Coaching school leadership in Primary Education in Rwanda. Evolutions in Head Teachers’ self-assessment

Abstract

School leadership is identified as a crucial element for improving the quality of education. This article describes a project on school leadership in Rwandan primary education, in which different groups of head teachers received inputs in varying degrees input on school leadership and follow-up coaching by their sector education officers. A self-assessment tool has been developed to map training needs and to measure professional capacity development, addressing eight dimensions of school leadership. By comparing the mean self-assessment scores of about 196 head teachers, over the course of the first year of the project, we identify how the different experimental groups perceive similar training needs, especially on the dimensions of “reshaping conditions for teaching and learning”, “enriching the curriculum” and “enhancing teacher quality”. However, even at the start of the project, the different experimental groups seem to use the self-assessment tool in different ways. We discuss that further research is needed on the use of the self-assessment tool as measurement as well as capacity development instrument.

Keywords: school leadership; primary education; coaching;  self-assessment; capacity development