Abstract:

The international, federal, regional and local strategic documents in the field of education are considered as the basis for the formation of the ‘road maps’ for the development of the education systems – whether those be of the international level, or the level of the development program of a particular school. Russian Ministry of Education sets the target indicators and effectiveness criteria for all aspects of performance of the state educational institutions. In line with those federal requirements and the relevant follow-up ‘methodological recommendations’, the regional regulatory frameworks and the administrative acts of the municipal authorities are being developed locally in order to evaluate the efficiency of the local school principals. The latter are understood and recognized as ‘guarantor’ of the implementation of the strategic goals and objectives of the regional and municipal policies in the field of education.

In 2018-2021, in the Russian regions, the educational authorities were active in their further legislation development. What they report facing primarily were both the administrative and the methodological problems with the design of the evaluation procedures and KPIs for school principals.

The authors resorted to the content analysis of 265 Russian regional and municipal ‘road maps’ so that to reveal the key structural indicators of the effectiveness in the field of the general education. It became apparent that the national educational objectives proclaimed in the ‘Education’ National Project (2019-2024) are, typically, not taken into account – either on the regional, or the municipal levels of evaluation. Moreover, extensive regional practices of school heads evaluation, including the evaluation approaches, the procedures, the evaluation criteria sets and their interpretation, the use of technologies, the degree of objectivity – all those differ considerably.

The paper presents the results of the authors’ attempt to develop a model methodology for the evaluation of the efficiency of school leaders in terms of the school performance in the local, regional and national contexts. The account was taken of the modern tasks set for the education systems, the balancing of the individual’s objectives and the federal goals, by means of cascading the strategic goals, criteria and indicators for all levels of the management hierarchy. The model is a subject of implementation in 2021.

Keywords:

Quality of education, school principals, school administration, school efficiency, efficiency criteria, evaluation criteria, Russian regions.