The long-running National Survey of Schools project is part of the New Zealand Council for Educational Research's (NZCER's) Te Pae Tawhiti programme of research, funded through the Ministry of Education. NZCER has run a national survey of secondary schools every 3 years since 2003. As part of the 2022 National Survey of Secondary Schools, we invited all English-medium secondary school principals (state and state-integrated) to complete our surveys. The report covers all the questions asked of principals, organised in four areas: (1) Optimism, supporting Maori students, and supporting Pacific students; (2) Governance, system-wide interactions, and support; (3) Teaching, learning, and wellbeing; and (4) Equity, curriculum, and working experiences. This year we trialled a different approach to surveying principals, where we sent out three shorter surveys to all principals, where each third completed only one survey. The three samples cover all English-medium secondary principals (state and state-integrated), and, together, the three surveys allowed us to retain the comprehensive nature of our national survey, while reducing survey completion time for principals. Of all 374 principals we invited to take part in the survey, we received a total of 154 principal responses across our three surveys, giving a response rate of 41%.