Rethinking Public Education Systems in the 21st Century Scenario

THE WORLD COUNCIL OF COMPARATIVE EDUCATION SOCIETIES

Series Editors:

Suzanne Majhanovich, University of Western Ontario, CanadaAllan Pitman, University of Western Ontario, Canada

Scope:

The WCCES is an international organization of comparative education societies worldwide and is an NGO in consultative partnership with UNESCO. The WCCES was created in 1970 to advance the field of comparative education. Members usually meet every three years for a World Congress in which scholars, researchers, and administrators interact with colleagues and counterparts from around the globe on international issues of education.

The WCCES also promotes research in various countries. Foci include theory and methods in comparative education, gender discourses in education, teacher education, education for peace and justice, education in post-conflict countries, language of instruction issues, Education for All. Such topics are usually represented in thematic groups organized for the World Congresses. Besides organizing the World Congresses, the WCCES has a section in CERCular, the newsletter of the Comparative Education Research Centre at the University of Hong Kong, to keep individual societies and their members abreast of activities around the world.

The WCCES comprehensive website is http://www.wcces.com

As a result of these efforts under the auspices of the global organization, WCCES and its member societies have become better organized and identified in terms of research and other scholarly activities. They are also more effective in viewing problems and applying skills from different perspectives, and in disseminating information. A major objective is advancement of education for international understanding in the interests of peace, intercultural cooperation, observance of human rights and mutual respect among peoples.

The WCCES Series was established to provide for the broader dissemination of discourses between scholars in its member societies. Representing as it does Societies and their members from all continents, the organization provides a special forum for the discussion of issues of interest and concern among comparativists and those working in international education. The first series of volumes was produced from the proceedings of the World Council of Comparative Education Societies XIII World Congress, which met in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, 3–7 September, 2007 with the theme of Living Together: Education and Intercultural Dialogue. The first series included the following titles:

Volume 1: Tatto, M. & Mincu, M. (Eds.), Reforming Teaching and LearningVolume 2: Geo JaJa, M. A. & Majhanovich, S. (Eds.), Education, Language and Economics: Growing

National and Global DilemmasVolume 3: Pampanini, G., Adly, F. & Napier, D. (Eds.), Interculturalism, Society and EducationVolume 4: Masemann, V., Majhanovich, S., Truong, N., & Janigan, K. (Eds.), A Tribute to David

N. Wilson: Clamoring for a Better World

The second series of volumes has been developed from the proceedings of the World Council of Comparative Education Societies XIV World Congress, which met in Istanbul, Turkey, 14–18 June, 2010 with the theme of Bordering, Re-Bordering and new Possibilities in Education and Society. This series includes the following titles:

Volume 1: Napier, D.B. & Majhanovich, S. (Eds.) Education, Dominance and IdentityVolume 2: Biseth, H. & Holmarsdottir, H. (Eds.) Human Rights in the Field of Comparative EducationVolume 3: Ginsburg, M. (Ed.) Preparation, Practice & and Politics of TeachersVolume 4: Majhanovich, S. & Geo-JaJa, M.A. (Eds.) Economics, Aid and EducationVolume 5: Napier, D. B. (Ed.), Qualities of Education in a Globalised World

The third series of volumes has been developed from the proceedings of the World Council of Comparative Education Societies XV World Congress which met in Buenos Aires, Argentina, June 24-28, 2013 with the theme of New Times, New Voices. This series includes the volumes listed below:

Volume 1: Gross, Z. & Davies L. (Eds.) The Contested Role of Education in Conflict and FragilityVolume 2: DePalma, R., Brook Napier, D. & Dze Ngwa, W. (Eds.) Revitalizing Minority Voices:

Language Issues in the New MillenniumVolume 3: Majhanovich, S. & Malet, R. (Eds.) Building Democracy through Education on DiversityVolume 4: Olson, J., Biseth, H. & Ruiz, G. (Eds.) Educational Internationalisation: Academic Voices and

Public PolicyVolume 5: Astiz, M. F. & Akiba, M. (Eds.) The Global and the Local: Diverse Perspectives in

Comparative EducationVolume 6: Geo-JaJa, M. A. & Majhanovich, S. (Eds.) Effects of Globalization on Education Systems and

Development: Debates and IssuesVolume 7: Acosta, F. & Nogueira, S. (Eds.) Rethinking Public Education Systems in the 21st Century

Scenario: New and Renovated Challenges between Policies and Practices

Rethinking Public Education Systems in the 21st Century ScenarioNew and Renovated Challenges between Policies and Practices

Edited by

Felicitas AcostaUniversidad Nacional de General Sarmiento, Argentina

and

Sonia NogueiraUniversidade Estadual do Norte Fluminense, Brazil

A C.I.P. record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN: 978-94-6351-018-9 (paperback)ISBN: 978-94-6351-019-6 (hardback)ISBN: 978-94-6351-020-2 (e-book)

Published by: Sense Publishers, P.O. Box 21858,3001 AW Rotterdam,The Netherlandshttps://www.sensepublishers.com/

All chapters in this book have undergone peer review.

Printed on acid-free paper

All Rights Reserved © 2017 Sense Publishers

No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work.

vii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Rethinking Public Education Systems: An Introduction 1Felicitas Acosta

2. The Restructuring of Higher Education in Brazil and the European Union: Concepts and Politics 9Renata Maldonado da Silva

3. Secondary Education Policies in Europe and Latin America: A Historical Comparative Analysis 21Felicitas Acosta

4. Teacher Evaluation: Contributions from Literature and Propositions in America’s Countries 45Adriana Bauer and Sandra Zákia Sousa

5. Pisa in a Latin American Context: The Cases of Argentina, Brazil and Chile 59Cristian Perez Centeno and Mariana Leal

6. Quality and Monitoring in Brazil: Prova Brasil and Its Impacts on Public Education 83Fernanda da Rosa Becker and Fabiana de Assis Alves

7. Re-Systematization of Secondary Education in the Past Two Decades in the Province of Buenos Aires: A Conceptual Framework for the Study of Recent Changes in Education Systems 95Daniel Pinkasz

F. Acosta & S. Nogueira (Eds.), Rethinking Public Education Systems in the 21st Century Scenario, 1–8. © 2017 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

FELICITAS ACOSTA

1. RETHINKING PUBLIC EDUCATION SYSTEMS

An Introduction

PRESENTATION

This book, Rethinking Public Education Systems towards the 21st Century emanated from presentations at the World Congress of Comparative Education Societies (WCCES), held in Buenos Aires, Argentina in June 2013. The Congress was organized around the topic of new times and new voices for education. The articles edited for this book were originally presented at one of the working groups of the Congress: New times for public education systems. The working group addressed the issue of new and renovated challenges for educational systems. Therefore, the working group considered studies that analysed new challenges such as: market driven reforms, transnational schemes, national-regional tension within education systems and quality assurance systems. It was also aimed at studies that analysed traditional education reforms as well as innovative models for programmes and institutions, new patterns of public-private relationship, the inclusion of ICT into educational management, the impact on contemporary educational reforms in the public sector, their links to past reforms and their cumulative impact on educational systems, among others.

