Educational values, as the organic integration and condensation of educational philosophy, directly influence the motivation, behaviour, and effect in educational management. In the less developed regions of the country, although the primary conditions of schooling are rapidly improving with increasing investment of state funds, the transformation of educational values is lagging, resulting in a big gap with the developed regions. The problem is thought to be the deviation of the educational values of many schools and parents from the core educational values. Utilitarian, economistic and individualistic educational values still prevail, directly affecting educational practice.Thus, the key to primary education reform is the change of educational values. A group of primary and secondary school principals with excellent educational values were chosen to be cultivated to lead the formation of a pluralistic and balanced value system in education. Taking the "Ten Thousand Principals Training Program" in Yunnan Province, China, as an example, this paper systematically analyses the educational values of 1,015 principals. The research design combines qualitative and quantitative approaches, starting with a qualitative analysis based on the Chinese Value Survey (CVS) to develop a framework, followed by word frequency statistics in Python, and finally, a generalisation and summary. The results show that the principals' cognition of excellent educational values converges strongly despite several limitations. Combined with expert consultation and in-depth interviews, the core elements of excellent educational values are further summarised and condensed from education's basic, time, and space dimensions. It is necessary to implement the main responsibility, adhere to certain principles, and conduct long-term follow-up cultivation along the internal logic of the cognitive, emotional, and behavioural paths. Results have valuable implications for developing educational values research frameworks and principal value education practices.