The African Centre for School Leadership (ACSL) has concluded a rapid school leadership mapping for Sierra Leone. This followed a one-day workshop on Thursday 26th June, 2025, at Brookfield Hotels Freetown, with key school leadership stakeholders in Sierra Leone. Outcome from this activity will support the co-creation workshop for the Leaders in Teaching initiative in Sierra Leone from July 1 – 4, 2025. The effort forms part of a broader continental effort by ACSL to strengthen school leadership systems across Africa.
The workshop, which was a focused group discussion, unpacked the various school leadership context in Sierra Leone, with focus on the LEAD pillar of the LIT effort. It was an opportunityt o engage with representatives from the Teaching Service Commission (TSC), the Ministry of Basic and Senior Secondary Education (MBSSE), development partners, such as EducAid, Cambridge Education, Teach for Sierra Leone, and academic institutions, including the Fourah Bay College. Participants reflected on the country’s school leadership policies—including the 2017 Professional Standards for School Leaders and the 2023 Basic and Senior Secondary Education Act—while discussing challenges in implementation.
The discussions revealed interesting gaps such as the limited access to Continuing Professional Development (CPD), low female participation in leadership roles, weak CPD monitoring systems, and unclear role definitions among key institutions. Stakeholders called for a more structured, inclusive, and coordinated approach to developing effective school leadership nationwide.
The workshop’s outcomes will inform the finalization of the Sierra Leone school leadership mapping report and feed directly into a three-day co-creation workshop aimed at developing actionable strategies to design the LIT-LEAD programme in Sierra Leone. The LIT-LEAD initiative is also being implemented in Ghana and Tanzania.