As the Congress was held in Latin America, the working group also paid special attention to studies focused on countries in need of overcoming a lag in their educational development and/or requiring political, technical and management competences to accelerate their change process in order to assure quality education for all. In this sense, this book puts together studies from authors from Latin American countries, in particular from the Southern Cone, as a way of giving voice to particular educational problems and perspectives in a globalized world. Getting into educational systems in Argentina, Brazil and Chile and analysing some of its current particularities through the lenses of regional and international comparison, contributes to a better understanding of the processes of circulation, reception, appropriation and translation that historically characterizes educational systems development.

The chapters of the book focus on different aspects of schooling: problems in secondary education organization, introduction of new ways of student assessment, restructuration of higher education, teachers’ education evaluation. The scope for comparison also differs, from case studies localised in one province in a country to

F. ACOSTA

2

regional comparison between countries to international comparison between world regions. Nevertheless, the studies do have one aspect in common: the relationship between the educational system under scrutiny and the role of the state (central or provincial). It is evident that this derives from the fact that educational systems were a state invention and the study of educational reforms always involves the understanding of the changing relation with the state.

Indeed, since the nineteenth century education occupies a central place on the agenda of states. Throughout the twentieth century international educational discourses came together in the installation of the Right to education and the extension of schooling as a way to access that right. In this sense, the image of an educator State is linked to the configuration of educational systems in terms of a technology for the expansion of schooling.

Arguably the global expansion of education systems became the predominant rational concept for schooling: it worked as a myth but also as a script giving legitimacy to the institutions and states organized under that concept. It covered and covers the systemic and institutional dimension as well as the set of actors and agents involved in the development of this script.

According to the above, it seems that education systems are the result of State action; but it is well known that this is a complex configuration structure, involving various actors who interact at different levels -from the enunciation of global educational principles to decision making in daily school life (Acosta & Ruiz, 2015).

This phenomenon can be analysed from two perspectives. From a legal and political perspective, the configuration of an educator State and the expansion of schooling can be traced to the French Revolution. It was by the time of the Revolution of 1789 and after the formation of the classical liberal that individual private and public rights were recognized, giving birth to a State of right as a State of the citizens.

However, it was with the creation of the institutions of the Welfare state that recognition of the right of all men and women to universal and free education was conferred. Each State defined the range of mandatory education within a progressive extension to higher educational levels. Thus, education became part of fundamental human rights, which requires positive intervention from the State to ensure them to all individuals who live in a particular country. But States guarantee the right to education via schooling; hence we could say hat the right to education is in fact a right to schooling

From the perspective of expansion of schooling, understanding the process of equalization between education and schooling involves analysing three passages: the passage of the discourse of education to schooling in the late eighteenth century, the passage of a school of basic institutional arrangements to the modern school during the nineteenth century and the passage of a school system to education systems by mid-twentieth century (Acosta, 2014).

These passages show an increasing process of educationalization (Tröhler, 2013; Tröhler, Popkewitz, & Labaree, 2013), that is to say resolving social problems,

RETHINKING PUBLIC EDUCATION SYSTEMS

3

such as the consolidation of nation States and capitalism, through the expansion of schooling. The formation of citizens, as a new way of self-regulation and of social governance, became the centre of the schooling agenda; in the words of Popkewitz (2009): the new moral issue.

The internationalization of schooling took place under this agenda. The concept of internationalization, as developed by Schriewer (2010), refers to the process of transnational migration, expansion, and reception, a process constructed historically in a range of logics of appropriation determined by deep cultural structures (Caruso & Tenorth, 2011). At the same time, it assumes the global expansion of transnationally standardized educational models and the persistence of various networks of socio-cultural interconnection (Schriewer, 2010).

Following Tröhler, Popkewitz and Labaree (2013), schooling is understood as a set of institutional and cultural practices associated with the assembly of the society through the construction of a particular subject: the future citizen. It can be linked to the global phenomenon of national developments towards society and school modelling as a result of the intersection between the emergence of schooling and the formation of the Nation state.

The authors’ concern does not only refer to the institutional, legal and organizational qualities of the school but also to the language of school (or schooling) as a set of principles about what counts as knowledge and how will that knowledge take place. It also refers to systems of reason that overlap in cultural and political values. Thus, the analysis of schooling refers to relations between political and cultural systems and practices.

From the perspective of internationalization, it includes similar processes such as (a) state education systems as a condition of survival of the republics, (b) growth of republics throughout the world over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and (c) expansion of mass schooling also throughout the world in those centuries. In their view, this would indicate that the combination of republicanism and education was a worldwide success.

They argue that during the eighteenth century this combination became necessary, at the time that social problems were educationalized and education seemed to be increasingly the answer to any social problem. The association between republic as the political form, reformed Protestantism and education seems to have been the global amalgam of success and the engine for its global development.

It is widely known that educational systems in Latin America have operated and continue to operate at a pace different from their counterparts in central countries. It would seem that the origin of many of these differences lies in how the region took part in the Enlightenment’s emancipation project and the consolidation of the modern state.

There are commonalities between how educational systems took shape in countries in Latin America and in Europe. As Ossenbach has pointed out (1997), after the emancipation of the metropolis, public education was handled at the municipal level. It was not until the wars after independence had come to an end that central states

F. ACOSTA

4

began to take charge of primary education pursuant to the notion of common education where the State defined itself as the educating State. Thus, educational systems in Latin America contributed to both the forming of the nation through a process of social and cultural homogenization and to the emergence and development of the middle classes.

In terms of the project of homogenization that gave rise to national integration as the distinctive matrix of modern educational systems, there are two main traits that distinguish the configurations of those systems in Latin America from their European counterparts: the precarious connection, until the fifties if not later, between the configuration of the educational system and economic development; a striking disparity within the Latin American region regarding the consolidation and expansion of educational systems.

After a lost decade, the educational reforms of the nineties placed the problem of change to the educational system back on the political agenda. Albeit with disparate results and educational segmentation due to the prevailing neo-liberal orientation, the region was, by 2000, more homogenous in terms of the universalization of basic education. Thus, the problem of providing mass-scale access to secondary schooling took center stage in debates on education. At present, the transition between primary and secondary levels of education is fluid. In the vast majority of the countries in the region, the rate of transition from primary to secondary school is high, with an average regional rate of 93.5%.

Regional heterogeneity is evident in other educational indicators. The percentage of children to receive some schooling ranges from 72% to 97% (SITEAL, 2008, 2010) and the percentage that attends secondary school fluctuates tremendously within countries according to socio-economic level. The regional average for this second rate ranges from 93.6% amongst a country’s wealthiest children to 78.9% amongst its poorest.

