This report presents a baseline study for the Randomized Controlled Trial which is designed to evaluate the effectiveness of two e-learning modalities for improving school leaders’ leadership skills in Rwandan secondary schools. Rwanda experiences a wide range of educational challenges in terms of financial constraints, absence of proper school infrastructure, abrupt change in language of instructions from Kinyarwanda to English in primary education, lack of availability of qualified teachers, high pupil-teacher ratio and increasing dropout rates among students, particularly in case of secondary education. According to the MINEDUC report 2019 presenting Rwandan Educational statistics, the net enrolment rate of students in secondary education has declined from 32.9 percent in 2016 to 24.5 percent in 2019. The dropout rates have increased from 4.5 percent in 2015/16 to 8.2 percent in 2018/19. Furthermore, the percentage of qualified staff stand at 79.2 % in the secondary schools. Since the school leaders are often regarded as the main actors in improving educational quality of schools, a Continuous Professional Development (CPD) programme has been developed to improve the school leaders’ (deputy headteachers and headteachers) leadership skills in Rwandan secondary schools. The CPD programme is set up by VVOB in collaboration with the Rwandan Basic Education Board (REB) and the University of Rwanda-College of Education (UR-CE), funded by the Mastercard Foundation (McF).
