China’s School Leadership: An Overview

The differences between school leadership in China and in other countries, especially in Western countries, can be largely attributed to their different sources of school leadership knowledge and different external and internal institutional environment for school leadership. To understand how China’s school leadership unfolds in day-to-day practice and what knowledge underpins its leadership practice, it is essential to figure out the sources of China’s school leadership knowledge and to examine the educational administration system and the school leadership system of China.

in Protestants-founded schools increased from 5,975 to 245,049 between 1876 and 1920 (see secondary schools in China was 6,890 and the number of Roman Catholics-owned primary and secondary schools in China was 6,133 (Dong et al., 1985, p.377). With the burgeoning of Christian-founded schools, the practical knowledge of Western school leadership and management inevitably introduced to the leadership work place in China though the school leadership knowledge in Western countries remained itself in "the prescription era" at that time. As a part of Source: Chen (1979, p. 283) that "the school principal should be a Chinese citizens, or a school must add a Chinese vice principal if the school has already had a foreign principal…The quota of membership of school board for Chinese members should be more than half if a school has its school board." (Yang, 2010). This policy resulted in the emergence of hundreds of Western trained Chinese principals or vice principals who worked in Christian-owned schools and applied Western leadership knowledge in their day-to-day practice. In another development, a batch of Christian-owned, Protestants-owned in particular, institutions of higher education successively established during the first quarter of 20 th century. These colleges and universities had significant and profound influence on the development of modern Chinese higher education during the first four decades of 20 th century even though they were decomposed and integrated into various schools/colleges or departments of other Chinese universities in 1950s (see Table 1.1). Not exaggeratively, quite a Indemnity and set up similar programs to support talented Chinese students to study in their universities while rest of powers were respectively remitting parts of the Indemnity to support banking, industry as well as railway construction in China. One of the outcomes of the "remit movement" yielded the first wave of Chinese students to study in Western, particularly American universities. By 1949, it was estimated that 15,000-20,000 Chinese had studied in American universities and about 1,000 Chinese had studied in British universities (Wang, 2000;Li, 2004).
Most of Chinese students who returned from Western universities played key roles in founding departments of Mathematics, Science, and Social Sciences (including Education) in Chinese universities. Eighty percent presidents of Chinese universities at the time were graduated from American universities (Li, 2003;Jiang & Xu, 2007). Meanwhile, not a few returned students founded schools at primary and secondary level and served as principals at the schools. Hence, both the practical and theoretical knowledge of school leadership with Western philosophy and methodology was spontaneously introduced to China by these returned students. On the other hand, more than ten books on school management and educational administration authored by Western scholars, such as The Public School Administration by E.P. Cubberley, was translated into Chinese and used as textbooks for university students studying in the field of education and for the trainees at teacher training institutions during the first half of the 20 th century. Most of the translators were also the returned students (Hou, 2001;Zhang, 2015). The second wave of Chinese students to pursue overseas education emerged in the early 1980s after Chinese government decided in 1978 to take the reform and opening-up policy. Statistics from 1978 to 2007 showed that the number of Chinese who had experience of overseas study was 1210,000 and 26 percent of them (320,000) had returned China (Yuan et al., 2008). A part of returned students and young scholars who had studied in the field of educational administration at the North American, Australian and European universities later became key faculty members of educational administration in Chinese universities. They acted, more or less, as disseminators of Western knowledge on school leadership.

