I used to send emails late at night and think I was being efficient.

I was clearing the inbox, getting ahead of tomorrow and making sure things were dealt with. I never thought I was asking anyone else to work the same hours.

Looking back, I am less certain about the message I was sending.

This Thursday I’ll be speaking at the National Education Summit in Melbourne, and that memory has brought me back to a question that has followed me through more than thirty years in education:

When did exhaustion become evidence that we care?

I know the rhythms of school life well. The quiet hour before anyone else arrives. The day that begins with a carefully written list and has completely rearranged itself by 9.15am. The conversation in the corridor that turns out to be more important than whatever was in the diary.

And I know how easily the working day stretches.

Schools are full of people who care deeply about what they do. It remains one of the things I love most about education. Teachers notice when a student is unusually quiet. Leaders remember when a colleague has something difficult happening at home. Someone stays behind because a young person needs another five minutes.

That generosity is one of our great strengths. It can also make it difficult to recognise when enough has become too much.

When long hours become normal

The Australian evidence gives us reason to pay attention.

The 2024 Australian Principal Occupational Health, Safety and Wellbeing Survey found that school leaders worked an average of 54.5 hours each week during term time. Almost four in five worked more than 50 hours, while more than a third worked 61 hours or more. The sheer quantity of work remained one of the major sources of stress.

When figures like these describe a profession rather than a handful of individuals, the explanation cannot simply be poor time management or inadequate personal boundaries. We have to examine the job itself.

I have nothing against 5am. Sometimes that early hour is the best part of the day. What concerns me is when 5am becomes the only way to keep up.

A principal may send an email before sunrise because it is the first uninterrupted moment available. The teacher receiving it may experience something quite different: perhaps this is what committed people are expected to do around here.

No instruction has been issued, yet a workplace norm may still be forming.

I understand that more clearly now than I did when I was leading schools. Culture is often created in the gap between what we intend and what other people experience.

But there is another side to this. It would be unfair to tell an exhausted principal simply to put the phone away.

School leaders are dealing with staffing pressures, increasingly complex student needs, community expectations, compliance requirements and multiple system priorities. Turning the phone off at six o’clock does not make the unfinished tasks disappear.

Sometimes there really is too much work.

Making the work more workable

If I had to identify one lever that deserves much more attention in our wellbeing conversations, it would be workload design.

Every time we add something, we should be willing to ask what can come away.

I think back to meetings I attended, and probably meetings I called, because that was simply what we did on a Tuesday afternoon. Reports continued because they had always existed. Capable people accumulated responsibilities because everyone knew they would get them done. New initiatives arrived while the old ones quietly remained.

None of those decisions seemed particularly significant on its own. Together they shaped what it felt like to work in the school.

That is where leaders have genuine agency.

We can ask whether every meeting still earns the time it consumes. We can identify the few priorities that genuinely deserve attention. We can protect periods when people are able to think without interruption, give staff greater discretion over how agreed goals are achieved, and stop rewarding our most dependable colleagues by continually giving them more to carry.

This is not glamorous wellbeing work. There is no new programme to launch.

It is the discipline of making the work more workable.

Schools cannot solve everything themselves. Systems carry responsibility as well. When a new requirement is introduced, there should be a serious conversation about what can stop. If we want school leaders focused on teaching and learning, their time has to reflect that priority. Sustainable leadership cannot depend indefinitely on good people finding another hour somewhere.

From coping to flourishing

This is why I keep returning to flourishing.

Coping tells us whether someone can continue functioning under pressure. A flourishing lens goes further. It asks whether the way work is organised allows people to remain purposeful, connected and effective over time, while retaining enough of themselves for the relationships and lives that exist beyond the school gate.

That does not mean education should become easy.

There will always be difficult conversations, unexpected crises and weeks when more is required of us. That comes with work worth doing. The concern is when the exceptional week quietly becomes the normal one.

So rather than beginning with another wellbeing initiative, I would begin with a conversation.

On Monday morning, sit with your leadership team and ask:

What are we asking people to carry that no longer needs to be carried?

Then listen carefully.

Perhaps it is a meeting. A report. A process that made sense five years ago. An expectation of immediate availability. Something small that has become part of school life simply because nobody has stopped to question it.

I still believe education is extraordinary work. I still believe it is worth giving ourselves to. I am simply less convinced that commitment should be measured by how much of ourselves the job consumes.

That is one of the conversations I want to continue at the National Education Summit in Melbourne this Thursday.

Before we ask educators to become better at carrying the load, perhaps our first responsibility is to look carefully at what we are asking them to carry.