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Abstract

Mainland China’s new rural migrant schools are an educational reform situated in national aims of revitalised rural communities, education, and economy. New rural migrant schools call upon school leaders to reimagine education and the integration of rural migrant students for community development. This study examined leadership for community development in the case of new rural migrant schools in Guizhou Province in southwest Mainland China. The research investigated leaders’ perceptions of goals and challenges for school-community development through interviews with 13 local policy actors, principals, and teachers in two new rural migrant schools. Participants articulated high expectations with limited autonomy, adaptation to new rural migrant communities, and leadership recognition and stability as main goals and challenges. With these findings, we argue that new rural migrant school leaders utilise their resources to strengthen their social and economic roles in the community. We also suggest that training in community-centred leadership is required for leaders, from the school- to municipal-levels, to facilitate new rural migrant schools overcoming the identified challenges in rural community development.

Keywords

School leadership community development rural migrant schools rural education rural China

Introduction

China’s poverty alleviation and Rural Revitalisation policies aimed to eliminate poverty by 2020 and enhance public services and education in rural areas, which support over 500 million people. As of 2020, nearly 10 million individuals living in poverty in rural areas have been relocated to resettlement sites with improved public services and facilities, officially called poverty alleviation relocation.

In these resettlement areas, China has established new ‘Schools for Poverty Alleviation Relocation Resettlement Sites’ (Xinhua, 2021) to educate relocated children. These new rural migrant schools are intended to stabilise migrant communities, showcase rural achievements, and contribute to rural development (Xinhua, 2020a). School officials and leaders have been called upon to strengthen the dynamism and effectiveness of rural schools, innovate, and establish high-quality education to support new communities of rural migrant families (Wu et al., 2022; Zhao & Zhang, 2021). To support these aims, new rural migrant schools receive exceptional funding from national, provincial, and local governments and are subject to preferential policies for personnel and urban-rural exchange (NDRC, 2023; Xinhua, 2020a, 2021).

Effective leadership is particularly crucial in schools that serve children and families and are part of comprehensive community development, such as China’s new rural migrant schools. Leadership is key to stabilising and integrating newly established rural migrant communities through improved schooling (Yang & Ma, 2022). Leadership fosters community culture (Sun & Ren, 2021) and a humanistic environment (Yang, 2016) that positively shapes community development and well-being. This paper contributes to research on school leadership for community development, drawing on the case of new rural migrant schools in Guizhou, China. A province in rural western China, Guizhou has created at least 669 new rural migrant schools to give rural migrants access to preschool and compulsory education (Xinhua, 2021). Guizhou issued comprehensive policies for planning, constructing, and inspecting new rural migrant schools (Yang & Ma, 2022).

We conducted interviews with 13 local education bureau officials, principals, and teacher leaders to investigate bureau- and school-level leaders’ perspectives on the aims and challenges of new rural migrant schools in new rural migrant communities. By examining rural China’s unique and understudied context, this research offers crucial insights from leaders at multiple levels on the aims and challenges of schools whose primary purpose is to support community development. This research is positioned within and contributes to international scholarship on school leadership, rural schools, and community development. The next section provides essential policy background on the policies of Guizhou’s new rural migrant schools.

Policy background

Li et al. (2016) framed China’s poverty alleviation efforts as unfolding in four waves. These waves included the 1984 first poverty alleviation scheme for central and western regions, the 1994 massive reduction of the impoverished population, the 2011 efforts to tackle 148,000 poverty-stricken villages across 592 national poverty counties, and the 2014 initiative to eliminate absolute poverty for the then-remaining 70.17 million impoverished rural residents. Today, poverty alleviation and rural revitalisation reflect China’s national rural development policy agenda. Poverty alleviation aimed to eliminate absolute poverty by 2020, while Rural Revitalisation has focused on comprehensively rejuvenating rural areas by 2050 (SC, 2018b).

