Increasing women's representation in school leadership: a promising path towards improving learning

• In Event: Roundtable Session 3
  In Refereed Roundtable Session: Teaching and Teachers

Proposal

Thematic Focus
Recent studies have shown that school leaders' management practices play an essential role in learning. A clear body of evidence suggests that schools with effective leaders have better student learning outcomes, and school leadership has been shown to be the second most important in-school factor affecting learning.
Evidence suggests that student outcomes and learning benefit more when schools are female-led. This submission anticipates shared research interests and valuable discussion with other CIES contributors around the interpretations of female leadership in education and the potential benefits of promoting it as a systemic improvement which will enhance equity.

Context
In 2020, PASEC-CONFEMEN4 research found that, across 14 Francophone African countries, learning outcomes for students in female-led primary schools were higher than those in male-led ones for mathematics and reading. Beyond learning, women in school leadership may also positively affect student wellbeing. Recent findings show female school leaders reported higher ability to support the wellbeing of their school community during the COVID-19 pandemic. Research on teacher attendance also suggests that female school leaders are more likely than male school leaders to encourage teacher attendance and use sensitisation strategies to make teachers aware of how their attendance affects student outcomes. In addition, in female-led schools, parents are more engaged in discussions about their children’s academic progress.

Theoretical Approach
This paper adopts a broad framing of the inclusion and equity agenda that finds expression in key international normative instruments such as SDG4 and 5 on inclusive and equitable quality education and lifelong learning opportunities for all.
The need for national education systems to become inclusive at all levels of the education system and develop policies and enabling environments that are reflective of the diversity of educators has wide-ranging implications for learners.

Methodology
This conceptual research comprises several phases:
• Desk research (complete)
• Econometric analysis of PASEC 2019 data, the association between the gender of the school principal and learning outcomes in 14 participating countries in francophone Africa (in progress).
• Country-level analysis of the four countries where a statistically significant correlation between female school leadership and student performance is evident (planned).
• Co-design and impact assessment of possible interventions in collaboration with governments (planned).

Preliminary Findings
The initial desk review highlights effective management practices of women school leaders, such as promoting more participatory teaching and learning environments, encouraging teacher attendance and parental involvement, increasing pedagogical leadership to support teacher collaboration, encouraging skills improvement and promoting accountability for learning. By February we will be able to share learning from the country level analysis and exploratory field work as well as from the literature review.

Author

• Carolina ALBAN CONTO, UNESCO IIEP