Improving school quality in low and middle income countries (LMICs) is a global priority. One way to improve quality may be to improve the management skills of school leaders. In this systematic review, we analyze the impact of interventions targeting school leaders’ management practices on student learning. We begin by describing the characteristics and responsibilities of school leaders using data from large, multi-country surveys. Second, we review the literature and conduct a meta-analysis of the causal effect of school management interventions on student learning, using 39 estimates from 20 evaluations. We estimate a statistically significant improvement in student learning of 0.033 standard deviations. We show that effect sizes are not related to program scale or intensity. We complement the meta-analysis by identifying common limitations to program effectiveness through a qualitative assessment of the studies included in our review. We find three main factors which mitigate program effectiveness: (1) low take-up; (2) lack of incentives or structure for implementation of recommendations; and (3) the lengthy causal chain linking management practices to student learning. Finally, to assess external validity of our review, we survey practitioners to compare characteristics between evaluated and commonly implemented programs. Our findings suggest that future work should focus on generating evidence on the marginal effect of common design elements in these interventions, including factors that promote school leader engagement and accountability.

提高中低收入国家 (LMIC) 的学校质量是全球优先事项。提高质量的一种方法可能是提高学校领导的管理技能。在这篇系统综述中，我们分析了针对学校领导管理实践的干预措施对学生学习的影响。我们首先使用大型多国调查的数据来描述学校领导的特征和责任。其次，我们回顾了文献，并使用 20 项评估中的 39 项估计，对学校管理干预措施对学生学习的因果影响进行了荟萃分析。我们估计学生学习的统计显着改善为 0.033 个标准差。我们表明，效果大小与计划规模或强度无关。我们通过对我们综述中包含的研究进行定性评估来确定项目有效性的常见限制，从而补充荟萃分析。我们发现降低计划有效性的三个主要因素：(1) 参与率低；(2) 缺乏实施建议的激励措施或结构；(3) 将管理实践与学生学习联系起来的漫长因果链。最后，为了评估我们审查的外部有效性，我们对从业者进行了调查，以比较评估的项目和普遍实施的项目之间的特征。我们的研究结果表明，未来的工作应侧重于为这些干预措施中常见设计元素的边际效应提供证据，包括促进学校领导参与和问责的因素。