Navigating Leadership Complexities: The Roles and Challenges of College Principals in Ensuring Quality Classroom Assessment in Ghana’s Colleges of Education

Quality classroom assessment in teacher education depends not only on the technical competence of tutors but also on the institutional leadership conditions under which assessment is designed, moderated, interpreted, and used. This study examined how principals of Colleges of Education in Ghana’s Ashanti Region enact instructional leadership in relation to classroom assessment and the challenges that shape this work. An interpretive qualitative design informed by a phenomenological orientation was used. Fifteen participants, four principals, two vice-principals, and nine tutors from four public Colleges of Education were purposively selected. Data were generated through semi-structured interviews, document review, and non-participant observation and analysed thematically using NVivo 14. The findings indicate that principals’ assessment leadership was enacted through three closely connected practices: supervision and moderation of assessment, mentoring and professional capacity development, and the cultivation of an institutional culture of assessment integrity. These practices were constrained by inadequate material and technological resources, uneven assessment literacy, tensions between policy expectations and institutional capacity, and substantial administrative workloads. The findings suggest that assessment quality cannot be secured through compliance-oriented supervision alone. It requires leadership arrangements that combine pedagogical oversight, professional learning, distributed responsibility, and institutional support. The study contributes a context-sensitive account of assessment leadership in Ghanaian teacher education and highlights implications for leadership preparation, quality assurance, professional learning, and the organisation of principals’ work.