 Improving school leadership in RwandaSimeon Lauterbach, Lee Crawfurd, Jocelyne C. Kirezi, Aimable Nsabimana and Jef Peeraer Journal of Development Economics, 2025, vol. 177, issue C Abstract: Can effective school leadership enhance high-stakes test scores in low-income countries? To address this question, we examine the short-term impact of a school leadership professional development program that was implemented by VVOB across 525 primary schools in the six lowest-performing districts of Rwanda between 2018 and 2019. The program aimed to strengthen the leadership, management, and teacher support skills of school headteachers. We find that the program had small but statistically insignificant effects on Primary Leaving Examination scores within one to two years after the intervention. However, the program led to a five to six percentage point increase in teacher retention rates, with qualitative evidence suggesting that headteachers provided greater support to teachers, in particular during the onboarding process. Future research should focus on refining such programs and understanding which mechanisms are necessary to also improve learning outcomes of students. Keywords: School leadership; Professional development; School management (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:deveco:v:177:y:2025:i:c:s0304387825000963 DOI: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2025.103545 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Development Economics is currently edited by M. R. Rosenzweig More articles in Journal of Development Economics from Elsevier |
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