Evaluating the evaluation: policies and practices involved in assessing school principals’ effectiveness

Purpose This study investigated public school principals’ perceptions of the policies and practices involved in their evaluation. The processes, impacts and challenges of the principals’ evaluation practices were identified within the Kuwaiti context. Design/methodology/approach The data for this qualitative study were drawn from semi-structured interviews with 32 Kuwaiti government high school principals. Findings These findings point to inefficient evaluation policies and practices that do not determine the level of effectiveness of school principals. In addition, the results identify limited awareness of the system of principals’ evaluations among school districts. Research limitations/implications This study is limited to the perceptions of government school principals in Kuwait, and the results are based on semi-structured interviews with school principals. Practical implications This study presents implications for policymakers and school principals to improve principals’ evaluation processes and impacts, especially in educationally centralized systems. Originality/value The novelty and significance of the present study reside in the scarcity of research undertaken on the evaluation of school principals despite the importance of their position. Furthermore, there is a tendency to prioritize the assessment of learners and teachers while disregarding the evaluation and methodologies used to evaluate school principals. Hence, the objective of this study is to address this gap, specifically within a centralized educational framework.