Rural community development through poverty alleviation and Rural Revitalisation

Since China’s Opening Up in the 1980s, poverty alleviation, well-being, and socioeconomic development in rural regions have remained national priorities (Wen, 2013; Xue & Li, 2020). The 13^th Five-Year Plan for Poverty Alleviation stated that, from 2016 to 2020, China would guarantee that people living in poverty¹ would have access to food, clothing, compulsory education, basic medical care, and housing; and poverty-stricken counties and regions should eliminate absolute poverty (SC, 2016 China’s 2018 Rural Revitalisation is a comprehensive development plan for rural areas. It emphasises the integration and reconstruction of rural societies’ economic, political, cultural, social, and ecological dimensions (SC, 2018a). The Policy aims to establish a well-off society, deepen reform, and promote the rule of law to ensure rural livelihoods and integrate urban-rural development by 2050 (SC, 2018a; 2018b). Rural Revitalisation has called for these goals to be carried out through new and improved agriculture, industries, villages, culture, and governance.

In 1997, about 42% of the Chinese population (more than 500 million people) lived in extreme poverty, with a daily personal income lower than two dollars (Rosling, 2018). In 2020, President Xi declared that China had eliminated absolute poverty for more than 700 million people and resolved regional poverty. He further emphasised that after the victory over poverty, comprehensively promoting revitalised rural areas would be the next historical move for rural development (Daily, 2021), an essential component of China’s rejuvenation (SC, 2021).

New rural migrant communities and schools

In the Mainland China context, ‘migrant students’ typically refer to children who move from rural to urban areas with their parents (Huangfu, 2024; Wang & Teng, 2022). Serving migrant students in China’s large cities, ‘migrant schools’ emerged in the 1990s as private schools and developed with the help of local governments and public schools (Chen & Feng, 2017). Despite these advancements, migrant schools face challenges, including poor student performance and well-being, low capacity for school improvement, and underdeveloped leadership (Min et al., 2019).

Through the Relocation Scheme of Poverty Alleviation (Xinhua, 2020b), a parallel model of migrant education has emerged. In 2016, the National Development and Reform Commission called for relocating China’s more than 10 million rural residents to more urbanised resettlement areas to improve living conditions and public services and ultimately curtail intergenerational poverty (NDRC, 2016). The Scheme stated that the resettlement areas included adjacent villages, town centres, industrial parks, tourism areas, or newly constructed villages. Through the Scheme, more than 9.6 million impoverished rural residents were resettled (Xinhua, 2020b) as ‘rural migrants’ in new rural migrant resettlement communities. ‘Schools for Poverty Alleviation Relocation Resettlement Sites’, the new rural migrant schools, were established in these new rural migrant communities to provide preschool and compulsory education only to school-aged children from poverty-alleviation migrant families relocated under the regulations of The Relocation Scheme. China’s news bureau Xinhua reported that as of 2020, approximately 6100 new rural migrant schools, including kindergartens, were renovated or constructed during the 13^th Five-Year Plan (Xinhua, 2020b).

New rural migrant schools and communities in Guizhou, China

The poverty alleviation relocation scheme has significantly reshaped education and society in Guizhou Province in Southwest China. Guizhou initially planned to relocate 1.3 million people living in poverty to three autonomous prefectures and six prefecture-level cities (Xinhua, 2016). By 2000, at the end of the 13^th Five-Year Plan, about 1.92 million rural residents had relocated, and 669 new migrant schools had been established in resettlement areas (Xinhua, 2021). Of these 669 schools, 96 were newly constructed, including 44 kindergartens, 32 primary schools, 15 middle schools, and five nine-year schools (Xinhua, 2020a).

Theoretical framework

In China’s rural revitalisation project, schools and communities are being reimagined to pursue large-scale rural rejuvenation. Given the context of the significant and unique needs of children and families’ post-resettlement (Vassallo, 2024), educational innovation and excellence can be particularly challenging in new rural migrant schools. To understand leaders’ perspectives on the aims and challenges of new rural migrant schools in Guizhou, China, we draw on conceptualisations of the roles of schools in community development.

