Mental health and wellbeing key focus at western NSW Primary Principals Association conference in Dubbo

Robyn Evans - president of the NSW Primary Principals Association, which represents 1,800 public primary school principals - said staff retention and access to professional development were some of the biggest challenges facing schools in the region.

Not one to dwell on the difficulties, Ms Evans said she's more interested in considering solutions.

"Nationally we're in a staffing crisis, so that's a challenge in itself," she told the Daily Liberal.

"But in regional, rural and remote areas it's especially about retaining people in those areas - attracting them and retaining them and also their spouses and children.

"One of the strategies that we're really interested in is 'grow your own', so people coming out of local schools and into local universities, and how that looks, so people stay with their families and friends and their connectedness."

During the conference - which took place at the Dubbo RSL club on Thursday, March 30 - principals and executive teachers from across western NSW took part in professional development workshops and listened to keynote speeches from mental health expert Mitch Wallis and broadcaster Yumi Stynes.

"It's all about connecting and networking, collegiality and building our capacity and the capacity of our executive," Anne Van Dartel, principal of Bunninyong Public School and president of the Dubbo Primary Principals council, said.

"It's also about working with the association and listening to their perspective and what we're doing to work together to address issues in our schools and make public education a wonderful place to be and create better outcomes for our students.

"We've had principals travel in from everywhere from Lithgow to Wanaaring. It allows us to not only share personally, but also to build connections and share teaching resources and ideas - and understand what's going on in different settings."

One key theme of this year's conference was mental health and wellbeing.

"Principal wellbeing and workforce wellbeing is a priority because what we do and how we model and how we operate impacts on our staff, our leadership teams, our students and our community broadly," said Ms Evans.

Ms Van Dartel said the mental health and wellbeing of principals is crucial as it has flown on effects for both teachers they lead and the students in their care.

"It's a bit like an oxygen mask in a plane. You have to have the oxygen mask on yourself before you can attend to others," she said.

"Self-wellbeing and self care are very important.

"Teachers and principals bring the weather with us and our classrooms need to be sunny places for the students that come in, and it's all about ensuring we have a climate in our schools that makes people welcome."

The conference also gave principals the opportunity to connect with each other and take part in professional development which is sometimes out of reach in more remote communities.

"Making sure our principals are connected to one another can be a challenge, so by offering these sorts of opportunities - where everyone's collectively together - is a really good opportunity to check in with each other, to share resources and to make those connections," said Ms Evans.

"One of the things we spoke about today and we reinforce constantly is that regional, rural and remote schools have different needs than metro schools and what that looks like and how we can make sure we have equitable resources and allocation."

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