In Turkey, with 20.000.000 students, there are 60.000 educational institutions. Given technological innovations and changes in the twenty one century, the administrators of these institutions need to possess crucial administrative and technical skills, such as instructional leadership, teaching programmes, performance management, human resources management, financial resources management and operational services management, school-environment cooperation, use of ICTs in school management, and so forth.

Add to this the effect of globalisation, and the Turkish Educational System has been recently the focus of public and academic debate, indicating that existing applications of theoretical models of education are insufficient. This situation has led to a search for new system of schooling, including a search for educational leaders who will solve the chaos in the system and lead it towards restructuring in the future.

Because principals are expected to play an important role in increasing quality in schools as they are the ones who are responsible for establishing an environment that encourages students learning, the principals are in the focus of many educational programs and training. Thus, for example, changes in the recruitment of school principals have been suggested, making teaching experience only one selection factor, not the sole one as was in the past. Furthermore, an attempt was made to eliminate the mismatch between scientific studies up to 1990’s and the current applications in the system.  In my paper, the new principal’s appointment process in Turkey will be discussed to demonstrate the changes in education policy conducted in this country. To this end, findings from a study on principal competencies, conducted in 2005 will be reported.