Handan Middle School Principals' Training Situation, Problems And Countermeasures

"The schoolmaster is the soul of a school. If you want to comment on a school, you should comment on his schoolmaster first."[1] These words of the Chinese famous educationist Tao Xing-zhi express concisely the schoolmaster's status and function in school management. In other words, the schoolmaster is crucial to a school. We can't implement quality education at all without highly qualified schoolmasters. "Schoolmasters play a special role in advancing quality education. They must take the lead in converting the idea about education, and regard it as their important duty teaching and leading the staff to implement quality education creatively. " The State Council and the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China pointed out in The Decision of Deepening the Education Reform and Advancing Quality Education in an All-Round Way. Therefore, we should carry on planned training of the headmasters constantly while choosing the excellent ones to appoint.The Party and the government pay much attention to the team construction of schoolmasters and the improvement of their quality. At the end of 1980s, the national principal job-specific training was launched and the on-duty-with-the-certificate system was implemented. However, "it's never too old to learn ". To achieve constant self-improvement, the schoolmasters should also persist in learning so as to meet the needs of education reform and development.Following the instruction of the former State Education Commission and Ministry of Education, schoolmaster training has already been carried out for a dozen of years in Handan. During half a year, from July to September in 2004, an investigation was made in order to get a general view of the present situation and problems in Handan schoolmaster training. This investigation was made in some schoolmaster training classes in Handan city and affiliated counties by means of questionnaire and interview while teaching. The respondents are middle school schoolmasters from 3 districts in Handan city and some towns of 18 counties. By taking multi-stage sample method to choose the respondents, altogether 208 questionnaires were granted and recollected. The rate of recollection is 100%. Yet only 182 questionnaires that were filled in clearly and completely are taken into account. The rate of effective questionnaires is 87.5%, namely 182 middle school...