In the light that new principals are drawn predominantly from the rank of vice-principals in many school systems in the world, it is important to examine whether their current experience adequately prepares vice-principals to take up the position of principal. The purpose of this paper is to examine the job responsibilities undertaken by vice-principals and to further investigate the respective contribution of each job responsibility in preparing vice-principals for principalship. All viceprincipals in Hong Kong secondary schools were sent a questionnaire that asked for the extent of their involvement in various activities and their adequacy of preparation for principalship. A sequential regression analysis was used to examine the effect of various job dimensions on the vice-principals’ perceived preparedness, over and above the effect of their demographic variables. The findings identified seven job responsibility dimensions pertaining to the role of vice-principals. It was found that respondents spend most of their time on staff management and the least on resource management. Amongst the seven job dimensions, only ‘strategic direction and policy environment’ was found to have an effect on the vice-principals’ perceived preparation for principalship. The findings reflect that vice-principals take their staff management and resource management responsibilities lightly as they do not perceive their extensive experience gained in staff management an asset or their inadequate experience in resource management a deficiency in preparing them for principalship. As these two dimensions are the core elements of schoolbased management, they deserve the attention of policy-makers. In addition, policy-makers should address the development of vice-principals in the area of ‘strategic direction and policy environment’.
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