Eureka! Institutional Repository

The School Leadership is a key factor in the effectiveness of the educational work. Thus, the implementation of an appropriate system of selection of School Principals is a critical issue for the selection of persons possessing all the characteristics required to effectively fulfill the multifaceted role and diverse responsibilities of the managerial position. For the merit selection of effective School Principals, a set of criteria is formulated and implemented conventionally, with scoring proportional to their importance in shaping the characteristics of the teacher-candidate Principal. In the Greek educational system, various systems for the selection of Principals have been implemented, with different criteria and procedure, in an attempt to find the most appropriate one. Fixed categories of criteria in the recently implemented systems are the service status (educational background and administrative experience) and the academic- pedagogical formation (degrees). Nevertheless, critique has been expressed on the reliability of the objective and measurable criteria, and their overall and individual scoring: to what extent do these criteria constitute evidence of the personal traits and qualifications required for a Principal’s effectiveness? Given the establishment of these two categories of criteria and since their scoring decisively affects the outcome of the final ranking- selection of Principals, what remains to be found out is the way of their rational and balanced scoring, proportional to their significance as evidence of the characteristics required for the managerial role. The present study focused on exploring the importance of each category as factor in the shaping of the characteristics of an effective Principal in the current selection system, in the view of teachers of Secondary Education of East Thessaloniki, in search of an improved and more acceptable selection system for School Principals. The analysis of the results reveals a significant precedence of the contribution of the long educational experience, without –however- overlooking the importance of the theoretical knowledge and, in particular, of specialized studies in the field of Management and Organization of educational units. Moreover, there is a positive attitude towards the re-scoring of the criteria, by reinforcing the overall educational experience over the degrees. In the end, relevant proposals are made, based on the research findings.