As Acosta points out (see chapter in this book) the region faces a triple challenge. First, the challenge of solving historical problems related to access and coverage, infrastructure, and the professionalization of teachers pursuant to the first great expansion. Second, the ability to effectively include all school age children and enable them to complete their school careers, a problem that dates back to the second great expansion and that could be linked to the institutional model. Third, the provision of quality knowledge that enables the development of human resources with skills relevant to the contemporary world, a problem particularly pressing in these times (if their use as an indicator were accepted, the results of PISA would evidence this challenge).

ABOUT THIS BOOK

As mentioned above, through this book, as editors and authors, we set out to provide recent empirical studies that focus on the study of Latin American educational systems from a comparative perspective. In the following six chapters that make up this book, the authors discuss the many features of policies adopted by governments in order to reform educational systems in some Latin American countries. Comparisons are made between schools, countries and regions. Policies are also compared showing similarities and differences between units of comparison. Moreover, as the topics

RETHINKING PUBLIC EDUCATION SYSTEMS

5

of the chapters show, there are many important aspects of educational change that come to light, specially when referring to the influence of international discourses and practices that have historically oriented the development of educational systems. In this sense, the chapters adopt different perspectives, from the internationalisation framework in comparative education to the analysis of educational policies.

Following the organization of other books in this series, the chapters can be read and thought about in a range of ways, can be read cover to cover, but also could be dipped into and out of. To facilitate the reading the chapters are organized from international and regional comparisons to local studies of educational systems taking into account the voices of actors in regional and local contexts. In summary, the chapters cover the following:

Renata Maldonado Da Silva (The restructuring of higher education in Brazil and the European union: concepts and politics) offers a comparison between regional and national educational policies. She studies the policies implemented by the Brazilian Federal government and the European Union (EU) in the area of higher education based on the analysis of documents produced by multilateral agencies. The aim of her work is to establish possible relationships between the restructuring of Brazilian university model under the government of president Fernando Henrique Cardoso and the educational policies currently implemented by the EU, which had the 1999 Bologna Declaration as a starting point. The author argues that even though the EU and Brazil are distant from the socioeconomic point of view, they do share similar educational policies intended to overhaul their higher education systems to meet the demands set by capitalism in its present phase. Her analysis is guided by the critical analysis of educational concepts and guidelines produced as from the late 1980s by the so-called Washington Consensus.

By means of a comparative historical perspective, Felicitas Acosta (Secondary education policies in Europe and Latin America: a historical comparative analysis), analyses the process of expansion of secondary education in Europe and Latin America. To do so, the chapter considers the characteristics of this expansion in some countries in those regions with particular emphasis on two issues: the historical configuration of secondary schools’ institutional models and the most recent policies aimed at those schools. In both cases, policies to expand secondary education have come against problems when it comes to adjusting classic secondary education institutional models to fit the social sectors with recent access to this level of education, These problems often mean increased dropout rates and the decreased graduation rates. Western European countries adopted different strategies, among them comprehensive schooling, to address this problem. Most countries in Latin America, on the other hand, still face very basic problems of expansion (infrastructure, completion of previous educational levels, teacher training, among others). Despite the different problems, the authors finds similarities in recent programs towards secondary education and warns about the possible effect of these programs on strengthening historical problems of educational systems, chief among them the segmentation of educational supply.

F. ACOSTA

6

Adriana Bauer and Sandra Zákia Sousa (Teacher evaluation: contributions from literature and propositions in America’s countries) present an overview on teacher evaluation, exploring purposes and procedures of existing proposals in eight American countries, taking as reference contributions of academic literature on the subject. To complete this task, they organize the chapter into three sections. The first section provides a brief historical context of teachers’ evaluation proposals and its recent expansion in Latin America, and discusses the concepts underlying these models nowadays. The second section presents purposes and procedures of teachers’ evaluation approaches in eight American countries. The third section arises some conclusions about evaluation trends, which can be perceived on the models analysed, questioning their role in educational policies. Emphasizing main arguments in favour of teacher evaluation in academic literature, which advocate its need to qualify the teaching, the study analyses the extent to which teacher evaluation approaches, which have been proposed, permit, effectively, better education or contribute positively to the professional development of teachers.

Cristian Perez Centeno and Mariana Leal (Pisa in a Latin American context: the cases of Argentina, Brazil and Chile) analyse the degree of alignment between implicit and explicit goals established by the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and implicit and explicit goals defined by developing countries in their regulations, plans and programs for secondary education in Argentina, Brazil and Chile. Through a critical analysis of official OECD documents -specifically PISA reports- its educational goals are matched with those set by the countries’ education policies. As a result, the authors question the articulation between national goals that guide developing countries’ policies and supranational policy guidelines designed on the basis of quality assessment systems and standardized tools, and question the appropriateness of assessment tools for the studied countries. Such tools built by central countries, based on their own needs and interests, do not necessarily reflect the interests and needs of Latin American emerging countries with education systems in contexts of strong inequality. For example, central topics for the countries under study, such as attainment, retention and quality of the educational supply, are not seen as priorities at the PISA reports.

Fernanda Da Rosa Becker and Fabiana De Assis Alves (Quality and Monitoring in Brazil: Prova Brazil and its impacts on public education) analyse the impact of large-scale educational assessments in Brazil. The authors focus on the importance of this kind of tool on the different levels government and how they may well determine the consequences of certain policies, such as correcting the course of ongoing programs. Currently, they argue, the results of the systems of educational assessment are being used for purposes ranging from the creation of indicators of educational development to individual performance evaluations. Thus, teachers, students and administrators discuss the indicators of their school or district. Mayors and governors are also constantly asked about the performance of the education systems. Considering this situation, the chapter aims to bring

RETHINKING PUBLIC EDUCATION SYSTEMS

7

to the debate the biggest large-scale assessment program in Brazil focusing on primary education: Prova Brazil. Through the analysis of the exam design, its range and its use its use as an instrument of public policy at the local level, the authors seek to shed light on the program’s possible contributions to the education supply.

Finally, Daniel Pinkasz (Re-systematization of secondary education in the past two decades in the Province of Buenos Aires: A conceptual framework for the study of recent changes in education systems) develops some arguments for the study of the educational system expansion process in the last decades by using the concepts of systematization and segmentation, which have shown their productivity in the explanation of the educational systems formation processes in several European countries during the nineteenth and early twentieth Century. The chapter is divided into two parts. In the first, the author describes, in the province of Buenos Aires, Argentina, the segmentation process of the sub-secondary education system as a result of the formation of different types of institutions. In the second part, he develops a brief case study focused on two administrative units (districts) of Buenos Aires, in eleven schools. The author argues that different institutional types have different institutional cultures and that those cultures are related with the results and with students’ educational experiences. The empirical data for this part arises from the analysis of the socioeconomic indicators of the school, indicators of efficiency and qualitative information gathered in interviews with principals and teachers and observation in schools.

