Why Uganda’s Education Reforms Need Instructional Leaders

CBC is reshaping classroom practice and efforts to strengthen teacher professional development are helping educators meet new expectations. But there is a question we are not asking enough: who is leading our schools through these reforms? 

Reforms of this scale do not implement themselves. Their success ultimately depends on what happens in schools and classrooms and on the people leading that work. That puts headteachers at the centre of education reform.

Headteachers manage staff, finances, infrastructure, parents, communities and government requirements. At the same time, they are expected to guide curriculum implementation, support teachers and improve the quality of teaching and learning.

A headteacher can run an orderly school without necessarily being equipped to lead instructional improvement. The latter requires a close understanding of what is happening in classrooms, the ability to support teachers to strengthen their practice, and the use of professional learning and evidence to improve teaching and learning.

Uganda’s government, in partnership with development partners like the World Bank, the Global Partnership for Education, STIR Education, has already tested approaches that acknowledge the significance of leadership development. The challenge now is to move from important but often fragmented efforts towards a more deliberate and sustained approach to preparing and supporting school leaders. This is an area where the Leaders in Teaching Uganda programme offers useful experience to build on.

Under the five-year Mastercard Foundation initiative (2025–2030), implemented through a 10-partner consortium co-led by the Luigi Giussani Foundation and UNICEF with strategic oversight from the Ministry of Education and Sports, VVOB and Promoting Equality in African Schools (PEAS) are supporting efforts to strengthen effective leadership practices in secondary schools. The programme takes an approach that sustainable improvements in education depend on changes at all levels, including schools, policies, structures, relationships and support systems that influence how schools’ function. As part of its focus on school leadership, the programme combines a blended certificate course for school leaders with leadership competency development, professional learning and peer support and better use of data for school improvement.

UNESCO's 2024/5 Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report identifies school leadership as one of the most influential school-level factors shaping education quality and student achievement across Africa. Governments across the continent often prioritise infrastructure, curriculum reform and teacher training. However, they tend to overlook leadership development, even though it is what connects these investments and transforms them into classroom results.

Similarly, other research that examined 287 novice head teachers in Ugandan secondary schools found that they demonstrated stronger competence in administrative responsibilities than in instructional leadership and stakeholder engagement. The point is that headteachers who are already skilled at administration need the preparation and support to effectively lead teaching as well.

In Uganda, teachers are being asked to rethink how they teach, assess and engage learners. Continuous professional development is important to this process, but what happens after training matters just as much. Headteachers need to follow up, support teachers through challenges and create opportunities for professional learning, using evidence to see whether changes in practice are improving learning. Without that layer of leadership, we risk treating teacher development as an event rather than a process.

School leadership is not an add-on to education reform; it is what enables teachers to apply, sustain and improve new approaches in their schools. If Uganda expects teachers to change their practice, we cannot leave the people leading those teachers to acquire the skills by chance. Leadership preparation needs to begin before someone becomes a headteacher and continue through the early years of the role.

Sustaining leadership development requires the right conditions across the education system. Leadership readiness needs to be at the centre of how school leaders are prepared and supported, with clear pathways for induction, coaching and mentoring that enable newly appointed headteachers to continue developing their practice. It also requires approaches that can be integrated into existing education structures and scaled across the system, so that leadership development reaches more schools and is sustained over time.

School leadership is more than whether a school is well administered. Teachers need leaders who can support their professional growth, strengthen classroom practice and keep attention on learning.

Uganda has invested in changing the curriculum and strengthening teachers. Now we need to invest in the leaders who must make those changes stick. If reforms are to change what happens in classrooms, school leadership cannot remain an afterthought.

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