Content from a Premium Partner Mastercard Foundation

More children and young people in Africa have access to schooling, but unfortunately, being in school does not automatically result in learning at school. The continent faces a “learning crisis” that jeopardizes economic growth and the well-being of its citizens. Too many young Africans are lacking the skills needed to thrive in the future, yet these young people represent the potential and future of the continent. To tap into the opportunities of a rapidly changing continent, Africa’s young people need a relevant education which can help them develop 21st century skills. This requires robust investment in many aspects of the education system, including effective school leaders across the continent.

Young Africans can transform the region and create lasting economic change, but they need to be equipped to do so. To solve the learning crisis and allow young Africans to thrive and achieve their full potential, four critical pillars must be addressed:

1. prepared learners
2. quality teachers
3. inputs and monitoring focused on learning
4. and effective school leaders

Effective school leadership enables the three other pillars to come together. School leaders are responsible for the effective management of the school, providing academic leadership and strategic vision. Effective school leaders are especially important in schools serving the most disadvantaged and can support equity, inclusion, and community involvement. School leaders play a key role in influencing the motivation and capacity of teachers to deliver quality education in part by creating a supportive school climate and environment. School leaders provide mentoring, supervision, professional support, and guidance for teachers. They can identify strengths and weaknesses of their teachers and provide support for continuing development. Good teachers in turn, are central to enabling student learning and success.  Effective teaching inspired by the best leadership are at the heart of the learning process and are the most important school-based factors for improving learning.

In fact, research has clearly shown that school leadership accounts for up to 25% of variation in students’ learning achievements, second only to classroom teaching. A study by the World Bank found that the most effective school leaders achieved the equivalent of three extra months of learning per year, compared to their least effective counterparts.

Surprisingly, the school leadership level is often forgotten in education reforms in spite of the potential for impacting the success of students. The underutilisation of school leadership is even more surprising when we acknowledge how cost-effective it is for tackling the learning crisis.

Weak school leadership capacity remains a reality in many countries. A recent report on Secondary Education in Africa by the Mastercard Foundation offers important insights as to why. In Sub-Saharan Africa, limited school leader capacity reflects a historical legacy of seeing a school leader as a purely administrative role. Instead of appointing staff for their educational leadership capacities, promotion processes for school leaders were often exclusively based on social or political networks. This also explains the striking underrepresentation of women in school leadership positions in many of these countries, when compared to the proportion of female teachers. Generally speaking, women are underrepresented in educational decision-making bodies, such as boards and ministries.

Mastercard Foundation

More children and young people in Africa have access to schooling, but unfortunately, being in school does not automatically result in learning at school. The continent faces a “learning crisis” that jeopardizes economic growth and the well-being of its citizens. A robust investment in many aspects of the education system is needed, including effective school leaders across the continent.

Clearly, a fundamental shift is required. Training just one school leader could potentially improve the learning outcomes of all students in that school. This study calculated the expected return on investment of management training for learner outcomes and found that it is one of the most meaningful in education reform.

School leadership can be strengthened by providing professional development opportunities for school leaders. Good practices already exist, such as the programme implemented by VVOB and Mastercard Foundation in Rwanda. As part of the Leaders in Teaching initiative, we work closely with the Government of Rwanda to strengthen school leadership in secondary education. The programme started in 14 districts of Rwanda and will now be scaled up to all 30 districts. Even in these difficult circumstances of COVID-19, the ICT-enabled model for professional development of school leaders allows us to reach large numbers of beneficiaries.  Professional development of school leaders is provided through certified courses in effective school leadership and through professional learning networks of school leaders. Through iterative learning cycles, we are learning what works best while implementing the programme. An early impact evaluation showed improvements in learning among teaching staff, and more collaboration between the schools and wider community. A midline study highlighted that there is increased support for professional development of teachers in schools where school leaders have been trained.

With this increasing evidence available on what works and how, we are looking forward to taking a next step in strengthening school leadership across Africa. Existing innovative approaches on school leadership, such as the Rwanda case, which was recognized by the African Union as a top innovation should be further tested and scaled in other African contexts. . Strengthening in-service teacher mentorship and support has also been identified as key policy challenge in the KIX Africa 19 regional hub.

Based on more than a decade of experience in strengthening effective school leadership in Rwanda, we can leapfrog reforms in other African contexts and generate the impact African young people deserve. Existing school leadership standards can be contextualized and current professional development trajectories for school leaders can easily be adapted to new environments. We believe that this will truly make a difference for education in Africa, and can help the continent fulfil its potential as a region where everyone has the opportunity to learn and prosper.

