Developing the capacity of education local leaders for sustaining professional learning communities in Rwanda

Abstract Constructing school leaders as autonomous professionals through management and leadership training constitutes the first step to releasing their potential to improve school quality. Despite major gains by the Ministry of education in Rwanda, particularly training and recruitment of teachers and introduction of a coordination system to ensure professional development and management of teachers, the education sector is still challenged to ensure that (head) teachers have the capacity to lead and deliver the new competence based curriculum in schools. In this paper, we explore how a partnership established in 2014 between governmental and nongovernmental institutions led to the development and implementation of certified Continuous Professional Development (CPD) programs for the Rwandan education sector and present some preliminary findings. We apply the Kirkpatrick evaluation of training framework to present the different results that the CPD programs have brought about at the learning and behaviour change level. Data were composed of different monitoring and evaluation outputs and training assessments that have been produced by the program so far including focus group discussions and pre- and post-surveys on knowledge, attitudes and practices. The partnership has enabled Leaders in Education including Sector education officers, head (deputy) teachers, school based mentors and tutors from teacher training colleges to acquire new competencies for leading school as well as managing and implementing CPD activities at the sector and school levels. Furthermore, the initiated partnership which started with primary schools in 6 districts has grown and expanded to other partnerships with new development partners to upscale the program at secondary school level in 14 districts. This led us to suggest that the same initiatives could be replicated by other partners to enhance professional development of leaders in education in Rwanda or any other country.