Schools are tools (Chung, 2002) and assets (Kretzmann, 1992) for community development, but their importance and potential contributions to this area are often underestimated (Newman & Lake, 2006). Schools can shape communities by uniting neighbourhoods for organised, efficient, and sustainable social and economic development (Baum, 2004). Warner et al. (2024) find schools are a crucial pillar of community infrastructure that is vital for human development, social support, community well-being, and social engagement. Schools are also culturally important for community development (Flora et al., 2016). The school-community relationship underpins shared communal values and interests (Valli et al., 2016; Warner & Zhang, 2023).

Good’s (2022) school-community development framework suggests that schools play a vital role and are deeply embedded in the social, institutional, economic, and physical domains of communities. The social domain emphasises relationships among people and the provision of public services to meet social needs; and the institutional domain represents organisations that foster these relationships and mediate the interests of different community groups. Socially, schools are hubs and sources of social support, bringing education, assistance, trust, and a sense of belonging to local families. They are trustworthy spaces where people build relationships that can endure for generations. Schools are also educational institutions that can unite and stabilise communities. The economic domain focuses on enhancing community economic development, whereas the physical domain concerns living and working environments. Schools shape community economies in terms of local businesses and real estate values. They catalyse potential for economic development, increase the community’s overall value, and contribute to attracting investment. Physically, the status and development of schools reflect the quality of neighbourhood planning and community development.

To integrate new rural migrant schools into the concerted efforts to develop rural communities, leadership endeavours are expected to look beyond schooling and focus on, as suggested by Good’s (2022) framework, the social, institutional, economic, and physical domains of rural community development. These principles of school-for-community provide lenses through which we can examine the aims of and leadership challenges in new rural migrant schools in Guizhou, China.

Methodology

This qualitative case study (Merriam, 2001) took place in two new rural migrant schools in Ceheng County, a primary target of community revitalisation in Guizhou Province. It centred on the research question: What are policy and school-level actors’ perspectives on the aims and leadership challenges of new rural migrant schools in new rural migrant communities? It employed 13 semi-structured interviews with three school-level leaders, five teachers, and five policy actors.

Research context

Ceheng spans 2598 square kilometres across nine towns, three street districts, one countryside, and 123 villages (CHCG, 2021). Ceheng County has a population of approximately 250,000 people, and about 62% of residents live in the countryside (CHCG, 2024). Ceheng is one of the poorest counties in Guizhou Province. In 2020, approximately 33% of its population (87,500) was relocated from rural villages to urbanised resettlement areas (NDRC, 2023). The local government constructed significant civil projects in housing, medical care, water supply, and education in the resettlement areas. Sixteen new schools were constructed, and six schools were renovated to satisfy the educational needs of migrant communities spread over the urban and rural areas of Ceheng (NDRC, 2023). These newly constructed or renovated schools included kindergartens, primary schools, and middle schools.

Schools A and B

Typical sampling (Merriam & Tisdell, 2015) was utilised to select School A and School B (pseudonyms) as the cases in this study. In 2022, when data collection took place, School A had 57 teachers and 1075 students, while School B had 37 teachers and 680 students. Established in 2019, Schools A and B, both primary schools, were two new rural migrant schools constructed in the largest rural resettlement areas of Ceheng. Students in these schools were from families who relocated from other areas to Ceheng’s resettlement areas. Teachers at Schools A and B were mobilised from other schools within and near the county.

Schools A and B were established through funding from the Guizhou government and the national poverty alleviation programme. In line with national policy, these schools received a guarantee of resources, personnel, facilities, and infrastructure from local and provincial governments (Xinhua, 2021). Schools A and B received funding from poverty alleviation migration preferential policies and thus had spaces with well-resourced classrooms, canteens, and sports facilities (see Table 1).

Table 1.

Profile of the Two Rural Migrant Schools in Ceheng County.

