the Ministry of Education assigns them to
schools. The ministry
may transfer principals
periodically among
schools and sometimes
into the Ministry of
Education itself as part
of Singapore’s continual
improvement strategy.
The principals’ performance is evaluated
against measures that
are common for all
principals and against
other standards that
reflect progress toward
their particular school’s
vision.
Ontario developed a coherent leadership development strategy that changed the function of the principal from administrator to instructional leader.
Shanghai’s Leadership
Teams
Shanghai is the leading
education province in
China and the top performer on the 2009 PISA
assessments. The Shanghai Education
Commission is responsible for basic,
higher, and vocational education and
lifelong learning for 23 million people.
School principals are employees of the
commission.
Thirty years ago, principals simply
followed instructions from the commission. Today, they have a more
demanding role—to meet the needs of
students and communities; encourage
professional development within the
school; and establish good relationships with communities, the media, and
other schools. Schools in Shanghai are
large, typically serving several thousand
students. Each school has a leadership
team that includes the principal and
several directors who are in charge of
teaching and learning, student affairs,
and logistics.
The principal’s role focuses on the
overall performance of the school, but
much of the instructional leadership
of the school is carried out by teaching
and research groups. Teaching or lesson
groups are composed of teachers who
teach the same subject at the same
grade level. They meet for up to two
hours weekly to plan lessons together,
examine student progress, observe one
another’s classrooms, and provide con-
structive feedback.
Ontario’s Focus on Capacity Building
After a decade of educational stagnation and conflict in the 1990s, a new
provincial government was elected
in Ontario in 2004. The government
brought together all stakeholder groups
and initiated major education reforms
that sought to increase mastery of literacy and numeracy in the elementary
grades, raise high school graduation
rates, and reduce achievement gaps
among its highly diverse population of
2 million students. The initiative also
