# 1 Introduction

Evidence from high- and middle-income countries suggests that the quality of school leadership has measurable impacts on teacher behaviors and on student learning achievement (Leithwood and Sun, 2012; Branch et al., 2012; Bloom et al., 2015; Fryer Jr, 2017; Leaver et al., 2019). In a meta-analysis of six rigorous studies based on data from the United States, Grissom et al. (2021) find the impact of improvements in principals’ practices on student achievement to be nearly as large as those of a comparable improvement in teacher’s practices identified in similar studies.<sup>1</sup> The authors identify three key areas through which school leaders achieve these impacts: organizing resources strategically around people and instruction; overseeing and providing feedback on teaching; and managing and effectively communicating with teachers, parents and the community. Adopting these three broad areas as a framework, we note that the literature finds that school leaders can improve the performance of teachers by (i) motivating them to attend school regularly and fulfil their assigned duties (Leithwood and Sun, 2012; Leaver et al., 2019), and (ii) directly supporting improvement in pedagogical practices, for example by observing lessons and providing feedback (Grissom et al., 2021; Hallinger, 2005; Ingersoll, Dougherty, and Sirinides, Ingersoll et al.; Grissom et al., 2013). Finally, school leaders can inculcate school cultures that are conducive to learning and support strong identification and communication between teachers, students and parents (Akerlof and Kranton, 2002; for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2005). However, there is limited evidence on the impacts of school leadership quality on educational outcomes in low-income countries.<sup>2</sup> The apparent importance of school leadership has led to a growing body of experimental evidence on interventions to improve school leadership skills, with mixed findings. Fryer Jr (2017), de Hoyos et al. (2020) and Tavares (2015), reporting on interventions in the United States, Argentina and Brazil respectively, find significant impacts from such interventions on student outcomes, although impacts were frequently heterogenous and took 1-2 years to emerge. Studies from Mexico (Romero et al., 2022) and India (Muralidharan and Singh,

> 1 The authors identify an impact of 0.13 standard deviations (S.D.) in mathematics and 0.09 in reading from a 1 S.D. improvement in principal effectiveness, as compared to a 0.17 S.D. gain in mathematics and 0.13 S.D. in reading from a 1 S.D. improvement in teacher effectiveness.

> 2 There are reasonable grounds to expect a relatively high marginal return from improved leadership at the school level in these countries. In particular, constraints of inputs unsurprisingly tend to be higher in low-income countries, raising the importance of efficient allocation and utilization of these resources; however, misallocation and poor utilization tend to be more common in low-income countries, particularly those in Sub-Saharan Africa (Bashir et al., 2018), suggesting a greater potential gain from efforts to build the skills of principals in resource management and utilization. For example, in Malawi, the context of this study, shortages of teachers are exacerbated by widespread misallocation of teachers between grades (see section 2.3). Similarly, challenges of teacher behavior, including absenteeism and inappropriate behavior towards children, are on average more severe in low-income countries and particularly Sub-Saharan Africa (ibid.); this potentially increases the benefits to learning and progression improvements in the skills and practices of school leaders in these areas.

1