In sum, the present volume offers cases grounded in empirical research in a particular region: Latin America. If also offers studies located in different arenas of comparative education, that may contribute to a deeper understanding of the various levels, scales and even temporalities inherent to the process of changing educational systems.

REFERENCES

Acosta, F. (2014) Entre procesos globales y usos locales: análisis de categorías recientes de la Historia de la educación para el estudio de la escuela secundaria en la Argentina. Revista Tiempo, Espacios, Educación, 1(2), 23–37.

Acosta, F., & Ruiz, G. (2015). Estudio introductorio: Repensando la Educación Comparada. Lecturas desde Iberoamérica. Entre los viajeros del siglo XIX y la globalización. In G. Ruiz & F. Acosta (Eds.), Repensando la Educación Comparada. Lecturas desde Iberoamérica. Entre los viajeros del siglo XIX y la globalización (pp. 15–26). Barcelona: Octaedro.

Caruso. M., & Tenorth, H. (2011). Introducción: conceptualizar e historizar la internacionalización y la globalización en el campo educativo. In M. Caruso & H. Tenorth (Eds.), Internacionalización. Políticas educativas y reflexión pedagógica en un medio global (pp. 13–35). Buenos Aires: Granica.

Ossenbach, G. (1997). Las transformaciones del Estado y la Educación Pública en América Latina en los siglos XIX y XX. In A. Martínez Boom & M. Narodowski (Eds.), Escuela, historia y poder. Miradas desde América Latina (pp. 121–148). Buenos Aires: Ediciones Novedades Educativas.

Schriewer, J. (2010). Comparación y explicación entre causalidad y compeljidad. In J. Schriewer & H. Kaelbe (Eds.), La comparación en las ciencias sociales e históricas. Un debate interdisciplinar (pp. 17–62). Barcelona: Octaedro/ICE-UB.

F. ACOSTA

8

Sistema de Información de Tendencias Educativas en América Latina/Organización de Estados Iberoamericanos (SITEAL). (2008). La escuela y los adolescentes. Informe sobre tendencias sociales y educativas en América Latina. Retrieved from http:/ /www.siteal.iipe-oei.org/informe/227/informe-2008

Sistema de Información de Tendencias Educativas en América Latina/Organización de Estados Iberoamericanos (SITEAL). (2010). Metas educativas 2021: Desafíos y oportunidades. Retrieved from http://www.siteal.iipe-oei.org/informe/227/informe-2008

Tröhler, D. (2013). Los lenguajes de la educación. Los legados protestantes en la pedagogización del mundo, las identidades nacionales y las aspiraciones globales. España: Octaedro.

Trohler, D., Popkewitz, T., & Labaree, D. (2013). Children, citizens and promised lands: Comparative history of political cultures and schooling in the long 19th century. In D. Trohler, T. Popkewitz, & D. Labaree (Eds.), Schooling and the making of citizens in the long nineteenth century. Comparative visions (pp. 1–29). New York, NY: Routledge.

Felicitas AcostaInstituto del Desarrollo HumanoUniversidad Nacional de General Sarmiento (UNGS, Argentina)

F. Acosta & S. Nogueira (Eds.), Rethinking Public Education Systems in the 21st Century Scenario, 9–20. © 2017 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

RENATA MALDONADO DA SILVA

2. THE RESTRUCTURING OF HIGHER EDUCATION IN BRAZIL AND THE EUROPEAN UNION

Concepts and Politics

INTRODUCTION

The primary goal of this chapter is to analyze the policies implemented by the Brazilian Federal government and the European Union (EU) in the area of higher education based on the analysis of documents produced by multilateral agencies. A second goal of this chapter is to investigate possible relationships between restructuring of Brazilian university model started during the government of president Fernando Henrique Cardoso and the educational policies currently implemented by the EU, which had the 1999 Bologna Declaration as a starting point. Based on the existing international division of labor, the countries that form the EU and Brazil are distant from the socioeconomic point of view. However, the EU and Brazil have special features in the context of educational policies that bring them closer since there are running similar processes intended to overhaul their higher education systems to meet the demands set by capitalism in its present phase (Harvey, 1998).

My analysis is guided by the critical analysis of educational concepts and guidelines produced by the state and the bourgeoisie that changed the sphere of capitalist production. My analytical emphasis is placed on policies implemented by the state through guidelines established in the late 1980s by the so-called Washington Consensus. In accord to the agenda set by the Washington Consensus, reforms are being implemented in higher education to meet the requirements set by multilateral agencies. Different authors consider these agencies as spokespersons of the American hegemony (see Lima, 2007; Harvey, 2005).

In fact, since the 1990s several multilateral agencies have been producing and disseminating a new discourse on education. According to these discourses, educational systems should be directed to attend the new economic demands, focusing on the achievement of varied skills. In relation to higher education, the multilateral agencies proposed a complete overhaul of education to encourage the association of public and private sectors, to change funding frameworks and, especially, to promote an aggressive expansion policy. As a result, the ideological parameters of economic rationality became the motto for the development of an

R. MALDONADO DA SILVA

10

education based on a linear association with the ideas of economic development that, in their turn, were grounded on the theory of human capital.

Although Brazil is distant from the socioeconomic reality of most EU countries, it cannot be ignored that in the globalized world economy there has been “a convergence of changes at the regulation of education among different countries” (Canário, 2006, p. 30). On this regard, Teodoro points out that:

The effects of globalization are well present in current educational policies of different countries, often leaving a tiny range of options to Nation states. But these effects are felt mainly by the setting of a global agenda, and not so much by the affirmation of a clear mandate, which occurs, for example, in sectors of financial activity, world trade, tourism, mass culture or the media. Then we can talk using metaphor as an example of the electrical currents in Globalization´s ‘high intensity’ and ‘low intensity’. In education systems, mandatory mediation of national states in their policies then takes that one can speak of low intensity Globalization, while in other fields, such as those in the retreat of the Nation state in its regulation is almost complete, we can use, with property, the metaphor of the globalization of ‘high intensity. (2002, p. 70)

Therefore, the new guidelines for educational policies were related to the emergence of “transnational regulation” (Barroso, 2005). Based on this perspective, I highlight the central role played by supranational bodies such as the International Bank for Restructuring and Development (World Bank), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization – UNESCO. For member countries of the EU, the European Commission – EC recommends policies to be followed by all its member states to allow technical cooperation which would be intended to support research and development programs, and to suggest or impose diagnoses, techniques and solutions (Rummert & Canário, 2009, p. 30).

