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A non-governmental organisation (NGO) with schools in Sierra Leone prioritises admission of the most disadvantaged children but nevertheless achieves high educational and social standards. These schools were asked to provide continuing professional development and learning (CPDL) for other schools. This paper aims to report the design, development and delivery of CPDL which aimed to mobilise effective practices more widely. It also reports the design and results of an impact evaluation.

It was recognised that CPDL delivered by foreigners would be (1) unaffordable in this impoverished West African country and (2) culturally inappropriate. It was therefore delivered by local teachers from the NGO's own schools. Most had obtained no formal teaching qualification. They were trained to collect data using a quasi-experimental design for an impact evaluation of children's attendance and literacy. A total of five schools participated in the CPDL, with ten control schools.

A largely unqualified team succeeded in mobilising knowledge in the experimental schools. Children's attendance in experimental schools improved over that in control schools. Performance in literacy also improved significantly and was maintained at follow-up.

Findings of the impact evaluation are seen as indicative rather than causal because a quasi-experimental study was conducted rather than a randomised controlled trial.

This lies in (1) teachers in schools with a severely disadvantaged intake providing a structured programme of CPDL for teachers in other schools; (2) school improvement through knowledge mobilisation in CPDL; (3) an impact evaluation with a quasi-experimental design showing improvement in children's performance.

This chapter draws on the school improvement research of EducAid, a small NGO with schools in Sierra Leone. We review the challenge of school improvement in the context of a low-income country still emerging from the aftermath of civil war, historically low expenditure on education as a per cent of GDP, low levels of trust between people and the government and lack of a reliable evidence base on which to plan school improvement. As predictable consequences of these challenges, the Ministry of Education recognises weaknesses in teacher recruitment and training, resulting in low student attainments. In a critique of adaptations of Hood's (1998) social cohesion/social regulation matrix we argue that it may not provide a coherent framework for understanding the process of school improvement in a low-income country such as Sierra Leone. Specifically, high social cohesion, when focussed on educational improvement, is likely to be necessary for school improvement, but the concept of social regulation is more complex. Although the structure is hierarchical, both at national and local levels, implying high social regulation, lines of accountability seldom work effectively, resulting in low social regulation. The picture is further complicated by evidence that socioeconomic status may be less influential in predicting students' attainments in low-income countries than in those with high and middle incomes. We argue that a professional learning network for head teachers is a necessary starting point for head teachers to stimulate debate on change strategies within their own schools.