishdx.com 

Connect with me via:
Website: https://adriennehornby.com.au
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adrienne-hornby-a4126a205/
School Partnerships: https://adriennehornby.com.au/school-partnerships/

Most school leaders understand that psychosocial safety is a legal obligation. Very few have figured out how to make it feel like anything more than a compliance activity. 

In this solo episode, I unpack the gap between obligation and opportunity, and what it actually takes to move psychosocial safety from a four-step process on a page to something genuinely woven into how a school leads, communicates and operates.

Drawing on data from almost 80 schools and thousands of staff, I walk through common psychosocial hazards in Australian schools, why they are connected rather than isolated, and why the four-step risk management process, while important, is actually the easiest part of the whole process.

The real work is not in the paperwork. It’s the leadership commitment and authentic ongoing consultation that determine whether any of it sticks.

What I cover in this episode:
What is missing from the four-step risk assessment process in many schools
The national data: the most common psychosocial hazards in Australian schools and why they compound each other
Why good communication underpins the entire process, and how to ensure your messaging lands
How to embed wellbeing into your school’s way of doing and not let it be an initiative layered on top of others
Leadership commitment as the foundation: why it falters, what it actually requires, and the personal and professional skills that make it land
Why the hardest feedback can be the most important data you will ever receive
What the Safe Work Australia Code of Practice actually requires of school leaders, and why most schools are not quite there yet

Resources and links mentioned:
Article: The Wellbeing Weave: The Three Phases of Addressing Staff Wellbeing in Well-Led Schools adriennehornby.com.au/the-wellbeing-weave-the-three-phases-of-addressing-staff-wellbeing-in-well-led-schools/  
Article: Embedding a Sustainable Wellbeing Ecosystem: The Key to Psychosocial Safety and Staff Wellbeing
adriennehornby.com.au/designing-a-sustainable-wellbeing-ecosystem-the-key-to-psychosocial-safety/  
Podcast: Creating a School Culture Where Staff Feel Seen, Heard and Valued with Daniela Falecki https://adriennehornby.com.au/creating-a-school-culture-where-staff-feel-seen-heard-and-valued-with-daniela-falecki-season-3-episode-10/
Waverley Christian School Case Study: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/adrienne-hornby-a4126a205_most-school-wellbeing-initiatives-fail-or-ugcPost-7465421290833805312-QVL9/?utm_source=social_share_send&utm_medium=member_desktop_web&rcm=ACoAADQvl1EBSRJtRkz0cewFH4TjXfHExS9B0F4

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