Items	School A	School B
Founding date	2019	2019
Area (m²)	8661	6180
Ranking of students’ testing performance	Lower middle tier	Higher middle tier
Teachers	57	37
Students	1075	680
Location	Community outskirt	Community centre
Facilities	A four-floor teaching building	A four-floor teaching building
	A two-floor canteen	A medium-sized canteen
	A football pitch	A small garden
	Two basketball courts	A basketball court
	Three badminton courts	A small playground

Note. In the county of Ceheng, all the urban and rural schools were annually ranked and evaluated through students’ performance in the final exams organised by the local education bureau.

Data collection and analysis

Semi-structured interviews were conducted in 2022. Typical sampling strategies (Merriam & Tisdell, 2015) were employed to recruit policy actors, school-level leaders, and teachers from the school leadership teams (see Table 2). In accordance with local research conduct guidelines, we first obtained consent from the Local Education Bureau (LEB) to carry out this research in Schools A and B in Ceheng. One policy actor from the local Rural Revitalisation Bureau and four policy actors from the LEB participated in the interviews. These interviews focused on the aims of new rural migrant schools. During in-depth interviews with officials from the Ceheng Education and Rural Revitalisation Bureaus, we enquired about the policy changes and educational expectations related to new rural migrant schools and rural education at large.

Table 2.

Interview Participants (N = 13).

Participant	Organisation	Post	Time serving the position (by 2022)
Official 1	LEBLEBLEBLEB	Vice director	2 months
Official 2		Director	3 months
Official 3		Vice director	7 years
Official 4		Unit chief	11 years
Official 5	Rural revitalisation bureau	Director	1 year
Principal	School A	Principal	1 year
Teacher 1		Maths teacher	1 year
Teacher 2		Chinese teacher	2 years
Teacher 3		Maths teacher	1 year
Principal	School B	Principal	3 year
Vice principal		Vice principal	3 year
Teacher 4		Maths teacher	1year
Teacher 5		English teacher	3 years

Then, we interviewed the principals of Schools A and B. The principals identified additional school leaders and teachers within the leadership team for interviews. We conducted interviews with three school-level leaders and five teacher leaders at Schools A and B. These ‘active interviews’ (Holstein & Gubrium, 1995) focused on the perspectives of the principals and teacher leaders regarding the aims, practices, and challenges of new rural migrant schools. The interviews took place at the schools and were conducted in Mandarin Chinese before being translated into English. The first author of this manuscript collected, transcribed, and translated the interview data.

The following data analysis steps were performed in DeDoose, a web-based, mixed-methods data analysis platform. First, we conducted index coding (Brewer, 2000) to prepare for the later stages of data analysis. Next, we conducted open coding to extract information relevant to the research questions through ‘word-by-word’ and ‘line-by-line’ coding (Charmaz, 2006) of all the transcripts. This process helped us establish provisional and descriptive codes, which were then processed through axial coding (Strauss & Corbin, 1998) to summarise the data themes. Finally, we employed theoretical coding (Mirhosseini, 2020) to integrate the emergent data categories and excerpts from the interview data.

Limitations

The Ceheng LEB’s research guidelines shaped both the design and implementation of the research. The LEB mandated their approval of all instruments and interactions between the researchers and the school actors. The principals required that they select participants for interviews. Participants’ perceptions of the political environment and performance accountability may have influenced their interview participation. Also, while the interviews were conducted in Mandarin, some participants were more accustomed to speaking the local dialect, which may have impacted their articulations. Furthermore, our limited access to internal policy documents and follow-up conversations made it challenging to clarify and contextualise the participants’ impressions.

Results

Local officials viewed new rural schools as crucial for developing migrant communities and rejuvenating rural societies. The principals of Schools A and B prioritised the growth of both students and teachers. The principal of School B also highlighted the importance of school culture. Participants from the schools articulated the leadership challenges of high expectations coupled with limited autonomy, adapting to new rural migrant communities, and ensuring leadership recognition and stability.

