The Challenges to Primary School Leadership of HIV/AIDS in Botswana: The Inadequacy Of School Effectiveness Models in the Context of the Pandemic.

This article focuses on the effects of HIV/AIDS on education in Southern Africa, and is based on a study of several countries in the region but with especial investigation into the situation that obtains in Botswana. We argue that much of the educational development and the response to the pandemic at both school and system level has been influenced by the dominant Western educational paradigm of school effectiveness. The findings of the multi-level study that underpins this paper are presented at the pupil, classroom, and school and leadership levels, and conclusions are drawn about the efficacy of current leadership approaches within the context of AIDS. The paper subsequently problematises some of the conventional wisdom that defines the response to the immense dislocation caused by HIV/AIDS, especially in relation to the ways in which schools should be led and managed, and we suggest that more culturally sophisticated, locally defined, approaches may be required.