How school leadership, principal preparation, inspection and teacher appraisal are organised in different education systems, with a short comparison with Turkey. Each profile states the position as of the date it was last reviewed.
How American public schools are governed and led: state licensure of principals, district hiring, the PSEL and NELP standards, ESSA accountability instead of inspection, teacher evaluation after 2009, and recent debates on principal turnover and the federal role.
How Singapore’s Ministry of Education organises schools into clusters, identifies and prepares principals, rotates them between schools, evaluates schools through self-evaluation and external validation, and appraises teachers, with reforms up to October 2026.
How Finnish schools are governed and led as of October 2026: municipalities as education providers, principal qualifications under Decree 986/1998, evaluation without a school inspectorate, the absence of a national teacher appraisal framework, and reforms since 2023.
How state schools in England are governed, how headteachers are appointed and prepared, and how Ofsted’s report-card inspections, introduced in November 2025, now judge leadership. Position as of October 2026.