From these early considerations, I assume that reforms in higher education w being implemented in Brazil and in the EU actually seek to meet the demands of global capitalism and also to maintain existing links with multilateral agencies. However, it is even more important to note that these reforms seek to create a new standard for universities to meet the requirements of flexible accumulation (Harvey, 1998) Moreover, these reforms intend to disseminate the hegemonic logic required by capitalism in its new phase of expansion and consolidation. These changes are being expressed by the development of educational policies submitted to the principles of a new economic rationality (Rummert & Canário, 2009).

As a direct result of these new policies, there is also a prevalence of concepts such as productivity, competitiveness and employability. Regarding higher education, these policies internalize the discourse advocated by UNESCO that promotes the idea that education should suit the economic and political changes occurring in the international arena to enable workers to win a better level of ‘employability’. Therefore, the use of these concepts expresses a significant

THE RESTRUCTURING OF HIGHER EDUCATION IN BRAZIL AND THE EUROPEAN UNION

11

shift from education as a social right -which in the Brazilian case has never been universally implemented, and within the EU, in only a few countries such as France and Germany- to education as a commodity.1

Given this historical context, I seek to examine the political and economic foundations of educational policies that have been implemented by the Brazilian Federal government in recent years. In order to conduct my analysis, I selected two federal programs that are hallmarks of these reforms in Brazil: the “Plan for the Expansion and Restructuring of Federal Universities (REUNI)2” and the “Open University of Brazil (UAB).”3 In the specific case of the UAB, it follows the guidelines of the EU, specifically in the case of the E-Learning and the Program of Lifelong Learning. From the empirical assessment of these programs, I stress the connections between the restructuring of higher education occurring simultaneously in Brazil and in the EU, and their linkages with the agenda formulated by multilateral agencies such as the World Bank, UNESCO, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the World Trade Organization (WTO).

Meanwhile, I consider that educational reforms were implemented in higher education to meet the guidelines of multilateral funding and mutual aid agencies which, in the context of economic globalization, became stronger. Nonetheless, it is important to stress out that the characteristics and the influence of these organizations differ for regions occupying different positions in the international division of labor, such as Brazil and some countries of the EU. Therefore, in the context of economic deregulation, one can speak of a process of “globalization of education” (Melo, 2004), in which, despite the historical and geopolitical differences, there is an attempt to submit higher education to the demands of the production process, linking the educational process directly to the demands of the economic system.

In order to investigate the scope and impacts of these changes using a comparative perspective, I adopted the theoretical and methodological framework proposed by Canário (2006). My choice was based on the fact that Canário defends the inclusion of new concepts and approaches in comparative education studies to improve the existing understanding on the effects brought by the processes of transnationalization of capital and “internationalization of education”, and by the new regulatory frameworks operating at the Nation state level.

ECONOMIC GLOBALIZATION, MULTILATERAL AGENCIES AND ONGOING CHANGES IN HIGHER EDUCATION IN THE EU AND IN BRAZIL

During the last forty years there was an intensification of transnational interactions that produced a new pattern of relationships between Nation states and their markets. This phenomenon, known as globalization (Souza Santos, 2005), is characterized by the emergence of globally linked production systems and financial transfers, unlike previous cross-border interactions. According to Souza Santos:

R. MALDONADO DA SILVA

12

This is a complex process that spans several areas of social life, the globalization of production systems and the financial revolution in the technologies and practices of information and communication, the erosion of the Nation state and the rediscovery of civil society, the exponential increase of social inequalities, large cross-border movements of people as immigrants, tourists or refugees, the role of multinational corporations and multilateral financial institutions, new cultural identity and the new styles of globalized consumption practices. (p. 11)

At the economic level, the phenomenon of globalization is articulated to the emergence of a new international division of labor, mainly characterized by the globalization of the production process run by multinational companies. These multinational companies became the main promoters of the new global economy. Globalization is fundamentally characterized by the centrality of the financialization of capital (Chesnais, 1996), by investments being made at global scale, and by the desregionalization of the economy (Souza, 1996). These actions when they are combined result in the elimination of trade barriers to facilitate the creation of a global market, and the establishment of a new pattern of accumulation marked by flexible and multilocal production processes (Harvey, 2004). In contrast, this process has also spawned the emergence of regional economic blocs that bring together countries of the same continent or region, such as the EU, which is one of our subjects of analysis.

In this globalized economy, the market emerges as a “space devoid of any influences other than strictly the economic order” (Souza, 1996, p. 4), and it is guided by the principles of competitiveness that seeks to boost the process of capital accumulation. According to the prevailing discourse, this is better achieved by the lack barriers and by the weakening of the Nation states. Therefore, globalization emphasizes the predominance of a Neoliberal ideology as the pillar of economic growth, and it is aimed at repossessing profit levels that existed before the dominance of the Welfare State in some parts of the capitalist system. It is important to point out that the benefits of the Welfare system only benefitted a part of the working class, but its distributive gains, although small and localized, were still opposed by the ruling classes.

In response to the Keynesian model of State intervention, theorists such as Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman emerged in the post Second World War to propose a rigid control on the State to curb social spending and to establish the market as a self-regulatory mechanism, depriving the State intervention in strategic sectors of the economy. Ultimately, the followers of Hayek and Friedman also proposed that governments should relentlessly pursue monetary stability. Faced with the contradictions inherent to capitalism, which worsened from the 1970s, the economic elites used the neoliberal rhetoric to restore the conditions for capital accumulation and to have their power restored (Harvey, 2005).

However, the consensus is that the neoliberal offensive, applied differently in central and peripheral countries, criticized the ‘inflexibility’ of labor unions and

THE RESTRUCTURING OF HIGHER EDUCATION IN BRAZIL AND THE EUROPEAN UNION

13

labor processes in general to generate profound changes in the production system. One consequence of attack on the labor unions was the gradual withdrawal of social and labor rights that were hard-won by the workers, which, in this new order, were weakened by the loss of union power and by the rise of unemployment rates.

In this context, Souza Santos (2005) points out that, in addition to economic globalization being grounded in the neoliberal consensus, one of the central elements of this new order was the subordination of Nation states to multilateral agencies such as the World Bank, the IMF, the WTO, UNESCO and the OECD. These organizations were created in the postwar period in the context of the supremacy of the American hegemony, and as a result of agreements signed at Bretton Woods (1944).

In the case of the World Bank, its creation was intended to promote long-term loans to assist with the development process in poor countries as a way to drive them away the ‘communist threat’, while the OECD was designed to promote the European postwar reconstruction, and to assist the implementation of the Marshall Plan. During the same period, UNESCO, an organization directly linked to United Nations Organization (ONU), was founded to ensure the American hegemony worldwide. However from the 1960s onwards, according to Melo (2004), UNESCO also became a defender of the capitalist accumulation process at the international level. In practical terms, UNESCO fulfilled this broader role by establishing cooperative agreements with the IMF and the World Bank. In the sphere of action of the EU, it is important to note that the inclusion of the WTO in recent years in debates related to education, although in different levels, has also gradually influenced the Brazilian educational policies.