Aims of new rural migrant schools

Officials stated that new rural migrant schools were an integral part of poverty alleviation and new rural communities under Rural Revitalisation. The resettlement spots and the migrant schools were promoted as achievements of poverty alleviation and Rural Revitalisation (Official 1; Official 4). One official characterised Schools A and B as the showcase of rural community development in the county:

Education is the most important livelihood and it’s the precondition of Rural Revitalisation and national development. Our county government and party committees at all levels are giving unprecedented support, including funding, to this field. (Official 2)

A local Rural Revitalisation Bureau official perceived that new rural migrant schools were an integral part of rural economic development and the core of rural rejuvenation (Official 5). He explained that improved education was essential for talent development and for attracting outflowed rural labour forces to return to rural areas and develop rural industries:

We invited enterprises and created jobs in our county and rural resettlement areas. With good public services such as education and medical care, rural residents can enjoy similar living conditions like their urban peers. They can work, improve their income, and have their children educated at their doorstep. (Official 5)

However, the fiscal conditions of the local county government remained tight after massive investments in civil engineering and livelihood projects in previous years (Official 4). In turn, an official stressed that the unparalleled investment was not visible in established or other rural schools: ‘We have few young talents who want to stay in our rural schools…funding is also a problem for teacher training, school renovating, and facilities update.’ (Official 1) The new rural immigrant schools represent the direction of local governments to develop rural schools and communities under the premise of limited funds and resources.

When we have large-scale rural schools, our schooling conditions, teacher structure, title structure, and management of rural schools will be improved. (Official 3)

The two migrant schools are brand new! They are fully equipped and staffed once and for all. Poverty alleviation migration has a firm guarantee to the education rights of children from relocated villager families. (Official 4)

School leaders conceptualised the new rural migrant schools differently, believing their “new” schools could solve persistent rural educational challenges. New rural migrant schools were not troubled by the problems facing other local rural schools, such as student turnover and the scarcity of resources and personnel. They had a stable source of students from the migrant-populated communities where they were located (School B Principal). They had larger teams of teachers and much-improved facilities and infrastructure under rural rejuvenation preferential policies (School A Principal). The School B Vice-Principal stated that new rural migrant schools represented a better school model for rural societies:

Rural Revitalisation first lies in educating rural children who have been moved here, to our school. Based on the current situation, migrant schools will become the main provider of rural education. I think this is a necessary move.

Principal’s leadership priorities: Student and teacher development

As a showcase of Rural Revitalisation, Schools A and B were expected to demonstrate changes within the community. The principals of the two schools believed their primary contribution to their migrant community was the development of students and teachers. The School A Principal maintained that it was important to provide education in the new resettlement areas for relocated families from different villages. Similarly, the School B Principal stressed the need to ‘stabilise’ the community in the resettlement spot with a good education.

We want to do a good job in poverty alleviation relocation. We want to stabilise the migrants by developing a good school where their children can come and receive good schooling. (School B Principal)

In School A, extracurricular activities were initiated to improve students’ learning attitudes and civic manners, aiming to rectify their ‘negative habits’ formed at their previous schools. Encouraged by School A’s ample space and sufficient facilities, football tournaments, singing competitions, and musical instrument courses were frequently held.

The ‘troublemakers’ and less-performing students won trophies in our singing competitions and art festivals. They had a sense of achievement, and they started to like school, teachers, and learning. (School A Principal)

Although there were some similar student activities in School B, the principal emphasised that students’ testing performance was central to their public reputation:

We ranked 32nd in the first term, then 29th in the second term, then 26th in the third term, and we came to the 18th last term. The only things we can use to persuade the public, to accept a school at their doorstep, are student performance and teaching quality. (School B Principal)

Both principals also emphasised the importance of students’ moral development. The School B Principal explained: ‘We value the development of morality. We want students to be a moral person first. Without morality, a person can be useless.’ The School A Principal shared a similar view:

Students can be deformed talents if they are only developed academically. Students in our school are smart and promising. If we guide them right, they will be the driving force for the revitalised countryside in the future.

