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Key messages

• Policymakers face a major challenge: how to ensure that people with the right skills and vision are identified, selected,
  prepared and supported as leaders.
• National plans at the school, system and political level need to nurture four essential leadership dimensions: set expectations, focus on learning, foster collaboration and develop people. Yet a global review of school principal preparation and training programmes and courses suggests that barely half of them focus on any of these four dimensions – and just one third focus on all four.

• Effective principals bring out the best in students. In the United States, it was estimated that principal and teacher leadership inputs contributed up to 27% of the variance in student outcomes, ranking just below teachers' impact on learning among school-controlled factors.
• Effective principals bring out the best in teachers. A study of 32 countries affirmed that strong leadership correlates with improved teaching practices. Globally, 57% of countries expect principals to provide feedback to teachers based on their observations. However, the share of secondary school principals overseeing teaching activities fell from 81% in 2015 to 77% in 2022 in high-income countries.
• Effective principals ensure their schools are safe, healthy and inclusive. Preventing bullying and ensuring student safety are key objectives for school leaders. In the United States, principals adapted the curriculum to prioritize social and emotional well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic. In Malta, principals worked with communities to develop an inclusive school culture for migrants with language support.

• Talent recruitment and retention requires open and competitive hiring processes. Limiting political discretion in appointing school principals improves school outcomes. Yet globally, only have open and competitive school principal recruitment processes in primary and secondary education.
• The best teachers do not necessarily make the best principals. But while almost all countries require principals to be
  fully qualified teachers,also specify management experience.
• Autonomy can unlock leaders’ potential. Higher-performing education systems tend to grant greater autonomy to principals over decisions on human and financial resources. But, in richer countries, less than half of principals are responsible for course content or establishing teacher salary levels. And almost 40% of countries do not recognize higher education institutions’ autonomy by law.
• Professional leaders need preparation and training. School leadership standards can help guide training by outlining the required competencies, which almost all countries have set. However, almost half of principals in richer countries do not receive any training before appointment and only 31% of all countries have regulations for the induction of new principals. Practical skills like data use, financial management and digital literacy are also essential, yet a quarter of principals in richer countries lack adequate training in such areas.

• There are too many demands on school operations to leave enough time for principals to set a vision. Expectations of principals are often too high. Principals are key to effective implementation of reforms. In some countries, they are also under intense scrutiny due to new accountability mechanisms. Yet a survey of principals in 14 middle-income countries showed that 68% of their time is spent on routine management tasks. About one third of public school principals and one fifth of private school principals in OECD countries reported lacking sufficient time for instructional leadership.

• Sharing leadership throughout the school creates a collaborative learning environment. It empowers teachers to lead within their classrooms, students to be active leaders with their peers, and parents and community members to be involved. Yet collaboration is the most underemphasized of the four leadership dimensions in training programmes. 
• School leadership is too often hierarchical. Assistant principals and teachers can help achieve school goals when enabled with clear roles, training and incentives. But only explicitly emphasize teacher collaboration in their leadership standards and barely one third of leadership training programmes focus on it. Somerequire school boards to include teachers and 83% to include parents, 62% community members and 57% students.

• Education officials at the central and local levels are potential leaders. They can drive system-wide improvement and alignment in education reform and policy. Countries increasingly recognize that these officials can have greater influence if they are given greater autonomy. 
• System leaders are effective when they work with other actors. In the Mexican state of Puebla, the success of the education reform was the result of coordinated system-wide efforts that included the leadership of education officials.

• Ministers balance multiple demands during short tenures and often do not have a background in teaching. A new global database shows that half of education ministers since 2010 leave office within two years after their appointment; only 23% have prior experience of teaching in schools. 
• Political leaders need to be astute in political compromise and outreach to make reform happen. Coalition and relationship building can make up for a lack of time and good data and in the face of conflicting opinions. 
• Short tenures make it hard to deliver reform. Analysis of World Bank education projects between 2000 and 2017 in 114 countries found a substantive negative correlation between ministerial turnover and project performance.

• Female political leaders have prioritized education more than their male peers. Female parliamentarians have helped increase primary education spending globally. Yet, the percentage of female ministers has increased only from 23% in 2010–13 to 30% in 2020–23. 
• Some studies suggest that women achieve better learning outcomes than men as principals. In francophone Africa, students in primary schools led by female principals outperformed those in schools led by male principals in mathematics and reading by at least six months. 
• While many women teach, far fewer lead schools. The share of female principals in primary and secondary education is on average at least 20 percentage points lower than the average share of female teachers. Only 11% of countries globally have measures in place to address gender diversity in principal recruitment.

• Teacher unions, student unions, business leaders, academics and civil society hold governments to account, lobby and raise awareness. Influence matters: In the United States, some think tanks score low on expertise but high on education discussions in Congress, with the reverse being the case for others. 
• International organizations help frame and inform the global debate on education, as well as fund countries’ education systems. However, competition for space and influence can distract them from the goal of education improvement and their legitimacy can be challenged by a lack of capacity or efficiency.