The practical knowledge of school management from Soviet Union
The knowledge of school management spread from Soviet Union to China by direct and indirect ways during the early 1950 to the year of 1960 (In 1960, Soviet government withdrew all experts from China). Soon after the People's Republic of China (P.R.C) was founded in 1949, the wave of Chinese seeking to study in Western countries went down sharply for ideological reason.
Instead, the primary destination of overseas study for Chinese students was changed to the Soviet Union because the Soviet Union at the time was seen as a prime example of the most successful and advanced socialist country in the world. From early 1950s to the year of 1960, 8,310 government-funded Chinese students were sent to Soviet universities as degree-seeking or non-degree-seeking students They not only studied in various fields at Soviet universities but learned a lot of practical knowledge of management by the organized visits of Soviet primary and secondary schools, factories, and local communities during weekends and university vacations (Liu, 2009;Bai & Liu, 2016). In the same period, some 7,000 Chinese engineers and technicians were sent to the Soviet Union to acquire experience of modern industry and management in Soviet factories (Meisner, 1977;Zheng, 2009 (Mao,1966, p. 288): The world is yours, as well as ours, but in the last analysis, it is yours. You young people, full of vigor and vitality, are in the bloom of life, like the sun at eight or nine in the morning. Our hope is placed to you. …The world belongs to you. China's future belongs to you.
It is clear that Chinese government had high expectations for the students and engineering technical personnel trained by Soviet Union. In fact, not a few students and young engineers later took leadership positions in all professions and trades of China. The most prominent example is former Chinese President Jiang Zeming and former Chinese Premier Li Peng who were trained in Soviet Union in 1950s. The knowledge brought back by Soviet-trained personnel, as it should be, influenced on Chinese leadership pattern in various fields. If this was only seen as indirect influence on China's school leadership, then the movement of learning from the education of Soviet Union (hereafter called "learning-Soviet-movement") was definitely the direct impact on the school management of China. The "learning-Soviet-movement" began from December 1949 when the 1st National Congress of Education was held in Beijing and called on Chinese education to borrow the advanced educational experience from Soviet Union. Following the National Congress of Education, the "learning-Soviet-movement" was pushed by relevant policies and government measures in three aspects of education restructuring, educational theory introduction, and approach to school management. In the early 1950s, the government set out the process of education restructuring by taking the education of the Soviet Union as an example. According to the Decision by the State Council of the Central People's Government regarding School System Reform issued by the State Council in 1951, the existing school system of 6-3-3(6 years primary,3 years lower secondary, and 3 years upper secondary) was changed to Soviet like 5-3-3 (5 years primary,3 years lower secondary, and 3 years upper secondary). The State Council also decided to establish a centralized system of educational administration and carry out the unified programs, unified syllabus, and unified textbooks in China's school education, which was obviously copied from the Soviet Union (State Council, 1951). Secondly, seven Soviet senior experts of education were invited as educational consultants to the Ministry of Education, P.R.C. The consultants provided a wide range of consulting service by introducing Soviet experience and providing professional advice and suggestions to educational issues discussed at ministerial meetings, giving lectures and handling training programs for local education system leaders, school principals and teachers, and assisting faculty members of education at universities to develop textbooks through their inspection tours or regular visits of various provinces of China. Another 67 Soviet experts were invited in the same period to China to give lectures or hold training programs in Chinese universities (Zhou & Xu, 2002;Gu, 2004). On the other hand, 107 monographs and textbooks of education authored by Soviet educationists were translated into Chinese and published in China from 1950 to 1956. Among these 107 books, there were 12 monographs or textbooks titled School Management (Hou & Shi, 2013). With the advisory and training activities, the Soviet 3C and 2P pedagogy (teacher-centered, textbook-centered, and classroom teaching-centered with laying stress on lesson plan and planned lesson) was widely disseminated and applied in Chinese school context (Zhou & Xu, 2002;Huang, 2010). Thirdly, the widely disseminating Soviet theory of education and the frequent field observation and advisory comments of Soviet experts brought intense impact on Chinese school management at the time. As one of the consequences of the "learning-Soviet-movement", both the pattern of school management and the conceptual framework and knowledge system underpinned management practice were shaped by Soviet educational experts. The influence of Soviet knowledge still works today though the close relationship between China and the Soviet Union was finished and the "learning-Soviet-movement" was terminated in 1960 when the Soviet Union decided to withdraw all experts from China. For example, the emphasis of principal's regular participation in classroom observation or collective teaching study is too often recognized today as a part of indigenous tradition of Chinese instructional leadership at schools, but it is actually the legacy of the "learning-Soviet-movement" though it was a bit revised later in Chinese leadership practice. Finally, it is noteworthy that one of the remarkable features of Soviet knowledge of school management was primarily concerned with specific knowledge and skills encompassing process and aspects of school operation aside from arguing and elaborating the communist philosophy on education. For example, the way of school enrollment, class grouping and class size setting, teacher team building, process supervision on classroom teaching, library and archives management, utilization and maintaining of school equipment and facilities, and the format of school report with statistics were described and discussed in details in the chapter "School Management and Leadership" of I.A. Kairov Pedagogy (Kairov, 1957), the best known and most widely circulated Soviet textbook of education in China in 1950s 5 . However, some elements of contemporary school leadership, such as setting direction, defining school vision, developing strategic plan, building learning community, enriching school-based curriculum, building good relationships with local community and wider society etc., were neglected in Kairov's School Management and Leadership. By and large, the knowledge introduced into China from the Soviet Union at the time was limited to practical knowledge of school routine management.