The principals also identified teacher development as a leadership priority. They organised school-based teacher training programmes (School B Principal) and articulated the importance of improving teaching skills through teacher collaborations (School A Principal). Such initiatives helped to retain and develop teachers: ‘This school has left me with a very good impression. It’s a new school and its facilities and infrastructure are even better than our county schools. The teachers here are very young. They are energetic and dedicated. I feel very good working here, a very promising school.’ (Teacher 3) Joking that he was too ‘straightforward and rough,’ School A Principal perceived that teacher development would unfold over time. He pointed out that teaching improvement required changes in teachers’ views on teaching:

I’ll spend two years uniting the teachers, another two years improving their teaching capability, and then five years changing their schooling philosophy. Our teachers need to change their self-recognition as rural teachers. This is not an excuse for low teaching performance.

School B emphasised teacher development through research collaboration among teachers in nearby rural schools. They actively participated in teaching and research activities held in the town and the county to learn from fellow teachers (School B Principal). Additionally, School B’s teacher development was informed by a focus on its school culture that stressed development (li wenhua 立文化). Since the appointment of the seven-member leadership team in 2019, School B has focused on fostering cooperation among teachers, students, and families to uplift the school culture (School B Vice Principal). Their school culture building comprised teachers’ moral and professional cultivation, students’ behavioural and learning habits, and shared management between the school and migrant families.

We base our school culture on ‘development’. We develop teachers of morality and capability, students of confidence and self-discipline, and a school supported by family-school cooperation. (School B Principal)

Leadership challenges facing new rural migrant schools

High official expectations coupled with limited autonomy

Rural Revitalisation imposed high performance expectations on local education bureaus (Official 1). New rural migrant schools were anticipated to be exemplary in scale and quality under Rural Revitalisation (Official 3). To support these schools, local education bureaus received numerous resources including national and provincial preferential funding for school construction and teachers’ salaries (Official 2; Official 4; School A Principal), teachers mobilised from other rural schools, visiting teachers from sister cities in coastal areas, and Schools A and B were given ample exchange opportunities with urban schools (School B Principal). This rare convergence of resources and personnel in rural schools created heightened expectations for achievement from the LEB (Official 2). Yet, three years after their inception, Schools A and B were ranked middle-tier in students’ testing performance in Ceheng. The principals were aware of the consequences of low performance:

I don’t just want to pass school evaluations, I want to be excellent. However, if we perform badly, our income will decrease as merit pay will be reduced. (School A Principal)

There is pressure for sure! If the work is not completed well, or if anything goes wrong, that’s my problem, my leadership problem. ...if you receive a warning for not performing well, it will affect your title promotion. (School B Principal)

Meanwhile, the principals of the two schools expressed their concerns about limited school autonomy. Their teachers were employed by the schools but managed by the county under the mechanism of ‘School Employment and County Management’ (School B Principal), and they had limited rights concerning teacher and teaching policy (School A Principal). As a result, challenges in teacher quality persisted. Teacher 1 explained: ‘Our Chinese and Maths teachers also teach PE, Music, and Arts. We lack professional artistic teachers’ (Teacher 1). Disciplining and motivating teachers remained difficult: ‘I don’t want to talk about some teachers’ attitude, but I think you can only teach well if you’re truly dedicated…’ (Teacher 4). School-level leaders were unable to exercise power and make decisions in these and other personnel issues:

We have no power of personnel. Should we have personnel shortages or adjustment troubles, we can only report to the Education Bureau for solutions. As for how they deal with such issues, we wouldn’t know. (School A Principal)

Adaptation to new rural migrant communities

Participants perceived that educators and families struggled to adapt to their new schools and lives in the resettlement venues. Working in a different type of rural school within a new rural community, the school leaders and their teachers were adjusting to the emerging migrant communal culture that impacted migrant families and children (School A Principal). Teachers shared that it was difficult to ‘work faster, teach better, and work more efficiently’ (Teacher 5). As teachers come from widely different backgrounds, a collective sense of responsibility must be built (Teacher 1; School B Principal) to meet teachers’ needs for equity, justice, and humanism (Teacher 4).

