Constrained agency and school-led improvement in a centralised system: evidence from Cyprus

Purpose This study investigated how primary school principals in Cyprus perceived, prioritised and sustained educational change in a highly centralised education system. Leadership is conceptualised as constrained agency, emphasising how principals mediate external mandates through professional judgement and adaptive collaboration within systemic limits. Design/methodology/approach A qualitative design was used, employing semi-structured interviews with 63 primary school principals (90% response rate; 19% of schools nationally). A codebook-based thematic analysis with restrained quantitisation enhanced transparency and cross-case comparability. Findings Principals viewed change as necessary and context-responsive, prioritising ICT integration, student support, pedagogical redesign, reformed assessment practices and enhanced collaborative culture. They encountered barriers such as teacher resistance, insufficient professional development, resource shortages and bureaucratic rigidity. To address these constraints, principals mobilised teachers' expertise, established participatory structures, piloted initiatives and embedded ongoing professional learning and feedback routines. Sustainability was linked to cultivating foresight, collective responsibility and normalised improvement practices within constrained discretion. Originality/value Situated within international debates on leadership mediation in low-autonomy systems, this study advances constrained agency as a generative lens that specifies how principals convert centralised mandates into embedded school improvement. While grounded in a highly centralised context, the mechanisms identified, policy mediation, collaboration structures, trust-enabled collective agency, and routinised professional learning, offer transferable insights for decentralised and semi-decentralised systems where leaders face different but comparable constraints, such as accountability pressures, reform overload or resource scarcity. The findings clarify boundary conditions under which leaders strengthen school capacity for sustained change amid governance limitations.