The Policy Regarding Principal Management

As we examined in Chapter 1, the principal plays so important role in school leadership under the Principal Responsibility System that they are inevitably viewed by China’s educational policymakers as key to success in school development and improvement.

The procedure of selecting reserve principals consists of five stages. The first stage is nomination in the light of the quota for the candidates of Reserve Principal by schools based on extensively staff opinions. At the second stage, the organization/personnel office of local education bureau examines the current performance and professional potential of individual candidates who are recommended by local schools. The examining is not merely to consult the candidates' professional files and records, but also to visit the candidates' work place and to interview with their colleagues. At the third stage, the organization/personnel office reports examining outcomes and presents a proposed list of qualified Reserve Principals to the leadership meeting of local education bureau to discuss and make decision. The proposed list of Reserve Principals has to be shown publicly at least for five working days at the web side of the education bureau and to collect possible feedback on individual candidates. The organization/personnel office must make a further investigation if there is negative feedback with substantial evidence towards a candidate though it rarely happens. As the last stage, the leadership meeting of the education bureau makes a final decision on the list of Reserve Principals and submits the list to superior authority for the record.

Pre-Service Training
After selection of reserve principals, the organization/personnel office of local education bureau is responsible to develop pre-service training programs for Reserve Principals. The training programs may be different from district to district depending on local specific expectations for principals. However, university-based training + work place learning (e.g. school leadership shadowing, one on one mentoring, etc.) is the popular approach at the moment.

Supervision
Reserve principal, as noted above, is a status of prospective candidate for principal or vice principal, rather than a substantive leadership post. A Reserve Principal is still working at his/her existing post (e.g. middle manager) while participating in the part-time training program for Reserve Principals. Both of his/her on job performance and performance in training are supervised by education bureau. The name list of reserve principals could be reshuffled after annual appraisal of Reserve Principals.

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The Policy Regarding Principal Management The length of duration from a "reserve" to "formal" principal is not fixed. It depends not only on individual reserve principals' performance but depends on various opportunities, such as the vacancies in principal/vice-principals posts in the district. No matter how long it takes before a Reserve Principal has an opportunity to get the post of principal or vice-principal, the official appointment won't be made until the Reserve Principal passes, again, the procedure of qualification reviewing, nominating, examining, discussion and preliminary decision making, publicity, and final decision.

Serving a Temporary Position [GUA-ZHI-DUAN-LIAN]
The to high-performing schools in the same district, where they will be trained by serving a temporary leadership position at the receiving schools and mentored by leadership team of the receiving schools. The performance of the trainees in the process of Serving a Temporary Position is supervised both by the education bureau of the sending district and the receiving schools. A final appraisal will be conducted upon the completion of Serving a Temporary Position. Based on the performance of individual trainees at their temporary positions, some excellent trainees will be promoted to higher-level positions overall arranged by the sending education bureau while others will return to their original positions at their home schools after completion of Serving a Temporary Position to wait for promotion chance in the future.
As a kind of field-based training, the emphasis of training content in Serving a Temporary Position, according to related policy, is not fixed but depends on whatever trainees' lack of (Organization Department of CCCPC, 1994CCCPC, , 2000. However, the heavy emphasis is always placed on practical leadership knowledge and management skills. The specific requirements for trainees in Serving a Temporary Position set out either by the education bureau of sending district or by the result of discussion between sending district and receiving schools. In an established case of Serving a Temporary Position in Hubei Province, for example, the sending district firstly stipulated a list of individual trainees' daily work at receiving schools in which the classroom observation, school policy documents study, interaction with teachers and students, seeking advice from their mentors, and self-reflection were included. Secondly, the trainees were required to plan and organize a school-wide event at their receiving schools to demonstrate their leadership capacity and management skills during the Serving a Temporary Position. Finally, they were required to submit a comprehensive work report to review and summarize the leadership knowledge and management skills acquired during the Serving a Temporary Position, and to plan some possible and feasible change in their future work after their Serving a Temporary Position (Qin, 2007). In addition to the requirements mentioned in the case of Serving a Temporary Position in Hubei Province, school data collection (e.g. school strategic plan, school yearbooks, school rules and regulations, working plans of subject teams, syllabuses of school developed curricular, school developed instructional materials, etc.), themed interview with staff, and personal journal during the Serving a Temporary Position are also the requirements for trainees in other cases of Serving a Temporary Position (Zhang, 2001;Tu, 2010;Zhao,2013).