Authors:

Rica Rwigamba (Country Head, Rwanda, Mastercard Foundation) and Marianne Kiggundu (Country Programmes Manager Rwanda, VVOB – education for development)

Chapter in “Education Reimagined: Leadership for a New Era” (pages 38-39) by WISE

INTRODUCTION

There is strong consensus within the international education community that effective school leadership is key to leverage the broader education workforce for better learning and more resilient education systems. However, school leaders’ roles and responsibilities are often still too contained to administrative or supervisory activities. The shift towards instructional leadership at school level can be facilitated through the professional development of school leaders to undertake instructional leadership and by providing the necessary tools, and by strengthening decentralised educational leadership capacity.

RWANDA IMPORTANT ACTIONS

In Rwanda, the government set out on a path in 2008 to firmly institutionalise such effective, instructional school leadership with the support of VVOB – education for development. Five important actions (in somewhat chronological order), over the course of nearly 15 years – not an unusual length of time for nationwide scaling – have led to this success and can inspire similar endeavours.

1. Set up a dedicated unit within existing structures To consolidate and sustain progress already made in pilot projects on school management and administration before 2008, Rwanda’s Ministry of Education and VVOB began looking at how and where to set up a department responsible for school leadership more broadly. In 2011, this collaboration led to the formal establishment of the School Leadership and Management Unit within the Rwanda Basic Education Board (REB). The unit is mainly responsible for the quality of school leadership and management in basic education and, more specifically, for continuous professional development, peer learning, and the monitoring and evaluation of school leaders. A taskforce on school leadership, co-chaired by REB and VVOB, coordinates efforts of all partners in the education sector.

2. Define a common framework for ‘effective school leadership’ One of the first major accomplishments of the Unit was the formulation and introduction of evidence based professional standards for school leaders:

• Creating strategic direction for the school
• Leading learning
• Leading teaching
• Managing the school as an organisation
• Working with parents and the wider community

These five standards describe in detail the key roles, responsibilities, functions and necessary competences to be an effective school leader. They set a common framework for the recruitment, assessment, certification and professional development of school leaders.

3. Invest in accredited professional development of school leaders and government officials In 2013, work began on developing a system to extend professional development to school leaders and government staff at a decentralised level across the country, taking into account the abovementioned five standards. VVOB, REB and the University of Rwanda-College of Education (UR-CE) joined forces to design two continuous professional development (CPD) modalities. These were

• a CPD diploma course on Effective School Leadership, aimed at equipping school leaders with the competences needed to fulfil their roles. By 2021, around 3,000 school leaders had successfully completed the program, officially accredited by UR-CE
• additional CPD support in professional learning communities (PLCs) of school leaders, aimed at bridging the gap between the theory, policy and practice of effective school leadership, and at creating a forum for sharing good practices. By 2021, VVOB had trained close to 400 government officials at a decentralised level, to facilitate these PLCs and coach the school leaders participating in them.

4. Reach more school leaders online As points 1 and 2 show, scaling is about more than ‘reaching numbers’. However, numbers are important, especially if the issue at hand impacts many individuals, as effective leadership does. When it comes to reaching many people, ICTmediated learning has some obvious advantages. The government of Rwanda is also keen to harness the power of ICT.

In 2019, VVOB redeveloped the original training programs for school leaders for delivery in a blended modality by UR-CE lecturers. Future and current school leaders who want to obtain a diploma in Effective School Leadership can now learn the content online from their workplace or at home through a user-friendly interface. The limited face-to-face sessions are dedicated to deepening the understanding of the content through peer learning and interactive exercises, with offline alternatives for contexts of limited connectivity.

5. Promote distributed leadership in schools As effective teaching is the school-based factor with the greatest direct impact on learning outcomes, VVOB and REB also look to teachers to take up leadership roles. School-based mentors and school subject leaders, for example, are teachers selected by their peers to act as teacher leaders: they are expected to show personal leadership in professional development; they coordinate school-based CPD; they support new teachers; they stimulate reflection through lesson observations and feedback; and they are general coaches and mentors to support their colleagues in becoming better teachers. The support of the school leader for the school-based mentor remains, however, a key determinant for successful teacher leadership. Through this trajectory of institutionalising effective school leadership at different levels, VVOB started building an evidence base to demonstrate that the model ‘works’ and to gain eminent support within Rwanda – and across the African continent.