The so-called “Schulleitungsmonitor” (Educational Leadership Monitor = ELM) has been introduced in Germany in 2019 (Cramer et al., 2021), in Switzerland in 2021 (Tulowitzki et al., 2022) and more recently in Austria in 2022 (Groß Ophoff et al., eingereicht). In all three German-speaking countries, there was a broad media response to the country-specific implementation of the project, and the educational authorities are very interested in the results of the study, too, which is why it is to be repeated prospectively at regular intervals in all three countries. Our presentation aims at shedding light on the question of why it makes sense to place school leaders at the centre of educational monitoring studies without even addressing performance indicators? Instead, constructs such as professional values, professional self-image, job satisfaction, career prospects and leadership styles are investigated (Groß Ophoff et al., submitted). One reason for this is that school leaders are viewed as key drivers of change and innovation in schools (Brown et al., 2021; Bryk, 2010; Fullan, 1993). Beyond traditional administrative and pedagogical tasks, today’s school leaders are responsible for instructional, staff and organizational development at their own school (Pietsch et al., 2022), and are required to being able to deal with periods of high stress in view of their wide-ranging task profile (Kemethofer, 2022; Pont et al., 2008). Against this backdrop, the implementation of the ELM in each of the three German-speaking countries will be presented (Germany 2019: N = ; Switzerland 2020: N = ; Austria 2022: N = ) and some insights into the specifics of the study implementation will be given. The comparison of the survey results makes it particularly clear that there are significant differences between the three countries. On the one hand, school leaders everywhere are particularly interested in informal learning. On the other hand, there are significant differences between the three countries regarding the availability and organization of such qualification programs. The conception and concrete implementation of ELM have the side effect that the focus of the public discussion is primarily on development rather than accountability, especially as there are no binding standards for school leadership in Germany or Switzerland available to date, which is why no summative evaluation based on performance measures is possible. In conclusion, an outlook is given on how this project will continue and which topics should be addressed in future.

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