Leadership Tenets and Principles of CPC
The Communist Party of China (CPC) has been the only ruling party since the founding of People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1949. In the past seventy years, the leadership tenets and principles of CPC has been embedded in government policies about school education, the programs for school leadership appraisal, as well as training programs for school principals.
Therefore, it is no surprising that the leadership tenets and principles of CPC can be viewed as one of knowledge sources of China's school leadership.

The Leadership Tenets
The leadership tenets of CPC were created and built chiefly by Mao Zedong who was one of the  (Xi, 2014). In explanation of the concept of seeking truth from facts, Mao Zedong said, "'Facts' are all the things that exist objectively, 'truth' means their internal relations, that is, the laws governing them, and 'to seek' means to study. We should proceed from actual conditions inside and outside the country, the province, county or district, and derive from them, as our guide to action, laws which are inherent in them and not imaginary, that is we should find internal relations of the events occurring around us." (Mao,1966, p. 231-232). As one of the tenets of the "Party's thinking, working and leading approach" (Xi, 2014, p. 27), the concept of seeking truth from facts encourages Chinese leaders at different levels to attach importance to the method of investigation and study in leadership practice. Mao Zedong once argued that everybody at any levels of leadership should investigated conditions at the lower levels when he/she engages in practical work. "You can't solve the problem? Well, get down and investigate the present facts and its past history! When you have investigated the problem thoroughly, you will know how to solve it. Conclusions invariably come after investigation, and not before." (Mao, 1966, p. 233).This argument is popularly summed up as a saying of "no investigation, no right to speak" in Chinese leadership practice, including school leadership practice. When Mao Zedong described the mass line, the second leadership tenet of CPC, he asserted that "in all practical work of our Party, all correct leadership is necessarily 'from the masses, to the masses'. This means: take the ideas of the masses (scattered and unsystematic ideas) and concentrate them (through study turn them into concentrated and systematic ideas), then go to the masses and explain these ideas until the masses embrace them as their own, hold fast to them and translate them into action, and test the correctness of these ideas in such action…so as to form correct ideas of leadership---such is the basic method of leadership." (Mao, 1966, p.128) In his comment on the tenet of the mass line in 2014, Xi Jinping referred it as CPC's lifeline and a cherished tradition that enables CPC vitality and combat capability and called on to implement it in all leadership practices (Xi, 2014).As for the concept of independence, it won't be discussed in this book because it is the tenet of CPC regarding the diplomatic relations with other countries.

Leadership principles
The "principles" here refer to the key principles underpinning leadership approach of CPC.
Among the principles, one of most frequently mentioned principles is democratic centralism. Mao Zedong expounded his view on democratic centralism that "within the ranks of the people, democracy is correlative with centralism and freedom with discipline. They are the two opposites of a single entity, contradictory as well as united, and we should not one-sidedly emphasize one to the denial of the other. Within the ranks of the people, we cannot do without freedom, nor can we do without discipline; we cannot do without democracy, nor can we do without centralism. This unity of democratic and centralism, of freedom and discipline, constitutes our democratic centralism. Under this system, the people enjoy extensive democracy and freedom, but at the same time they have to keep within the bounds of socialist discipline." (Mao, 1966, p. 254-256) In leadership practice, the democratic centralism is typically embodied in a leadership method so-called collective leadership. Mao Zedong pointed out, "the Party committee system is an important Party institution for ensuring collective leadership and preventing any individual from monopolizing the conduct of affairs….All important problems (of course, not the unimportant, trivial problems, or problems whose solutions have already been decided after discussion at meetings and need only be carried out) must be submitted to committee to discussion and the committee members present should express their views fully and reach definite decisions which should then be carried out by the members concerned." (Mao, 1966, p. 104-105) In the process of decision making at the committee meetings, the democracy or freedom refers to the views expressed fully by all members while the centralism refers to the right and responsibility of the secretary, the chairperson of the committee, to synthesize and sum up the views of members after their discussion. However, the relation between the secretary and the committee members is one in which the minority must obey the majority at the final decision made by voting. Then the minority must support the final decision passed by the majority. If necessary, the minority can bring up the matter for reconsideration at the next meeting, but apart from that it must not act against the decision in any way. In this respect, discipline means that both the members and the secretary must obey such a rule (Mao, 1966). As a matter of course, this principle has profound influential on school leadership practice and carried through the process of school decision making in China.