Additionally, Antunes (2005) points out that despite the fact these multilateral agencies had an entrenched leadership over the last century, in the last two decades they have assumed roles that differed significantly from those performed previously. According to Antunes, although currently these agencies form a constellation to act as the sole responsible for the governance of much of the world, the distribution of their influence does not occur evenly in different parts of the capitalist system.

Regarding the influence on educational policies implemented by the Brazilian government, for example, Antunes stresses the hegemony of the World Bank and of UNESCO in the ideological arena, which can be explained by the peripheral condition of the Brazil in the existing international division of labor. In the case of the EU, Antunes emphasizes the role of the European Commission (EC), which in recent years has influenced the educational policies of the block beyond what had been done previously by the OECD, the World Bank and the WTO. Antunes shows that, in education, in addition to international organizations having different characteristics, they also have distinct forms of action. On this regard, Antunes points out that:

Above all, the forms are different, i.e., they have some aspects in common, however, even these that we are talking only about education – because

R. MALDONADO DA SILVA

14

the other we set aside – this universe of five or six have very different characteristics in their ways of working. What matters in the current moment, it seems to me that what is educational agenda has today as fundamental actors and spaces the European Union on the one hand, and the World Trade Organization, on the other, and also the World Bank and the OECD; these are the international organizations that today influence, which are key actors in the field of educational policies and very different way for those countries, the continents, some for obvious reasons such as the European Union on the European continent. (2005, pp. 2–3)

However, it is also important to point out that are differences in scope of work of a same institution, such as the World Bank. According to Antunes, in the core countries, the World Bank has a more ideological and programmatic influence. This influence can be seen in the implementation of meetings, expert meetings and technical cooperation. Meanwhile, in the case of the peripheral countries, such as Brazil and some EU member countries such as Portugal, the World Bank has imposed structural adjustment programs and it has required the adoption of policies in several areas. As these countries are more economically fragile, they need to submit to the World Bank ‘guidelines’ to secure debt can be renegotiated, a step deemed as necessary to achieve economic growth.

In the case of countries located in the periphery of capitalism, since the 1990s education has come to play a strategic role in reforms proposed by the World Bank. According to Leher (1999), the discourse on education relates to the need for security and stability demanded by finance capital that previously, because of the fear of poverty and extreme poverty experienced by peripheral countries, had invested in elementary education and vocational training to contain social tensions. Attention is also given by the World Bank to the idea of an educational concept supported on the human capital theory. In the case of higher education, which is our object of study, the World Bank recommended that the financing of the institutions should be undertaken in whole or in partnerships by the private sector (Lima, 2007, p. 65). The World Bank has also proposed the creation of shorter duration higher education courses that would be geared strictly to attend the needs of the market. In recent years, the World Bank has insisted on the diversification of funding sources through the collection of tuition and fees, the expansion of higher education institutions through the establishment of non-university institutions for the poor, and the indiscriminate use of distance education.

Following the guidelines of the World Bank, the government of president Luis Inácio Lula da Silva created in 2005 the UAB with the manifest goal of expanding and promoting the internationalization of higher education courses and programs. Currently, 94 institutions of higher education are participating in the UAB program, which is offered in 639 service centers across Brazil. The creation of courses, the allocation of faculty and the development of learning materials is a responsibility of accredited higher education institutions (IES). The UAB has an entrance exam and

THE RESTRUCTURING OF HIGHER EDUCATION IN BRAZIL AND THE EUROPEAN UNION

15

currently 703 courses are offered in the several modalities such as undergraduate courses, sequential education, and teacher training through latu sensu graduate courses.4 In the coming years, there is the expectation that strictu sensu graduate courses will also be offered. It is important to emphasize that the process of supervision and guidance of courses is done by tutors holding undergraduate degrees and one year of teaching experience. The monthly value of a UAB scholarship is 187.00 US Dollars.5 This project was created primarily to promote certification of basic education teachers, based on the strategies designed by the World Bank to reduce the costs of teacher training (Torres, 1996)

The proposed diversification of course offerings in higher education is also present in the guidelines set by UNESCO, especially since the release of the Delors Report in 1996. The Delors Report established the concept of lifelong education according to which workers could return to educational institutions to acquire the ‘skills’ instituted by the market. Another important aspect of the recommendations set by UNESCO refers to an alleged inadequacy of universities to the new political-economic transformations and to the reduction of state action at this education level (UNESCO, 1999). In more recent documents, the agency (UNESCO, 2003) encouraged the diversification of funding sources, including the World Bank, and emphasizes the importance of private schools. In practical matters, UNESCO corroborates the expansion of private education and the transformation of education in a commodity. Moreover, UNESCO strengthens the position of WTO that has argued in favor of the designation of higher education as a type of service that should be subjected to the rules and controls are applied to other types of services (Dias, 2003).

It is important to note that the guidelines established by UNESCO for higher education are aligned to the implementation of neoliberal policies in the educational field. In fact, UNESCO adopts the perspective of education as a public good, in which all subjects involved (i.e., individuals, public and private agencies, governments and international organizations) should contribute in the fields of enforcement and financial support for the proposed model (Lima, 2007). Therefore, according to Lima, when considering higher education as a public good or service according to the design set by UNESCO, all sectors must assume the financing and the execution of that policy (Lima, 2007, p. 68). In recent decades, this model is being gradually implemented in Brazil, and it has been part of the process of reform of the state apparatus. As a result, the concepts of public and private have been redefined with the emergence of the third sector.

Since the late 1990s, the idea of internationalization of higher education is subsidizing a series of discussions held by European countries that were synthesized in the Bologna Declaration (1999). The Bologna Declaration was aimed at: (1) promoting the harmonization of European higher education, and (2) ensuring the employability and mobility of its citizens. To achieve these goals, the following measures should be implemented: (a) the development of a comparable degree system, and the adoption of a model composed of two main cycles: undergraduate and postgraduate courses; (b) the establishment of a system of credits that could be

R. MALDONADO DA SILVA

16

acquired outside higher education institutions. Beyond these measures, the Bologna Declaration recommended the encouragement of students and faculty mobility; and it also indicated the need for the development of quality criteria throughout Europe, and finally proposed the creation of a European university area (Bologna, 1999).

