Analyzing school leadership policy reform in Lebanon

This study examines how school leadership is constructed in two major Lebanese education policy documents – the 1993 Education Reform Plan and the 2021–2025 General Education Strategic Plan – to understand how leadership is positioned within a fragile, crisis-affected system. Using Bell and Stevenson’s framework, complemented by critical policy perspectives, the analysis compares how leadership is framed across the two reforms and what these framings reveal about governance, authority, and policy logics. The findings show that although leadership becomes increasingly visible and rhetorically aligned with global improvement agendas, meaningful reform is constrained by centralized governance, limited institutional capacity, and donor-driven priorities. Leadership is discursively elevated but remains structurally marginal: competencies, authority, professional standards, and operational mechanisms are largely absent. The analysis also highlights policy silences around crisis leadership, gender equity, and inclusion – issues that are central to leadership in fragile contexts. By situating Lebanon within broader debates on policy in protracted crises, this study contributes theoretically to policy sociology by illustrating how leadership reform operates as symbolic modernisation rather than institutional transformation. Strengthening school leadership in Lebanon will therefore require context-sensitive, structurally embedded reforms that move beyond rhetorical commitments toward coherent governance, professionalisation, and resourced implementation.