From leadership research to district action: Factors Contributing to School Effectiveness: A Systematic Literature Review

AI-assisted editorial implementation guide. Proposed district actions are separate from the original authors’ findings and recommendations. Independent peer review of this guide is not asserted.

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Evidence and transfer

Education-related source: verify which participants, institutions and outcomes were actually studied before district adoption. Source publication type: review-article. License and identity checks do not establish study quality or causality.

Original authors’ abstract, reproduced under the source license:

This paper aims to provide a systematic review of the literature on school effectiveness, with a focus on identifying the main factors that contribute to successful educational outcomes. The research question that this paper aimed to address is “what are the main factors of school effectiveness?”. We were interested in several descriptors such as school, effectiveness/efficiency theories, effectiveness/efficiency research and factors. Studies (published within the 2016–2022 period) were retrieved through two databases: JSTOR and ERIC. This paper defines several categories identified by school effectiveness research. Within these categories, various factors that affect the students’ outcomes and the defined effectiveness in school are listed. As the results show, the issue of school effectiveness is multifaceted, as the effectiveness of schools is a complex concept that can be measured through various indicators such as academic achievement, student engagement and teacher satisfaction. The review of school effectiveness revealed that several factors contribute to effective schools, such as strong leadership, effective teaching practices, a positive school culture and parental involvement. Additionally, school resources, such as funding and facilities, can impact school effectiveness, particularly in under-resourced communities.

Study methods

For this article, a systematic literature review was carried out. The literature review was conducted using the PRISMA protocol [8]. “To ensure a systematic review is valuable to users, authors should prepare a transparent, complete, and accurate account of why the review was done, what they did (such as how studies were identified and selected), and what they found (such as characteristics of contributing studies and results of meta-analyses)” [8] (p. 1). We were interested in several descriptors such as school, effectiveness/efficiency theories, effectiveness/efficiency research and factors. For searching, the following formula was used: (school AND effectiveness) OR (school AND efficiency)) AND (theories OR research OR factors).

Limitations

There are several limitations regarding the review processes used in this literature review and the evidence reported. One limitation is the possibility of a publication bias. This review only included studies that were published in peer-reviewed journals and reported only in two databases, and we only included items to which we had full access. Another limitation is the potential for methodological differences across the studies. The studies included in this review used a variety of research methods and comprised case studies, surveys, and quantitative analyses, which could have resulted in variations in the findings. Furthermore, the studies may have used different definitions of school effectiveness or different measures of school inputs and outputs, which could make it difficult to compare findings across studies. Many of the studies included in the review relied on self-reported data, which may have introduced bias and inaccuracies in the findings. This review was limited by its focus on English-language studies published from 2016. This may have excluded relevant studies published in other languages or earlier than 2016. Additionally, the rapid pace of change in education policies and practices means that this review may not reflect the most up-to-date research in the field.

A 90-day district inquiry

Days 1–15 · Appraise. Read the source methods, recruitment, comparator, outcomes and limitations. Record how the study setting differs from your district and which claim the design can support.
Days 16–30 · Design. Choose one school improvement question with teachers. Protect a short shared planning cycle, agree an instructional change and use a common rubric for examining student work. Agree participation, privacy protections, baseline and stopping rules before starting.
Days 31–60 · Observe. Collect the pre-agreed measures, keep a log of implementation changes and invite confidential voluntary feedback. Preserve existing support for staff and learners.
Days 61–90 · Decide. Review implementation fidelity, teacher time and independently scored student work against a recorded baseline. Examine access differences and competing explanations before attributing changes to leadership. Make a dated decision to stop, revise or extend the inquiry.

Board decision brief

Present the local problem, source setting, evidence limits, intervention, responsible owner, total cost, measured changes and uncertainty. Separate staff perceptions, implementation measures and student learning outcomes.

Attribution and reuse

Špela Javornik; Eva Klemenčič Mirazchiyski. Factors Contributing to School Effectiveness: A Systematic Literature Review. European Journal of Investigation in Health, Psychology and Education (2023-09-30). https://doi.org/10.3390/ejihpe13100148

Prepared 2026-11-07. Source authorship and DOI are preserved. The abstract and source passages are attributed extracts; this editorial guide is offered under the same CC BY 4.0 license.