I am asked this question often. In staff rooms, after training sessions, sometimes on the phone by a young teacher I have never met: "Ma'am, how does one become a principal?"
Behind the question there is almost always an assumption — that somewhere there is a qualification, an exam, a certificate, a shortcut. Something you can go and acquire on a Sunday.
There is no such thing. I joined Pragya Group of Institutions in 2011 as a Trained Graduate Teacher. I took charge as principal in January 2021. Ten years. And not one of those years was spent waiting for the post.
Here is what those ten years actually contained.
OneThe qualification is the entry ticket, not the job
Yes, you need the paperwork. A B.Ed. A master's in your subject — mine is an MA in History from the University of Rajasthan. CBSE has clear norms for the post and there is no way around them, nor should there be.
But understand what a qualification does. It gets your file read. It puts you in a room with eight other people whose files are equally strong. Every single candidate shortlisted for a principal's post has the degrees. Not one of them is selected because of the degrees.
I have sat on both sides of that table now. The paperwork is where the conversation starts, not where it is decided.
TwoSay yes to the roles nobody wants
In 2018, seven years into my time at Pragya, I was given my first in-charge role. It came with more work and no additional salary. Then academic in-charge. Then activity in-charge. Then vice principal.
This is the part that gets skipped when people tell this story neatly. Nobody hands you leadership. They hand you a problem and watch what you do with it.
An in-charge role teaches you what fifteen years in a classroom cannot:
- Building a timetable when three teachers are on leave and the syllabus will not move
- Standing in front of a parent at 8:15 in the morning who is angry and, occasionally, correct
- Recognising a teacher who is struggling and will not say so
- Running an event that must happen whether or not the power holds
Every one of those is a decision made without enough information and without anyone to escalate to. That is the actual job of a principal, and there is no way to learn it except by doing it while the stakes are still small.
If you are a teacher who wants the chair: the next time your principal asks who will take on the annual function, the CBSE file work, the parent grievance — put your hand up. That is the training.
ThreeYou cannot lead a system you have only seen from inside one building
The second thing that changed my trajectory was stepping outside my own school.
I became a CBSE resource person and a teacher trainer. I have delivered sessions at Neerja Modi School in Ajmer on building a happy classroom, at Queen Mary's School in Ajmer on learning outcomes and pedagogies, at Shrimati Sushila Devi Mathur Public School in Bhilwara on the NCF foundational stage, and at AVS Public School in Bijoliya on stress management.
Every one of those visits taught me something about my own institution that I could not have seen from inside it. You walk into another school, you look at their assembly, their staff room, their notice board, and you suddenly understand which of your own practices are considered normal and which are actually good.
In 2018 I attended an international roundtable leadership conference at CMS, Lucknow, and was recognised for Innovation in Process. The idea was a simple one: after a private school's project exhibition ends, the students' models are usually discarded. We began donating them to nearby government schools, where they became live teaching aids.
It was not a complicated idea. It came from having seen both kinds of school.
FourWhat actually gets you selected
When a management is choosing a principal, they are not looking for the most senior teacher. Seniority is not a qualification.
They are looking for one thing: the person who, when something breaks, does not come to them asking what to do.
That means judgement under pressure. It means ownership — of results, of failures, of the difficult conversation you would rather postpone. It means being able to hold a parent and a teacher at the same time without losing either.
It also means being trusted with the institution's name in public. By the time I was given the chair, the management had watched me handle their reputation for three years in smaller ways.
FiveGrow with an institution, not away from it
I stayed. Fifteen years, one institution, and I grew as it grew. That is not the only route — many excellent principals have moved between schools and gained from it. But there is something a long tenure gives you that lateral movement cannot: you inherit no one else's version of the school's history. You were there.
If you are early in your career and impatient, consider this seriously before you move for a title.
The distance in between
To the teacher who asked me the question: there is no shortcut, and that is precisely what makes the post worth holding.
The chair is not given to you on the day of the appointment letter. It is earned in the years before it — in every unglamorous role, every crisis you managed without escalating, every school you visited with your eyes open.
Do that work, and the appointment becomes a formality.