The school is developing too fast, and the students are changing too fast. How do we teach to meet the requirements under the new circumstances? We need to work out solutions. (Teacher 5)

Adapting to the new rural migrant community also involved sense-making in contributing to community development. Teachers interpreted community contribution in their own ways: ‘The key to this is family visit, but this depends on teachers. I often visit my students’ families to talk to their guardians’ (Teacher 5). ‘For us, we would take the children to do voluntary cleaning services for the community’ (Teacher 3). Although the school leaders stressed school-community interactions, such provisional activities were more school-centred, not the other way around: ‘Education is in the schools and the community. Our community leaders and civil servants would provide suggestions to us on students’ behaviours. We would also organise students to participate in community activities.’ (School A Principal) However, these activities are secondary to teaching and learning activities:

Sometimes the community promote campaigns in our school. Sometimes they set up a stage outside our school for festival activities and issuing prizes. These activities have been reduced since the last term because of teaching arrangements. (School B Principal)

Leadership recognition and stability

Leadership recognition and stability were significant challenges. In School A, the principal was appointed in 2021, two years after the school’s founding. Although the principal had plans and goals for school development and building school culture (School A Principal), his efforts and straightforward leadership style had yet to be accepted and recognised by the teachers: ‘I think our goal is to improve teaching. Some young teachers don’t quite understand our principal’s work. As for school culture, …I’m a maths teacher, I don’t remember it well’ (Teacher 1). The divergence of leadership intentions and teacher perceptions affected the effectiveness of leadership efforts: ‘The principal has a plan for our school, a good plan, but we regular teachers don’t think much about it. As for school culture, I haven’t thought about this either’ (Teacher 3).

I think the principal needs a bit more affinity with teachers. He’s emotional and does what comes to his mind without discussing it with middle leaders. We older teachers adapt to him, but the young teachers don’t welcome his management. (Teacher 1)

Participants from School B articulated concerns about the lack of leadership stability in the school. Voicing his concerns and disagreement with the sudden appointment of his successor, the principal sighed at the disruption of his school development plan that lasted just three years, which is shorter than a regular five-year term of principalship (School B Principal). The School B Vice Principal warned: ‘Leadership ideas are like family traditions. Once formed, they’re unlikely to be changed.’ Similarly, Teacher 5 perceived that leadership instability would hinder the development of school culture: ‘A school culture cannot be formed overnight, it needs time to grow, so is our culture of development.’ The School B Principal also agreed that the culture of development was stunted due to changes in leadership: ‘We have a five-year plan. Our school culture of development can be richer in another three to five years. But now everything is paused.’

Discussion

China’s rural rejuvenation project has drawn on resettlement techniques to reimagine education in rural areas. In Ceheng County of Guizhou Province, local education bureau officials and the principal participants perceived new rural migrant schools as a source of stability, a site to showcase rural rejuvenation to society, and a solution to persistent rural educational problems. The School A and B principals aimed to develop students and teachers, raise performance, and foster school culture. They and the teacher leaders perceived their most significant challenges were high expectations with limited autonomy, adaptation to new rural migrant communities, and leadership recognition and stability.

The findings reveal two crucial considerations in examining school leadership for community development. First, new rural migrant schools can support new community development by emphasising and strengthening their social and economic roles. Schools A and B contributed physically and institutionally to the new rural migrant communities, representing China’s new face of rural communities with brand-new, well-appointed school buildings. Institutionally, these schools stabilised rural migrant families through compulsory education. However, in newly established migrant communities with complex needs post-resettlement (Vassallo, 2024), it is vital to enhance the social and economic roles that new rural migrant schools play in community development. With their abundant resources and personnel, the two new rural migrant schools are more empowered to contribute positively to rural societies. However, to integrate and utilise school resources efficiently and creatively, local education bureau officials and principals must work together to ensure that policy, programme, and practice aims and priorities are squarely centred in community development. Enriching school goals requires greater elucidation in Schools A and B, as well as other new rural migrant schools, to facilitate school-community development.

