School Principals and Job Stress: The Silent Dismissal Agent and Forgotten Pill in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 4

The quest to ensure the provision of quality education in schools has taken a global dimension with the introduction of the sustainable development goals (SDGs) by the United Nations. Goal 4 of the 17 SDGs titled “quality education” seeks to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities. Consequently, the notion that leadership in schools is gradually being established as a complex enterprise to work as school principals are continually battling with the demands the job makes on them had been strengthen. Unfortunately, strategies designed to ensure the achievement of this goal regrettably was silent on the issue of job stress among the main policy implementers at the school level—the school principal. This paper, therefore, attempts to critically examine the issue of job stress among school principal and offer some recommendations to reduce the phenomenon. It is guided by the following research questions: 1. What are the sources of job stress among school principals? 2. What is the effect of job stress on the performance of school principals? and 3. What new steps could be taken to reduce job? In conclusion, the paper recognized that work load, lack of resources, and support rated higher on the scale of stressors and so recommended the reduction in the work load of school principals and part shared among deputies and delegated staff in the school. The paper thus disapproves of the job stress avoiding strategies being used by the principals—changing job, refusing to take up the position, and quitting the job. In the future, the paper suggested further investigation into school principals’ roles, practices, effect of work conditions, and resilience.