Study Of Public Elementary And Secondary Principals' Accountability System

With the higher expectations the whole society places on the education, how to promote the scientific development of school to improve the quality of education has become a significant topic. Under this background, the Principal Accountability System has been put forward by some scholars. The Principal Accountability System was devised by referring to the American education accountability system and domestic administrative accountability system, which is conducted to complete and perfect the headmaster accountability system. This system is a kind of accountability system that aims at restraining and supervising the headmasters'authority. That is, the school stakeholders can impose appropriate penalties on the headmaster according to their prior agreement when the headmaster abuses his power or fails to fulfill his expected liability in connection with his power.The proposition of Principal Accountability System is on the theoretical and policy basis of relevant management theories, laws and regulations as well as on the practical basis of the disadvantages emerging from the implementation of the system. It provides pertinently the solutions to the problems existing in the internal management system of primary and secondary schools. The System falls within the scope of the Administrative accountability. It directly investigates the relative responsibilities carried out by the Principal, meanwhile, functions as a reminder and a supervisor during the whole process. Practice shows that the implementation of Principal Accountability is conducive to enhancing the awareness of responsibility and improving the working style of the Principal. Also, it helps to establish an effective incentive system and improve the administrative efficiency of the Principal.Nowadays, such documents as measures concerning Principal Accountability System put forward by different local governments across the country are in a considerable number and many of them have been put into effect. On the basis of the collection of such kind of documents and cases, the author studied and summed up the problems such as the subject, the content, the causes, the basis, the result and the influence of the System. Although Principal Accountability System does not have a unified mode and procedure due to the regional differences, there exist many common factors among them, which make it possible for the author to propose the basic idea of designing and practicing Principal Accountability System.