Centro Lemann
Brazil
Context
Established in 2021, Centro Lemann champions equitable learning in basic education worldwide. The organization trains educational leaders, supports research, and fosters cross-national coalitions. Inspired by Sobral, Ceará, and the Lemann Foundation, Centro Lemann is independent and non-partisan. Currently, they engage with 2,516 school leaders, poised to impact 781,955 students in Brazil.
Project Spotlight:
Training program for school leaders
To build a more equitable education system in Brazil, Centro Lemann developed its flagship leader training program. The program aims to support educational leaders across the country to “rethink their beliefs, values, and attitudes, expand their commitment to equity, develop a systemic vision, and strengthen their technical capacity in the area of management, with a priority focus on pedagogical issues.”
The two-year school leader training program is focused on reducing racial inequities in the education system by addressing dimensions of school culture, vision, and operations. Participants learn how to improve their management with a focus on teaching, build higher expectations for student learning, make better use of data to support their decision-making and reduce inequalities between schools and within each one of them.
The program brings school and municipal leaders together to collectively define the goals for their systems. Virtual training is a core component because Centro Lemann is working at a large scale across Brazil, through in-person workshops, application and mentoring opportunities.
GSL’s role and future work of our partnership
In our partnership with Centro Lemann, we provide support on their school leader training, particularly around coaching. In the coming years, we will work with Centro Lemann to define a measurement and evaluation system aligned with their theory of change and support the development of their peer coaching model.
This work will help us to answer one of our learning questions, what are some viable strategies for scaling coaching? We have learned that coaching is an important component of effective programming but it is expensive to scale and it can be challenging to find individuals with the appropriate skills and knowledge.
