When we think of Education as a fundamental part of the social gear and whose main imperative rests on the fundamental principles of quality and equality, we must assume the constant changes to which it is subjected and meet the demands of the new times.
The education of 30 years ago does not respond to the demands of today's society, often classified as Postmodern and highly technical. This was based on the principle of "school administration", a model that presents a series of difficulties that disrupts the educational space and that prevents all actors from participating collaboratively.
The school administration model assumes a series of premises, based on the following aspects:
According to other analyzes, applicable to our reality, schools that use the school administration model tend to have certain "critical features" by not functioning as groups with common goals and tasks, with an isolated teaching practice, a management team or leadership concentrated in the administrative sphere and without a culture of “accountability”. In other words, the educational space that develops a model based on administration bureaucratizes practices, which are managed "from above", executing and validating the centralization of the system and closing schools to any possibility of innovation.
Management as a challenge
The challenge to modify the "organizational culture" lies in transforming the perspective of "doing education" into a proposal with a vision of the future, humanized and capable of adapting to the changes and demands of society. The school can take on the challenge of changing the administrative perspective towards one of management, only if there is clarity and willingness to assume the paradigm shift, assuming risks and challenges jointly and involving the entire educational community.
The State has looked at the change towards management with interest, since the Ministry of Education tried to modify the structure of school administration through the System of Assurance of the Quality of Education (SACGE), proposing the Quality of Education model. School Management, whose main premise was that "the systematic nature of the actions, the linking of its processes and the achievement of goals, the processes of permanent review and adjustment to its strategies and the evaluation of its results are the conditions of a management of quality ”. However, the vertical structure does not seem to respond to the concrete reality of the schools, the internal agents did not assimilate the joint task and the linear and hierarchical structure was maintained.
Previously, the “Erasmus Commission” defined four principles in educational management: Leadership, Productivity, Holistic Vision and Transcendence. These principles imply structural changes in the way of taking responsibility for the educational processes and in the way of assuming leadership based on competencies that require permanent reflective capacity, creativity and the ability to negotiate in the conflicts that develop in the educational organization. The work of leadership is emerging as a constant challenge to organizational communication and feedback of knowledge and skills.
The differentiation between management and administration can be pointed out in three examples, which are clearly rooted in the organizational culture of schools:
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Directive leadership in schools |
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The school administration |
School Management |
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| It is based on the transmission of information from higher bodies, it is vertical and supervises the established routines. Not very open to analyzing, in a reflective and collaborative way, in conjunction with the educational community, certain points of interest such as: the results of the measurements of the quality of education. The administrative tasks of the teachers exceed the centrality in the pedagogical (completion of class books, discipline, imposed routines, etc.). There is also no concept of “accountability”. | Focused on the pedagogical field and with the clear conviction that collaborative, reflective and systematic work improves the quality of students' learning. Here the entire educational community is involved in work and reflection spaces, with a horizontal relationship organization. The directive leadership "accompanies" the teaching work, it does not supervise it, since their contributions are validated with an unwavering commitment to improving learning and results. He is a leader associated with "knowing how to do". There is a culture of “accountability” towards the entire educational community. |
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Teaching exercise |
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The school administration |
School Management |
| Teachers work in isolation, with a school culture that encourages individual and fragmented work from the rest of the disciplines taught at school. She develops a job "behind closed doors" focused on curricular coverage, rather than quality. | Deprivatized, collaborative and articulated teaching work with other subsectors, taking a holistic view of teaching. A work is developed "open doors", where the feedback of knowledge is promoted, whose main focus is to deliver a quality education and with good results. Impetus towards a “new teaching professionalism”. |
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Development of innovation projects |
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The school administration |
School Management |
| In this regard, the school administration tends to view with suspicion any innovation that breaks the rigid structure of the school organization. Generally, the projects developed are those imposed by higher bodies and implemented to bureaucratically comply with the requirement, so there is no durability over time or monitoring of their development. | School management encourages the development of pedagogical innovation projects, with the aim of improving learning and establishing a vision with a vision of the future, involving teamwork, the principles of efficiency and effectiveness. Innovation is seen as a process that must be constantly evaluated and adapted to the reality and needs of schools. |