Educational administration system
In China, the educational administration system has the most direct and powerful influence on the school leadership practice. By examining the four-tier system of administration and the autonomy and accountability maintained for school leadership, it is believed that one can have a general understanding one of the most influential aspects of school leadership's external environment in China.

A four-tier system of administration
The

Autonomy and accountability for school leadership
Although schools in China have been operating under a centralized system of educational administration thus far, decentralization has been one of the focal themes in the country's educational reform agenda in last three decades. As a result, primary and secondary schools have much more autonomy than 30 years ago. To make it easier to understand the status quo of school autonomy in China, the author chose three European economies, Germany, England and France as a comparison. The information provided in Table 1 there are three kinds of answers to each item: full autonomy, limited autonomy and no autonomy, but the proportion of the three kinds of answers is different. Taking the item "selection for teaching vacancies" as an example, 77.1% of the respondents said that they had no autonomy, which was consistent with the current policy that the recruitment of teachers was handled by the county education bureau /district education bureau (CEB/DEB). But why did 18.7% of the subsequent interview with some principals, it is learned that the different answers were largely due to the different management styles of some CEBs/DEBs. For example, the principals would regard that they had "limited autonomy" if a CEB/DEB respected individual schools' proposal for teacher recruitment which submitted in advance to the CEB/DEB. And a small number of prestigious schools, in some counties or districts school system, were often given priority to select the candidates they preferred. For the principals of these schools, they of course recognized that they had "full autonomy" in "selection for teaching vacancies" (Feng, 2018). This fact suggests that the "full autonomy", "limited autonomy" and "no autonomy" should not be seen as "categorical variable" respectively, but rather they should be seen as "continuous variable". With this in mind, the author believes that it is appropriate to use Mean (M) and Standard Deviation (SD) instead of Percentage (%) to present the status quo of school autonomy in China. By doing so, we got the results of the survey of Chinese principals shown in Table 1.4. It suggests that the public compulsory education schools (at the stage of ISCED 1 and 2) of China have greater discretion in making decisions regarding choice of teaching methods, setting internal assessment criteria of pupils, and operating expenditure while the schools have less discretion in making decisions on loans, leasing of school premises for out-of-hours activities, selection for teaching vacancies, dismissal of teachers, and choice of text books (see Table 1.4). In contrast with three European economies, China's schools have greater autonomy in using of private funds to employ teaching staff and non-teaching staff than the schools in Germany and France, while the autonomy of China's schools in these affairs is close to that of schools in England. On the other hand, China's schools have less autonomy in choice of text books, choice of teaching methods, criteria for grouping pupils for compulsory learning activities, and decisions about whether pupils should repeat a year than the schools in Germany, England and France (see Table 1.2 and 1.4). Perhaps, contrast between school autonomy in China and in the European economies can help us to get a rough profile of the autonomy for China's school leadership.
As the other side of the coin, school autonomy is always accompanied by the introduction of respondents say "limited autonomy" and even 4.2% say "full autonomy"? (see Table 1.3) By accountability for school leadership. In China, school evaluation is conducted each school year.
Despite numerous exceptions across the 31 PEDs and thousands of CEBs/DEBs within them, a three-step pattern of school evaluation prevails. As the first step of school evaluation, school leaders and their staff engage in annual self-reflection based on certain pre-established criteria formulated by local CEB/DEB and submit school self-evaluation report to the CEB/DEB. Secondly, it is the on-site evaluation of an expert team organized by the CEB/DEB, including listening to the school work briefing, classroom and other work place observation, examining school policy and managerial documents, interviewing with representatives of stakeholders, etc.
Finally, the experts share, at a feedback meeting, overall evaluation and detailed comments on school performance with the school leadership team and discuss the possible ways of school improvement in the future. The evaluation report worked out by the expert team will submit to the CEB/DEB. On the other hand, the leadership appraisal is also conducted by local CEB/DEB at the end of each school year. The leadership appraisal is a way by which a school leader's annual job performance and productivity are reviewed encompassing leadership capacity, personal morality and self-discipline, and work achievements. The outcome of leadership appraisal, together with school evaluation report, will be documented as one of key references to determine a leader's promotion, job rotation, demotion, and even termination in the future.

