“At a time of increasingly complex educational challenges, the traditional notion of a lone, heroic school leader is simply no longer tenable,” says Stefania Giannini, Unesco assistant director-general for education.
Ms Giannini makes the observation in the foreword to a report looking at school leadership in education in Latin America.
The Unesco report, Latin America: Lead for Democracy, says it is not possible for school leaders “to do everything and do it on their own” and that they need to “lead through collaboration to achieve common goals so that all stakeholders are motivated to work in the same direction using their respective strengths.”
This is an approach to leadership known as “distributed leadership”.
Limits on collaborative leadership
However, the report finds that while distributed leadership is often practised in Latin America with teachers, students and families involved in the running of schools, “the concept of distributed leadership is not widely used by policymakers”.
This disconnect between practice and policy, together with deficient training and centralised decision making, “limits the potential of collaborative leadership”, it says.
This, the report argues, is bad for school success, given that the collective expertise of the school communities is not being drawn on to the full extent.
It is also “particularly troubling given the fundamental role of schools as spaces for civic education and the promotion of democratic values”.
The report states: “Distributed and democratic leadership in education help strengthen democratic societies. This is important everywhere around the world, including in Latin America, where opinion polls have documented a decline of citizens’ support for democracy.”
Through distributed leadership, which encourages collaboration and shared decision making, it says that “students and teachers learn not just about democracy but how to practise it”.
The report says that students who are more exposed to open dialogue, debate and critical thinking had higher civic knowledge levels and were more likely to believe in the value of democratic participation.
The report adds: “Even in education, ‘attitudes that validate authoritarian leaders’ are a threat to the democratic ideal.”
Latin American countries see school leadership as a key factor in improving education outcomes, says the report - and, as elsewhere in the world, they are also assigning “a large and constantly increasing set of functions to leaders”.
However, the report - which draws on evidence collected via case studies of six countries, as well as the 2024-25 Global Education Monitoring Report and a survey of ministries of education - finds only three countries explicitly refer to distributed leadership in legislation, regulations or policy.
Meanwhile, participatory leadership is explicitly mentioned in eight countries, and democratic school management is a constitutional principle in Brazil.
Reasons to be positive
The Unesco report, therefore, finds that, while the term distributed leadership “lacks recognition”, there are reasons to be positive, given concepts that are “related, albeit not identical, have deeper roots and currency”.
It also says that, increasingly, school leaders in Latin America are being appointed through “merit-based, public and open competitions”, as opposed to through “personal invitations or closed competitions”.
The report finds: “Out of 17 countries, 13 have public competitions for principal recruitment, although patronage remains present in some contexts.”
The report describes this as a “substantive but also symbolic development towards democratic school management”.
The report makes seven recommendations, including: promotion of the importance of distributed and democratic school leadership in national and sub-national education policies and regulations; and giving school principals “sufficient autonomy”, particularly in financial and human resource decisions.
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