Location:  Rwanda, Kenya, Ghana 

Timing:  May 2023 – October 2024 

Budget: 737,822.29 USD 

Donor: Mastercard Foundation 

Challenge/opportunity

Governments in Africa have made great strides to ensure access to basic education. But ‘being in school’ does not equal ‘learning’, and the quality of education indeed remains a challenge. Effective school leadership is critical to addressing the underlying factors of the learning crisis impacting the African continent, such as unprepared students, poor teaching quality, weak school management, and a focus on educational inputs that do not drive learning. School leaders play a key role in ensuring the effective use of resources and supporting teachers, and investing in successful school leadership strategies is likely to have a large payoff given the scope of principals’ impacts on students and schools. However, school leaders tend to focus on administrative and supervisory activities rather than instructional leadership, and many school heads in Sub-Saharan African countries are ill-prepared to meet the challenges posed by their job. Training school leaders to undertake instructional leadership and providing coaching and support for developing such skills can help shift towards instructional leadership at the school level.  To address the diverse challenges in education systems in Africa and to ignite the potential of school leadership to improve the quality of education, the African Centre for School Leadership (ACSL) has been set up. 

Goal:  

The objective of the Centre is to work with governments and governmental agencies in the education sector to build supportive school leadership systems that strengthen teaching and improve learning  outcomes and wellbeing for all. The Centre does this by using the best available expertise in the region to deliver high-quality continuous  professional development services, research, and policy advice. The focus  of the ACSL is on providing technical and coordination support at both operational and strategic levels to governments and their agencies with a focus on: 

1. Policy: development or re-development of effective school leadership policies and guidelines. 
2. Practice: development and delivery professional development programmes for school leaders. 
3. Research: research on the effectiveness and impact of school leadership and school leadership professional development. 
4. Knowledge mobilisation, advocacy, communication, and sector coordination: mobilisation and dissemination of evidence, insights, learning; advocacy on school leadership; coordination of partners and stakeholders involved in promoting school leadership. 

Partners: 

• Rwanda Ministry of Education 
• Rwanda Basic Education Board  
• University of Rwanda College of Education (UR-CE) 
• Kenya Education Management Institute (KEMI) 
• Institute for Educational Planning and Administration (IEPA – Ghana) 
• Association for the Development of Education in Africa (ADEA) 

Alignment with the ACSL focus areas 

• 1. Policy ​☒​ 
• 2. Practice ​☒​ 
• 3. Research ​☒​ 
• 4. Knowledge mobilisation, advocacy, communication, and sector Coordination ​☒​ 

Location: Ghana, Kenya, Zambia 

Timing:  June 2023 – December 2023 

Budget: 10,000 USD 

Donor: Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report UNESCO 

Challenge/opportunities

School leadership is recognised broadly as a key factor in enhancing student learning outcomes. Although the school leader does not interact directly with learners in the classroom, they play a big role in ensuring that the school learning environment is conducive to effective learning.  

The concept of Ubuntu school leadership highlights unique competences and aspects of leadership, starting from assessing available resources, attending to others’ needs, and raising expectations and commitment to organisational goals.  

While most studies on school leadership competences in Africa align with international school leadership models, the concept of Ubuntu leadership could be an emergent approach to school leadership in Africa highlighting unique aspects of leadership. The concept also aligns with a growing interest in the distributed or shared school leadership model.  

While the research on distributed school leadership in Africa is still limited, it can indicate a normative shift away from solo leaders, towards shared leadership models. The concept of Ubuntu leadership can be of interest to describe how multiple actors, b¬¬oth within and outside the school and the education system, can collaborate and achieve collective goals. As such, the model also zooms in on the needs and roles of the community. 

Goal  

To explore unique characteristics of leadership and leadership competencies that are relevant in Sub-Saharan African contexts, describe and further develop the concept of Ubuntu leadership 

Partners

• Prof. Dr. Ann Lopez (University of Toronto) 

Alignment with the ACSL focus areas 

• 1. Policy ​☐​ 
• 2. Practice ​☐​ 
• 3. Research ​☒​ 
• 4. Knowledge mobilisation, advocacy, communication, and sector Coordination ​☒​ 

Location: Ghana  

Timing:  1 March 2023 – October 2024 

Budget: 183,000 EUR

Donor: Jacobs Foundation 

Challenge/opportunities

Quality ECE is critical for building a productive and competitive nation envisioned in Ghana’s Education Strategic Plan 2018-2030. With this vision, the ECE policy was developed to strengthen the ECE sub-sector to advance the physical, cognitive, psychosocial, and emotional growth of all 4-5-year-old children. However, several challenges are hindering the achievement of the expected results, such as fragmented coordination for quality ECE implementation and inadequate teacher professional development leading to poor understanding and use of the play-based curriculum.  

Given these challenges, and the significant work underway to scale play-based teacher training nationally in Ghana, engaging leadership within the ECE system is critical to the success of ECE implementation. 

Goal 

To set up ECE Leadership Communities of Practice (LCoP), to create learning societies in which key members and leaders within the learning community develop shared understanding and insights, as well as a clear commitment and leadership in support of play-based ECE teaching and learning in Ghana. 

Partners  

• VVOB – education for development
• Sabre Education 
• Right to Play  
• AfriKids 

Alignment with the ACSL focus areas 

• 1. Policy ​☒​
• 2. Practice ​☒​ 
• 3. Research ​☒​ 
• 4. Knowledge mobilisation, advocacy, communication, and sector Coordination ​☒​