Numerous international studies show that the principal and his executive team determine the educational strategy of the school, promote its continuous and sustainable development, ensuring high educational results of students. During past two decades the Russian education system is under the reform. According the Education law (2012) and The National Priority Projects (2018) Russian education government authorities orient the principals and their teams to improve the educational results and to give attention to the educational process.

«The improvement of student learning is the key aspect of school leadership» (K. Leithwood, 2004).  Many kinds of ratings and rankings make local education government authorities set the goal to be the first in National tests, State national exams, international scales such as PISA, TIMSS and etc. No doubt the attention to the role of the principal and his team has grown since the education system has become open and monitoring from day-to-day. There is no doubt that the responsibilities of the principal and their team has grown since the education system widened it’s scope and began monitoring day to day. Russia is a huge country and from region to region the local practices to improve educational results follow by region educational documents can be different: Russia is a vast country and local practices to improve educational results can vary widely from region to region depending on their specific needs and legislation: average monthly wages, employment policy, principal’s key performance indicator (KPI) and etc. Is that differences influence the kind of leaders in the school? Are the principals of Russian schools pedagogical leaders? What do they focus on: curriculum, education their teachers, find out the new pedagogical technologies, students achievements? Or there is an opinion they play just the managerial, political roles… The study investigated the role of school principal of the big city in Russia as a leader of teachers. Our hypothesis is based on the next statement - the cities where the schools principals and their teams occupy the educational process, do attentively curriculum and new pedagogical technics are more successful in the educational results of their students then others. We supposed that the educational systems of those cities have more students who are winners of the Federal Russian tour of the Subject Olympiad. And these schools are on the top-500 school around Russian Federation than other cities. The analyze will include the data of the results Federal Russian tour of the Subject Olympiad and National rating top-500 of the state school in 2017-2018 school year. So this report has two research questions.  What of the daily professional routine are the school principals involved most of all. What responsibilties are they ready to delegate to their teams. Besides it is interesting to know there is or isn’t the coloration between local authorities policies and the professional profiles of principals following the conception of pedagogical leadership (or instructional). In what kind of daily routines of school leaders we could find out the links between local educational directives and the professional profiles of the administrative team.

Our research follows the model of instructional leadership by Philip Hallinger (2000), which is based on three dimensions: defining the school’s mission, managing the instructional program, and promoting a positive school-learning climate. In 2017 and 2018 Assessing and developing principal instructional leadership questionnaire (Philip Hallinger, 2000) was validated in some Russian region (Moscow and Perm) by researchers of High School Economic and showed the opportunity to use it to assess the Russian leaders of schools. We are going to measure the principals and their school administrative teams in five cities of Russian Federation. They are Nizhniy Novgorod, Voronezh, Krasnoyarsk, Kazan, and Yekaterinburg. They are all with a million-plus population. The process of collecting data has begun at the end 2018. The survey data is collected from the State school principals (about 500 people) and their school administration teams (about 1500 people). The Hallinger’s questionnaire poses the principals and their teams to view and to compare professional profiles both categories. The next focus of the research is on the correlation between local education policies and pedagogical leadership in the city. Both questions should find the correlation with the educational results of students.

In our opinion the results will be useful to the local authorities who are involved on the recruitment policy, especially if they need to make the new step of school reform. In fact it is speaking about appointment or certification of adequacy for the job. Need to note that the idea of assessing of school principals as pedagogical (instructional) leaders is new for Russia. Till that time it was validation process. Until this time, there has been no such research in this area. The results will be of extreme significance and will he highly useful to the local authorities who are involved in the recruitment policy, specifically with regards to improving school reform.

Philip Hallinger and Joseph Murphy, "Assessing the Instructional Management Behavior of Principals," The Elementary School Journal 86, no. 2 (Nov., 1985): 217-247. Lenskaya E., Brun I. (2016)Gotovy li direktora rossiyskikh shkol k rabote v transformatsionnom rezhime[Are Principals of Russian Schools Ready for Transformational Leadership]. Voprosy obrazovaniya / Educational Studies. Moscow, no2, pp. 62-99. Kasprzhak A., Filinov N., Bayburin R., Isaeva N., Bysik N. (2015)Direktora shkol kak agenty reformy rossiyskoy sistemy obrazovaniya[School Principals as Agents of the Russian Education Reform]. Voprosy obrazovaniya / Educational Studies. Moscow, no3, pp. 122-143.