Second, professional development in community-centred leadership philosophy, dispositions, and practices is crucial for school-level leaders to ensure that schools foster rural community development. Harmonising performance accountability demands with an ethic of community-centred leadership is paramount to this training. In the unique socioeconomic context of migrant communities (Vassallo, 2024), school leaders are responsible for educating and integrating students into their school environments (Yang & Ma, 2022). At the same time, leaders are tasked with promoting cultural diversity, forging community connections, and establishing community cultures (Sun & Ren, 2021). These ethical obligations may conflict with short-term accountability, but they underpin rural people and community sustainability in the long term. Additionally, transformative leadership principles (Shields, 2013) can be adopted to facilitate the transition to community-centred leadership. Training in these paradigms and practices can foster innovation and creativity among school leaders to see the synergies and possibilities of community-centred schooling. By promoting equity (Yiu & Adams, 2013) and humanism (Yang, 2016) in strengthened school-community ties, new rural migrant school leaders can contribute to forging durable community traits and a sustainable and friendly environment as the backbone of community development (Howley & Howley, 2010), which is key to community development in multiple domains (Warner et al., 2024).

Conclusions

New rural migrant schools and communities illuminate the profound changes in rural China (Kong et al., 2021). Officials want new rural migrant schools to showcase integrated rural development through improved public service in education, and school leaders conceptualised the new rural migrant schools as a solution to persistent rural educational problems. New rural migrant schools face leadership challenges due to high official expectations paired with limited autonomy, the need to adapt to new rural migrant communities, and the importance of leadership recognition and stability. However, challenges outside the school that contribute to social and economic development in the rural community deserve equal policy and leadership attention.

By revealing the aims and challenges surrounding new rural migrant schools amid the changes reshaping rural communities and schools, this study argues that the conventional conceptualisation and practice of rural schools must evolve. It also advocates that performance accountability demands must be situated within a community-centred leadership ethic to promote community development, which the principles of transformative leadership can facilitate. When leadership is focused solely or primarily on the inside of the school (Warren, 2005), the vision of school-for-community is likely to be diminished.

Future research on leadership for community development – particularly in migrant, rural-to-rural and rural-to-urban contexts – would benefit from multifocal lenses that position leadership squarely in service of (new) communities and the well-being of children and families living in these spaces. Additionally, in the case of new rural migrant schools, leadership can be examined in and compared to cases of (new) community schools in post-conflict and post-integration neighbourhoods, towns, and societies. Scholarship may also investigate collaboration between new rural migrant schools, parents, and community leaders in resettlement areas to facilitate rural socio-educational development in the Greater China context. Research on schools and leadership in rural and migrant contexts must be contextualised within the complex historical and current policymaking and political environment.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interest

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Ethical statement

ORCID iDs

Li Huan Chen

Priya Goel

Data Availability Statement

All data generated or analysed during this study are included in this published article [and its supplementary information files].*

Note

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Leadership for community: Learning from new rural migrant schools in China

Abstract

Keywords

Introduction

Policy background

Rural community development through poverty alleviation and Rural Revitalisation

New rural migrant communities and schools

New rural migrant schools and communities in Guizhou, China

Theoretical framework

Methodology

Research context

Schools A and B

Data collection and analysis

Limitations

Results

Aims of new rural migrant schools

Principal’s leadership priorities: Student and teacher development

Leadership challenges facing new rural migrant schools

High official expectations coupled with limited autonomy

Adaptation to new rural migrant communities

Leadership recognition and stability

Discussion

Conclusions

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interest

Funding

Ethical statement

ORCID iDs

Data Availability Statement

Note

References