The 2024/5 Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report, launched on October 31, 2024, at the Global Education Meeting in Fortaleza, Brazil, explores how effective leadership can transform education systems and learning outcomes. It emphasizes that leadership is the second most influential school-level factor affecting student achievement after teaching quality. Drawing on data from over a dozen countries, the report finds that school leaders spend nearly 70% of their time on administrative tasks, limiting their ability to drive instructional change. Despite women making up a majority of teachers in many countries, they remain significantly underrepresented in leadership roles, with female principals often 20 percentage points fewer than female teachers—yet schools led by women in some regions, such as Francophone Africa, show students outperforming their peers by up to six months in reading and math.
The report also highlights that most leadership training programs fall short, with only a third addressing the full range of competencies needed—from setting clear expectations and fostering collaboration to driving learning and supporting teachers. At the policy level, it raises concern over leadership instability, revealing that half of all education ministers since 2010 served less than two years, and only 23% had prior teaching experience. Ultimately, the report calls for rethinking leadership as a collaborative, inclusive, and gender-equitable process, shaped not only by formal roles but also by the broader social and governance context in which education systems operate.