According to Lima:

This protocol is a major milestone in the reform of European higher education and it is guided by the same reasoning present in the documents of the WB and UNESCO: the consideration that economic globalization and the information society – or the” Europe of knowledge”, as identified the Bologna Declaration – indicates a set of rearrangements in labor markets, the diversification of sources of funding for higher education and the diversification of institutions and higher level courses. Higher education is conceived in the framework of employability of workers; oriented training for labor markets, by conducting short courses; elimination of remaining obstacles to full mobility of students (…); ICT and ODL through standardization or uniformity of curricula. (2007, p. 69)

Besides the attempt to unify historically different educational systems, Lima, Catani and Azevedo (2008) point out to the decrease in the autonomy of national states in higher education. According Cabrito (2003), Bologna Declaration is also a disguised strategy to reduce the participation of the state as funder of university education, and it aims to impose on students and their families the cost of their education. Cabrito also suggests that, in peripheral countries such as Portugal, where the state is already sharing part of the costs of education with the families, many students have become unable to complete their studies. Also, another central aspect of the Bologna Declaration is that it reduces considerably the time for course completion which often leads to a superficial training whose ultimate goal is to shorten the time required for the students to enter the labor market. In addition, Teodoro (2002) indicates that the Bologna Declaration also disregards the fact that education systems are mediated by Nation states, a fact that creates a major hurdle for the proposed single certification.

In Brazil, the echoes of Bologna Declaration are present in the guidelines for the implementation of REUNI, a program created in 2007 and entirely funded by the Brazilian Federal government with the manifest goal of promoting the democratization of higher education. Two of REUNI´s main objectives were to decrease dropout rates and to improve the utilization of physical infrastructure and human resources by the federal universities. Moreover, REUNI also sought to expand students’ mobility and to reorganize undergraduate and academic structures.

A central theme of REUNI was the adoption of the “New University” project with the aim of achieving a complete reshuffle in the Brazilian university model. The New University proposed that the academic structure of higher education in Brazil should consist of three cycles: an interdisciplinary bachelor’s degree (Cycle 1), which would provide a general training and it would be a prerequisite for the

THE RESTRUCTURING OF HIGHER EDUCATION IN BRAZIL AND THE EUROPEAN UNION

17

subsequent cycles; vocational training (Cycle 2) which would refer to degrees or other forms of careers; and graduate studies (Cycle 3). According to Lima, Azevedo and Catani (2008), the idea of the program was to build a university model compatible with the American and the European unified system that would result of the full implementation of the Bologna Declaration. Leher (2007), however, problematizes this model, calling it “fast delivery diploma”, a proposal that was developed since 2003 through the Inter-ministry Working Group with the manifest goal of increasing public education through distance learning programs.

Taking the context of the EU, the OECD has produced reports that ultimately aim to point out the shortcomings of educational systems and the assumption that the current setup would prevent advances in competitiveness and the creation of skills required by ‘the knowledge society’. According to Dale (2008), on the one hand, the OECD emphasizes the fact the national sectors and disciplines can articulate broader interests than those required in the Declaration of Lisbon (2000). On the other, these sectors and disciplines are unable to achieve its goals. The views are expressed, according to Dale, in a document produced by the OECD in 2001, the “Educational Scenarios”, in which six different scenarios are presented for the future of schools. There the OECD asserts the need to find new educational purposes and the resources required for their achievement, and the necessity for the adoption of new priorities for national education policies (Dale, 2008, p. 19).

In relation to higher education, Antunes (2007) highlights the importance of the guidelines proposed by the OECD within the European Union for this type of education based on the analysis of the situation faced by Portugal. According to the Antunes, although the reorganization of the Portuguese higher education was started in 2004, in 2005 Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education announced the implementation of an evaluation system for higher education, prepared by OECD and placed under the responsibility of the European Network for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (ENQA).

This system was intended to ensure quality in this type of education and instituted an evaluation program for the Portuguese higher education institutions, both public and private. Antunes also observed that one of the objectives spelled out in the legislation was the adoption of evaluation parameters in the university system as a mean to ensure the competitiveness required for this education level, and to guarantee that the criteria ‘quality’ would be present on the demands of new teaching modalities, such as distance education programs.

The reorganization of classroom teaching has also been a major focus of the E-learning program that was created by the European Commission in 2003. E-Learning sought to “improve the quality and accessibility of European education and training through the effective use of information technologies and communication.”6 In addition to pursuing the development of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in teaching and learning processes, the program proposed the creation of an European area of E-learning; the promotion of educational partnerships, and the creation of virtual classrooms mainly aimed at the

R. MALDONADO DA SILVA

18

training of teachers. All members of the EU, including candidate countries, could participate in this program. A total of € 44 million for the implementation of its activities was allocated for the 2004–2006 period.7 As a result, the E-learning is part of a set of initiatives that proposes to implement the educational process assumptions of the so-called ‘knowledge society’ as previously proclaimed in UNESCO reports. Rosa (2003) also shows the articulation of the same program to business interests in education and training. The ultimate result of this articulation would be the submission of education systems to the demands of transnational capital, a provision present in the OECD guidelines since the early 1990s.

Since 2007 the E-learning program has been included in the new Learning Lifelong Program whose management is also in charge of the EC. According to EU legislation, the Learning Lifelong Program is an action program in the field of learning, and it is aimed at fostering “interchange, cooperation and mobility” while seeking the establishment of a European area of lifelong learning. These are the general principles agreed in the call of the Lisbon Strategy (2000), and, as a result of their application, a space for higher education would be created within the education and training community to allow the expansion of mobility between countries and regions, but also between different areas of knowledge (Wood, 2009). According to Wood, the programs of the Lifelong Learning are part of a set of initiatives that, perhaps for the first time in history, would allow education and training to position themselves as engines of economic growth and development. Furthermore, by promoting the ideals of employability and mobility, Lifelong Learning plays a key role in developing the skills required for meeting the fluctuations of the labor market (Moreira cited in Wood, 2009).

CONCLUDING REMARKS

To summarize the elements analyzed in this chapter, my effort was to make explicit the fact there is a clear imposition of neoliberal principles in policies for higher education conducted by the EU and by the Brazilian Federal government. The adoption of these policies is accentuating the gradual withdrawal of the state, through the use of distance learning and the dissemination of the concept of education as a service that should fit the demands and needs of the market. In addition, there is the subjacent requirement according to which higher education must adapt to the new world order, and to make it more ‘flexible’.

The combination of these policies tends to accentuate the process of diversification of courses and the decrease of their duration. In practical terms, these courses are becoming strategically geared to attend the demands of the production process. This is another element of fundamental importance in the discourse of international organizations, both in the ‘guidelines’ for the peripheral countries, such as Brazil, but also in the case of the EU where some countries, based on existing the international division of labor, are also subordinated (e.g., Portugal and Spain) to the other countries.

THE RESTRUCTURING OF HIGHER EDUCATION IN BRAZIL AND THE EUROPEAN UNION

19

NOTES

1 Rummert and Canário point out that in the Portuguese case, given the secondary position of Portugal in the international division of labor, education was never universally provided.

2 The REUNI is the Federal Government’s Support Program for Restructuring Plans and Expansion of Brazilian Federal Universities, part of a set of actions of the Federal Government in the MEC Education Development Plan. Established by Presidential Decree 6096, April 24th 2007, in order to give the institutions a position to expand access and ensure conditions of stay in higher education. Source: http://www.reuni.ufscar.br/o-que-e-reuni. Accessed online on July 23, 2015.