School leadership system
The current school leadership system in China is different from that in Western countries because of the influence of a fundamentally different cultural and political context, although the modern school leadership system in China was established by borrowing some relevant experience from Western countries. We are afraid that some peculiarities of China's school leadership system may be strange or even mysterious to outsiders. Because, in a large sense, it is hard to make out the year 1). The Lesson Preparation Group is responsible for ensuring the quality of teaching and learning of a subject by supervising performance of individual teachers at the same grade and organizing teaching study activities for teachers of the same subject at the same grade. So, it is an intermediary management between Teaching-Study Group and subject teachers. In practice, the organizational structure of schools is not entirely uniform in China, because every school has the right to arrange its own middle and lower management. However, the organizational structure most commonly adopted is shown in Figure 1.3.

Figure 1.3 Common organizational structure of a school
Note: STU= School Trade Union.
WF= Women's Federation at school level (WF is responsible for defending women's rights and interests, promoting equality between men and women, and also concerning about the welfare of children).
CY= The Communist Youth League (the student organization for secondary school students).
YP= Young Pioneers (the student organization for primary school students).
OME= Office for Moral Education ("Moral Education" is often used synonymously with "Civic Education"

Principal Responsibility System
The role of China's school principal over a substantial period of time had been an agent to convey the will of the superior authority and to fully implement government instructions on school education and seldom taken the responsibility for school development planning until the nation-wide educational reform was launched after the publication of the Decision of the CCCPC on the Reform of the Educational System in 1985. With the progress of the reform, the government both delegated part of power to schools in managing human resources, financial resources, teaching content and processes, and in developing school charter as well as intramural rules and regulations (Liu, 2005;Cao & Hui, 2009). The CCCPC called on for the first time in 1985 that the Principal Responsibility System (PRS) would be gradually adopted as school leadership system for all primary and secondary schools across the country (CCCPC, 1985). In1993 CCCPC and State Council reaffirmed that the PRS shall be adopted in primary and secondary schools (CCCPC and State Council, 1993). The PRS became the statutory leadership system for the compulsory education schools in 1986 when the Compulsory Education Law of the People's Republic of China clearly stated," A school shall adopt the principal responsibility system" (National People's Congress, 1986). Although the rationality as well as the appropriateness of the PRS has been questioned and challenged over the past 30 years (e.g. Feng, 2003;Chen, 2006;Sun et al., 2013;Wang & Lin, 2017), this system is likely to continue to be implemented since there would not be better system to replace it in the foreseeable future.
The framework of the PRS is made up of four pillars: the local education authority (i.e. CEB Interview 2018-Principal in Appendix B). But ten to twenty years ago, it was not easy for a principal to communicate directly with the CEB/DEB director since such a communication would have to be arranged by the director's office. In a sense, it can be seen as a sign of a reduction in the bureaucracy of the local education authority. Moreover, the emotional needs of principals are also respected by the local education authority. The CEB/DEB director sometimes takes the initiative to meet with a principal to give timely leadership advice and emotional support when the principal is confronting with a hard time and suffering from a frustration in his/her leadership practice.
Nevertheless, the local authority still maintains great substantive power in supervising and managing school leaders by school leadership accountability although the role of local education authority is not as strong as it used to be.

