Identifying the Factors, Criteria and Symptoms of the Ranking of the First Junior High Schools: Findings of a Qualitative Research

Despite the fact that the ranking of junior high schools as one of the most important missions of the Ministry of Education plays a significant role in the success of this organization in achieving the goals of this course, the development and validation of relevant components of ranking of junior high schools has not been taken into serious consideration. The current researches in this field have not considered all the factors related to the ranking of this type of schools. The purpose of this study is to develop and validate the factors, criteria and ranking symptoms of junior high schools. In terms of method, the adopted approach is a type of qualitative research that employs theme analysis method. In this study, documents and resources were examined and 10 comprehensive themes of teaching-learning process leadership, successes, leadership, communication, administrative-executive management, resource management, teachers, administrative staff, ethical leadership and extracurricular activities were identified, and they have been validated by consulting experts. The results reveal that the ranking of junior high schools in the field of education is a new and emerging issue that has not received much attention from researchers in this field. Therefore, due to the limited employed resources, some of the factors, criteria and symptoms proposed in this study may not be complete, or there may be some other components that have not yet been identified. It is also necessary for the effectiveness of school rankings to pay more attention to the alignment of all identified factors, criteria and symptoms with the major factors of the organization, leadership, culture, infrastructure.