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The School Development Planning [XUE-XIAO-FA-ZHAN-GUI-HUA] as a term has not been included in the China’s lexicon of school leadership and management until the late 1980s and early 1990s (Cao & Hui, 2009; Chu, 2008; Zhu, 2010). “School development planning” is valued because of the role of school leaders was intensified following the China’s educational reform launched in 1985. The government policies regarding educational reform during the late 1980s and early 1990s yielded two big changes for school leadership. In the Decision of the CCCPC on the Reform of the Educational System, the CCCPC decided that “reform the management system, while strengthening macro-management, resolutely implement simplified administration and decentralization, and increase the level of school autonomy.” (CCCPC, 1985). This position of the CCCPC resulted in the first change that a part of power was delegated from local education authority to school. As we know, the autonomy was always accompanied by accountability.

China and the Western countries have different historical traditions in terms of the relations between school and community. The Chinese educational historians have a summary of Chinese school education in ancient times, which is called XUE-ZAI-GUAN-FU [education never takes place out of official compound]. This saying is based on three fundamental characteristics of school education during initial stage of school education in ancient China (the period of time so-called the Chinese society with slave system). The first characteristic is that school education is exclusively the experience of the children from royal and noble families, and never allowed to extend to common man. Secondly, the school house is set in the royal palace or an official residence, in which a certain official or a couple of officials take the role of teachers. To be more exactly, these officials are only part-time teachers, since they also take other governing responsibilities in central or local governments.

As one of school leadership key practices, the “optimizing internal management” was initially set out by The Professional Standards for Principals of Compulsory Education Schools (MOE, 2013a) and The Professional Standards for Principals of Senior High Schools (MOE, 2015), and was more specifically described in the Management Standards for Compulsory Education Schools (MOE, 2017). According to above-mentioned RHDs, this leadership key practice consists of two prongs of requirements for school internal management

Among the professional standards for principals formulated by the Ministry of Education in 2013 and 2015, the “creating a culture fostering student development” was set as one of the six core practices of school leadership (MOE, 2013, 2015).

The differences between school leadership in China and in other countries, especially in Western countries, can be largely attributed to their different sources of school leadership knowledge and different external and internal institutional environment for school leadership. To understand how China’s school leadership unfolds in day-to-day practice and what knowledge underpins its leadership practice, it is essential to figure out the sources of China’s school leadership knowledge and to examine the educational administration system and the school leadership system of China.

Historically, the Chinese nation had a tradition of respecting teachers and valuing education. For example, Confucius as the typical and outstanding representative of ancient Chinese educator has been respected for thousands of years in China.

As we examined in Chapter 1, the principal plays so important role in school leadership under the Principal Responsibility System that they are inevitably viewed by China’s educational policymakers as key to success in school development and improvement.

In China, instructional leadership is not a theme that has only recently emerged. In fact, instructional leadership has long been placed in the center stage of China’s school leadership and management, and it has been regarded as a key factor to promote school improvement.