1.
Listening to the principal's report on the formulation or revision of the draft of the school charter, and put forward suggestions of amendments.

2.
Listening to the principal's report on school development plan, major reform initiatives, and solutions to major problems, and put forward suggestions of amendments.
quarter of the 20 th century, and two waves of Chinese to seek study in Western universities in the first half of the 20 th century and 1980s onwards (Feng, 2002;Dong, 1985 ;Mei, 1995 (Hallinger, 2003, p. 4). Regarding what is about "the school as an educational institution", there are conflicting assumptions between different sources of leadership knowledge. Some Western scholars tend to hold the assumption that a school ought to be a learning community or a community of practice (Sergiovanni, 2001;Leithwood et al., 2006;Hargreaves & Fink, 2009). They contended that "community building is must become the heart of any school improvement effort (Sergiovanni, 1994, p.xi)." And a community does not "require heroic or hierarchical leaders, but leaders who can help design a culture in which leadership is distributed in an emergent and benevolent way-so the community engages in robust dialogue, in an evidence-informed and experience-grounded manner, about the best means to promote the goals of deep and broad student learning for all" (Hargreaves & Fink, 2009). This Westernized assumption about what schools ought to be like, however, seems to be considerably discrepant from the Chinese assumption sourced from leadership knowledge of CPC.
As we all know, CPC is a party emerged and grew up from the revolutionary years as a highly disciplined and tight knit organization. Not unnaturally, "highly disciplined" and "tight knit" is viewed as key factors to ensure organizations, including school organization, to be successful.
Furthermore, a highly disciplined and tight knit school organization, based on the leadership perspective of CPC, would be most likely to need a heroic leader with strong leadership capacity to set school vision and to lead school members to fulfill the dreams and wishes of school stakeholders. This could be used to explain why it is so carefully for Chinese government to set since the founding of PRC in 1949 and incarnated, in a sense, a mind set as well as a set rigorous principles and procedures for school principal preparation and selection in China (cf. Chapter 2). For school leadership, the underlying assumption about the nature of school organization is so important that "purposes, data collection and analysis procedures, roles of participants, and the uses made of information all will vary depending on this assumption" (Leithwood et al., 2006, p. 17). If the leadership behavior shaped by the assumption based on CPC leadership knowledge worked well in any leadership contexts, it would be a lot simpler. Yet, the thing is not as simple as it seems to be. A school principal may find that it would lead him/her to a difficult situation if he/she holds the "highly disciplined" and "tight knit" perspective when he/she addresses the challenge emerging from the process of team building among professionals or teaching quality improvement. Thus, he/she may be going to adopt the leadership behavior based on the assumption of school as a community. However, most principals, superficially speaking, recognize a school as a professional community (see CSSLM2017-principals in Appendix A), but his/her actual leadership behavior may be still with the characteristics which is more fit for a "highly disciplined" and "tight knit" organization. In school leadership practice, one of possible outcomes of the tension caused by such conflicting assumptions and perspectives would decrease the coherence of leadership behavior and style.
The second focus of this chapter is the system of educational administration as well as autonomy and accountability for school leadership. China's school leadership is working within a four-tier administrative framework by which various political, economic and cultural demands and constraints are integrated into educational policies. Superficially speaking, the major task of school leadership under a centralized administrative system may be just to implement existing policies and regulations with little discretion. However, the degree of autonomy of China's schools seems not to be much lower than that of German, English and French schools (see Table 1.2 and 1.4). Rather, China's school even has more discretion than German, French schools in using of private funds to employ teaching staff and non-teaching staff, while the autonomy of China's schools in these affairs is close to that of schools in England. This fact reminds us that it would be questionable to examine the literature or analyze the data regarding China's school leadership by a linear way or with a stereotype about China's education. And, of course, the autonomy is accompanied by accountability for school leadership in China. The outcome of school evaluation together with the outcome of leadership appraisal will be significant influence on schools' social reputation and school leaders' personal career.
Finally, we explore the school leadership system of China by presenting the school organizational structure and examining the four-dimension-framework of the Principals Responsibility System. Although some peculiarities of China's school leadership system may be strange or even mysterious to outsiders, we believe that it is not very difficult to understand Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.