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The purpose of this study is to find out what kind of contextual factors that positively or negatively influence effective school improvement (ESI) in The Netherlands.

To achieve the above‐mentioned purpose, Sun's contextual level model with ten contextual factors and 48 indicators has been used to carefully identify and evaluate three large Dutch ESI programs.

The findings showed that the factors fostering ESI at the Dutch contextual level were: external evaluation and external agents; national goal setting in terms of student outcomes; an adequate time, financial and human resource support; strong centrally steering and empowering ESI; national goal setting in terms of school improvement; engendering a culture in support of ESI; school accountability; offering school some autonomy. The factors hindering ESI at the Dutch national contextual level were: market mechanisms, allowing too much school/teacher autonomy in test taking; and instability of school staff and school counselors.

Sun's model with ten factors and 48 indicators can be used to identify or to evaluate the positive or negative factors at the contextual level of any ESI programs in different countries. The findings of this study may have significant implications for ESI, practice and policymaking.

The paper identifies and evaluates positive or negative contextual factors of ESI.

The purpose of this paper is to find out what are the effective school principal leadership (ESPL) factors or indicators that Chinese teachers consider or expect. It explains how and why ESPL factors are important for effective school improvement (ESI). It tries to expand the domain knowledge of ESPL.

The questionnaires consisted of eight factors and 40 indicators. The rating instrument was a five point Likert Scale (from 1 to 5). In total, 100 school teachers in Liaoning Province of mainland China were participated and surveyed. Factor analysis, t-test and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) were used to analyze the collected data.

This study provides empirical insights about what ESPL factors that Chinese teachers considered. According to the results of t-test and one-way ANOVA, there were no significant differences between and among the respondents’ gender, areas and years of teaching experiences in rating the ESPL factors. The findings argue that the 16 extracted ESPL indicators have not only revealed the expectations of Chinese teachers toward their school principals, but also have drawn a three-dimensional-image of what a good and effective school principal should be. From the Chinese teachers’ eyes, a good school principal should not only possess good managerial skills in the aspects of time and routine work (such as self management, time management, influence, decision making and commitment) but also should possess good emotional intelligence, human skills, more attentiveness and consideration toward the needs of their followers (such as comfort, communication skills and empathy, etc.).

This study provides implications for all school stakeholders, particularly for school principals, school leaders and educational managers both in and outside of schools. A good school principal should possess good ESPL characters/factors. If not, at least he/she should be aware of the ESPL characters/factors and actively adopt or adapt them. Thus the ESPL factors or indicators extracted from this study can be served as a mirror and a useful knowledge.

This study belongs to very few of this kind of researches carried out in mainland China. Its findings have made some contributions to the ESPL research in mainland China, to the research of school leadership and ESI.

This paper aims to survey the status quo of the student pressure and the relationship between their daily time management and their learning outcomes in three different types of higher secondary schools at Shenyang, the capital city of Liaoning Province in mainland China.

An investigation was carried out in 14 higher secondary schools (HSS) located in five districts of Shenyang. Both qualitative and quantitative approaches were used, such as interviews and questionnaires.

The important findings include: the students pressure sources in three different types of higher secondary schools, the strongest pressure felt by the HSS students in China was the pressure from national college entrance examinations (NCEE), the rank orders of other pressures were pressures from parents, from society, from others, from schools, from teachers. The findings also include the relationship between student time management (time for sleep, time for getting up, time spent at schools, time for doing homework) and the students learning, the tests frequency in different types of HSS, the relationship between the tests frequency and student learning outcomes, etc.

To survey the HSS students' pressure causes, to explore the relationship between their time management and learning outcomes, to find out the effective learning factors and strategies will benefit students, teachers and schools worldwide.