As a result of reforms in the governance of schools, the role of principals in Germany has changed from a teacher with additional administrative tasks to a leader of school improvement. However, many principals in Germany did not receive any substantial formal training for management and leadership tasks. Using the results of a survey of 1240 principals in nine German states, we investigated in which areas of school improvement German principals had professional development needs and how their needs were related to individual and school-related factors. Despite a lack of training and in contrast to studies from other countries, principals reported only moderate professional development needs, and these were influenced, only to a limited extent, by their training and experience and, to a greater extent, by the individual self-efficacy and the perception of teachers in schools. The results might indicate that the normatively postulated change of the principal’s role has not yet permeated their practice.

More and more students attend private supplementary tutoring to improve their academic achievement. Private tutoring might be understood as a reaction to insufficient instructional quality in school, especially regarding individual support. However, it might also be possible that parents generally see insufficient grades as an indicator of lacking support and engage a tutor in hopes of improvement or to enhance a competitive edge for their children. So far, the relationship between tutoring attendance and perceived individual learning support during classroom lessons has not been tested. We used multilevel analyses based on N = 2,842 students in 102 Grade 5 classrooms at German academic track schools to test for a relationship between private tutoring in several subjects and students’ shared perception of the instructional quality in these subjects. On the individual level, we controlled for typical predictors of private tutoring such as academic achievement and family income, as well as for additional variables such as working behaviour and parental homework assistance. In classrooms with more individual support, students were less likely to start private tutoring in English. However, we did not find comparable relationships for tutoring in mathematics and German. Therefore, school principals and educational policy‐makers should monitor the incidence of private tutoring and consider within‐school structured tutoring programmes as an effective measure to improve academic achievement and to meet parents’ desire for individualised instruction.

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