Improving the quality of education at scale remains one of the toughest challenges facing policymakers. While much attention focuses on teachers and curriculum, a growing body of research identifies school leadership as a critical yet underused lever. Rwanda offers a rare large-scale test of this idea.
A national leadership training programme reached hundreds of schools, with the results documented in the working paper ‘Improving school leadership in Rwanda’, published by the Center for Global Development in 2024. The results of the programme suggest promise, but there are also some limitations.
The programme: Training 500+ school leaders
Between 2018 and 2019, Rwanda rolled out a School Leadership Professional Development Programme (SLPDP) across 525 schools, targeting headteachers. The programme aimed to strengthen core leadership functions, including strategic planning and school direction, supporting teaching and learning, managing school operations and engaging parents and communities.
Delivered as a diploma course, the programme focused on practical leadership skills, recognising that many head teachers are promoted from teaching roles without formal management training. The intervention was evaluated using a randomised design, allowing researchers to estimate its impact on student learning outcomes.
The results: No overall gains, but low-cost schools benefited
The programme had no significant overall effect on student test scores, either during the training year or the following year. Even where test scores increased slightly – around 0.01 to 0.03 standard deviations – these effects were not statistically significant. This places Rwanda’s results in line with a wider body of evidence. Many leadership and management interventions show limited or no measurable gains in learning outcomes, at least in the short term.
Dig deeper, however, and a more nuanced picture emerges. In public schools, the programme led to gains of around 0.10 to 0.11 standard deviations in test scores. These effects were concentrated in schools with fewer resources, rural or less affluent areas, and contexts with weaker initial management and performance. By contrast, there was no measurable impact in government-aided schools, which typically start from a stronger baseline. The implication is that leadership training may matter most where systems are weakest.
The study highlights three main constraints that shape outcomes:
1. Starting conditions matter
Public schools tend to have weaker management and lower-performing students at baseline. This creates more room for improvement and makes gains easier to detect.
2. Time constraints limit implementation
Head teachers reported struggling to apply what they had learnt. Administrative burdens and competing responsibilities reduced their ability to support teachers or drive change in classrooms.
3. Governance structures get in the way
In government-aided schools, principals must answer to multiple stakeholders, including school owners and religious bodies. This makes decision-making slower and change harder to implement. Together, these factors help explain why the same training produces different results in different contexts.
Qualitative evidence suggests the programme did shift leadership practices. Head teachers reported greater confidence in managing schools, more collaboration with teachers, improved engagement with parents and communities and increased focus on supporting teaching and learning. These are important changes – but they did not consistently translate into measurable improvements in student learning, at least within one to two years of implementation.
Despite modest results, the programme shows potential as a cost-effective intervention. The study estimates that, under reasonable assumptions, the programme falls within the mid-range of cost-effectiveness compared to other education interventions. However, this depends heavily on targeting. Directing resources to schools with the greatest need substantially improves value for money.
Lessons for education reform
Rwanda’s experience offers a set of grounded, practical lessons:
- Leadership matters, but is not a silver bullet – and training alone does not guarantee improvements in learning outcomes.
- Context is critical – programmes are more effective in weaker, lower-performing systems.
- Design must account for constraints – time pressures and governance structures can undermine even well-designed interventions.
- Targeting matters for impact and efficiency – focusing on the right schools can turn modest gains into meaningful ones.
The study reinforces the fact that improving education systems requires not just better ideas, but an understanding of how those ideas play out in real-world conditions.
Rwanda’s results are neither a success story nor a failure. They show that leadership training can shift behaviour – and sometimes improve outcomes – but only under the right conditions. Policymakers should invest in leadership, but design carefully, target precisely, and expect uneven results.