Principal Career-ladder System [XIAO-ZHANG-ZHI-JI-ZHI]
Principal Career-ladder System [XIAO-ZHANG-ZHI-JI-ZHI]is a reformed rank system for principals emerged in mid 1990s in China. It is intended to establish a profession-oriented and performance-related career-ladder to promote the professionalization of principals.
In China, the role of principal is conventionally seen as a type of officials rather than professnk of principals is bound up with level and chy, the principals of key senior high schools were awarded the Division-Head rank while the principals of ordinary senior high schools, junior high schools as well as district central primary schools, and ordinary primary schools were respectively awarded the Deputy-Division-Head rank, Section-Head rank, and Deputy-Section-Head rank. When Chinese government decided to promote the professionalization of school leadership in 1990s, the conventional hierarchy for school principals obviously had become an obstacle. The major ionals. In the conventional hierarchy for principals, the ra size of their schools. Under this hierar maladies of the conventional hierarchy were identified as follows (Yuan, 1996;Yang,2006;Wang,2012; The Task Group of Shandong Institute of Administration, 2016; Wang, 2016): einforcing the consciousness that principals are officials rather than professionals. As a result, principals usually lack intrinsic motivation for professional development.
Principals mobility or rotation is difficult or even hindered because talented principals are only willing to move to higher ranks (being bound up with key senior high and district central primary schools) rather than to lower ranks (being bound up with ordinary and even disadvantage schools).
Hence, it is difficult to send a talented principal to disadvantage and low-performing schools.
It is not fair to those principals who have been working hard in disadvantage schools and making substantial contribution to their schools improvement though their school are still low-performing schools.
To improve the professionalism of principals, it was necessary to establish a profession-oriented and performance-related rank system for principals to replace the conventional hierarchy. In 1994, Education Bureau of Jingan District, Shanghai issued a local policy document titled Provisional Regulations of Jingan District on Principal Career-ladder System to replace the conventional hierarchy for school principals in the district (Yuan, 1996). It is known as the term Principal Career-ladder System (PCLS) was first officially used and also the first policy initiatives set out by a local education authority to develop and implement a district-wide profession-oriented and performance-related rank system for principals (Wang, 2012;Wang, 2016;Wang, 2017;Yuan, et. al., 2017). implemented in most provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities directly under the central government. However, there is no unified the PCLS across the country because the PCLS is actually a type of performance-related pay system. It is impossible for central government to establish a unified PCLS for principals all over the country since the principal salary system which set in terms of local consumption level is different from province to province, and even different from district to district.
To further explain the PCLS in detail, we take the PCLS of Shanghai as an example. Under the PCLS of Shanghai, the school principals are classified into a hierarchical rank system with five rank titles and eleven levels (see Figure 2.2).

Rank titles
Superfine P Senior P Middle P Junior P

Key Terms 53
Level C if they think that their performance is good enough. As candidates for Senior Principal, they will be evaluated and get the rank title of Senior Principal if they pass the evaluation. The rule of promotion from Level D to Level A of Senior Principal is almost same as promotion rule for Middle Principal. Although Senior Principals will be eligible to apply for the rank of Superfine Principal after two years working as Senior Principals, it is difficult for most of candidates to pass the strict evaluation because the quota of Superfine Principals is generally less than five percent of the total number of serving principals (SMEC, 2015a Commission. The framework of the criteria consists of three indicators and eight sub-indicators (see Table 2.2). The set. It is noteworthy that one of prerequisites for applicants is to have lessons in their schools and no less than two periods each week (SMEC, 2015a). It suggests that principals should never The separate themselves from classroom practice though principals core mission is school leadership.

Term-Accountability by Objectives [REN-QI-MU-BIAO-ZE-REN-ZHI]
Term-Accountability by Objectives [REN-QI-MU-BIAO-ZE-REN-ZHI] refers to the system to ensure a principal, in his/her leadership term, to take responsibility in setting appropriate objectives for his/her school development and leading school members to achieve the objectives, and the principal will be finally evaluated in the light of the extent of objectives achievement. In fact, the Term-Accountability by Objectives (TABO) is a system closely related to the PCLS in practice and is usually employed as one of supporting systems for PCLS.
Before 1980s, the position of principal in China was a de facto tenured position. At the time, once a person was appointed to the post of principal, there was no definite time limit for his position whether he did more or less and did well or badly. Namely, once a principal was appointed, he/she wouldn t be terminated until he/she retired or unless he/she was under extraordinary circumstances, such as committing a crime or coming down with severe illness.
Thus, the de facto tenured system for principals was increasingly inconsistent with the societal expectations for principals in the education reform launched in the mid-1980s in China. During the mid-1980s and the early 1990s, some education bureaus at district level in large cities took the lead in abolishing the de facto tenured system for principals by establishing a new system so-called TABO as an alternative to the old system (Ni, 1984;Liu ,1999 (Wang, 2004;Cao, 2006;Jia, 2009;Zhang, 2010 Therefore, the TABO has become a policy requirement that must be implemented since 2017. In the implementation of TABO, local education authorities usually make some corresponding provisions and detailed requirements. In Tanggu (Liu, 1999). The most important part of the TABO is perhaps the final comprehensive appraisal of the principals performance at the end of their leadership term. The final appraisal will determine whether they can get reappointment for next term or have to leave the position of principal, and whether they can promote to higher rank or stay at their original rank.

Reporting Performance and Integrity [SHU-ZHI-SHU-LIAN]
In the term Reporting Performance and Integrity [SHU-ZHI-SHU-LIAN performance leadership performance integrity leader s personal integrity Reporting Performance and Integrity is one of phases in the procedure of LTA, in which the school leadership team members respectively report their leadership performance and personal integrity to the LTA task group organized by local education bureau(usually composed of officials from education bureau and the professionals from district-level supporting institutions), and all school staff and the representatives of other stakeholders. A normal Reporting Performance and Integrity begins with the task group s introduction of the purposes of this LTA, the ways of information collection, and the procedure to the LTA. Following the introduction, the principal as the chief leader of leadership team represents the team to report the school s progress and achievements in achieving desired goals and objectives. After the principal s repot, other members of the leadership team, one by one, report respectively how they fulfilled their leadership responsibilities, how they contributed to achieving desired goals and objectives of the school, and how they kept their personal integrity and didn t abuse their authority in their leadership practice.
Commonly, the principal s report of leadership team s performance should focus on how accomplishment of the objectives regarding student outcomes, teacher development and team building, building of staff ethics and code of conduct, campus construction and environment creating, campus safety, and school policy and regulations development while the focal issues of leaders personal integrity is concerned with the appropriateness of school funding allocation, reception costs, school vehicles using, major equipment purchasing, and infrastructure maintenance and renovation (Fu & Li, 2004;Shen, 2005; GY County Education Bureau, 2017). Jiaoxue Yu Guanli [Instruction and Management] 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.