School leaders across Southeast Asia already manage extraordinary complexity. They balance learning improvement with student and teacher wellbeing, community expectations, digital transformation, and expanding administrative demands. These pressures are intensifying amid demographic change, technological disruption, climate risks, and widening inequalities. Yet the systems meant to support school leaders, including their career pathways and professional learning, have not always kept pace with what is being asked of them.

The 2024/25 UNESCO Global Education Monitoring Report on Leadership in Education shows that many principals spend close to half of their time on administrative tasks, often at the expense of instructional leadership most closely linked to better learning outcomes. The challenge, therefore, is not a shortage of capable leaders, but the need for stronger and more coherent support that matches the complexity they already carry.

In response, the SEAMEO Secretariat is collaborating with Global School Leaders, a non-profit organization working on strengthening school leadership in low-and middle-income countries, to establish the Southeast Asia Hub for School Leadership, the region’s first platform envisioned to provide coordinated and sustained support for principals and leadership teams. The Hub will leverage GSL’s strong record of developing and implementing interventions in the area of school leadership and SEAMEO’s regional leadership in education.

A key milestone took place during the 48th SEAMEO High Officials Meeting, where a Special Session was convened as a side event to shape the Hub’s design. High Officials provided concrete guidance on its structure, sustainability, and priority initiatives. Discussions centred on three proposed core functions for the Hub: advancing advocacy and research through a regional policy agenda and shared data; providing technical assistance tailored to Ministries’ needs and contexts; and strengthening capacity building through scalable training frameworks that support leaders across their professional journey.

The HOM Special Session complemented earlier efforts by GSL to gather insights from Ministries of Education and civil society organisations. Moving from expecting school leaders to manage complexity alone toward creating creating systems that help them lead with confidence and continuity, the Hub will be launched in mid-2026.

2024/25 GEM Report: Leadership in Education Download