3 The Universidade Aberta do Brasil is an integrated system for public universities offering higher education courses to the population without access to university education through the use of distance education methodology. The general public is served, but teachers working in primary education are trained priority, followed by officers, managers and employees in basic education of states, municipalities and the Federal District. The UAB System was established by Decree 5800 of June 8, 2006, for “the development of education in the distance mode, in order to expand and internalize the offer of courses and higher education programs in the country”. Source: http://uab.capes.gov.br/ index.php/sobre-a-uab/o-que-e. Accessed online on July 23, 2015.

4 Source: http://uab.capes.gov.br/index.php/cursos Accessed online on July 23, 2015.5 Source: http://www.uab.capes.gov.br/images/stories/downloads/legislacao/resolucao_fnde_n26.pdf6 Source: http://europa.eu/legislation_summaries/information_society/strategies/c11073_pt.htm7 Source: http://europa.eu/legislation_summaries/information_society/strategies/c11073_pt.htm

REFERENCES

Antunes, F. (2005). Global governance and international guidelines for education in the European Union. Perspectiva, 23(2), 449–465.

Antunes, F. (2007). The European higher education space for a new education order? ETD – Educação Temática Digital, 9(esp), 1–28.

Barroso, J. (2005). Status, education and regulation of public policies. Educação & Sociedade, 26(92), 725–751.

Bologna Declaration. (1999). Joint Declaration of the European Ministers of Education Convened in Bologna on the 19th of June 1999. Retrieved from http://www.europa.eu.int/comm/education/bologna_en.html

Cabrito, B. (2003). The Bologna process: Development of populations or responding to economic imperatives? XII Jornadas de la Asociación de Economia de la Educación (2013, January 29). Retrieved from http://www.pagina-aede.org/Oviedo/F6.pdf

Canário, R. A (2000). Escola e a Abordagem Comparada: Novas realidades e novos olhares. Sísifo: Revista de Ciências da Educação, 27–36.

Chesnais, F. (1996). The globalization of capital. São Paulo: Xamã.Dale, R. (2008). Building Europe through a European education. Revista Lusófona de Educação, 11,

13–30.Delors, J. et al. (1996). Education a treasure to discover. Report to UNESCO of the International

Commission on Education for the XXI century, UNESCO, Paris.Dias, M. A. R. (2003). Marketing in higher education: Is it possible to maintain the idea of public good?

Educação & Sociedade, 24(84), 817–838.European Commission. (2013, January 28). Communication from the commission to the European

parliament, the council, the European economic and social committee and the committee of the regions. Brussels: European Commission. Retrieved from http://ec.europa.eu/education/higher-education/doc/com0911_en.pdf

European Commission. (2013, January 28). Learning programme lifelong. Retrieved from http://europa.eu/ legislation_summaries/education_training_youth/general_framework/c11082_pt.htm

Harvey, D. (1998). Postmodern condition (7th ed.). New York, NY: Basil Blackwell.Harvey, D. (2004). The new imperialism. New York, NY: Basil Blackwell.

R. MALDONADO DA SILVA

20

Harvey, D. (2005). Neoliberalism: History and implications. New York, NY: Basil Blackwell.Leher, R. (1999). A new master of education? The educational policy of the World Bank to the periphery

of capitalism. October, 1, 19–30.Leher, R. (2007). ‘Fast delivery’ diploma: A feature of counter-reform of higher education. Retrieved

from http://www.adur-rj.org.br/5com/pop-up/fast_delivery_contra-reforma_ed_sup.htmLima, K. (2007). Counter-reformation in higher education: FHC to Lula. São Paulo, São Paulo: Xamã.Lima, L. C., Azevedo, M. L. N., & Catani, A. M. (2008). Bologna process, higher education and a few

considerations about the New University. Avaliação, 13(1), 7–36.Melo, A. (2004). The globalization of education: Consolidation of the neoliberal project in Latin America,

Brazil and Venezuela. Maceio: UFAL-PPGE / CEDU.Moreira, A. (2006). Internationalization of higher education. Foreign Affairs, 9(1), 29–37.OECD. (2001). Schooling for tomorrow: OECD scenarios. Paris: OECD.OECD. (2008). Higher education in the knowledge society. Paris: OECD. Retrieved from www.oecd.org/

edu/tertiary/reviewRosa, R. N. (2003). The reform dictated by the European Union. Retrieved from http://resistir.info/rui/

educacao_ameacada_5.htmlRummert, S. M., & Canàrio, R. (2009). Education youth and adult workers in Brazil and Portugal:

Preliminary writings. In D. Souza & S. Martinez (Eds.), Comparative education: Routes Mar. São Paulo: Xamã.

Souza Santos, B. (Ed.). (2005). Globalization and social sciences (3rd ed.). São Paulo: Cortez.Souza, D. B. (1996). The invisible hand of the market in the globalized pockets of social inequalities.

Boletim Técnico do Senac, 22(2), 3–12. Retrieved from http://www.senac.br/informativo/bts/222/boltec222a.htm

Teodoro, A. (2002). The new forms of transnational regulation in the field of educational policies or low intensity globalization. ECCOS Scientific Journal, 4(1), 61–77. Retrieved from http://redalyc.uaemex.mx/pdf/715/71540104.pdf

Torres, R. M. (1996). Improving the quality of basic education? The strategies of the World Bank. In L. De Tommasi, et al. (Eds.), The world bank and education policy. São Paulo: Cortez.

United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). (1999). Trends in higher education for the XXI century. Brasilia: UNESCO/CRUB.

United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). (2002). Constitution of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Brasilia: UNESCO. Retrieved from http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0014/001472/147273POR.pdf

United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). (2003). Survey on trends and developments in higher education since the World Conference on Higher Education (1998–2003). In World conference on higher education. Higher education: Reform, change and internationalization (pp. 93–150). Brasilia: UNESCO Brazil / MEC / Sesu.

Wielewicki, H. G., & Oliveira, M. R. (2010). Internationalization of higher education: Bologna process. Ensaio, 18(67), 215–234.

Wood, A. I. (2009). Higher education in Europe and its relationship with Latin America: Cooperation between Portugal and Brazil. Revista Brasileira de Política e Administração da Educação, 25(1), 33–60.

Renata Maldonado da SilvaLaboratório de Estudos da Educação e da LinguagemCentro de Ciências do HomemUniversidade Estadual do Norte Fluminense (Brasil)

F. Acosta & S. Nogueira (Eds.), Rethinking Public Education Systems in the 21st Century Scenario, 21–43. © 2017 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

FELICITAS ACOSTA

3. SECONDARY EDUCATION POLICIES IN EUROPE AND LATIN AMERICA

A Historical Comparative Analysis

PRESENTATION

By means of a comparative historical methodology, this work sets out to analyse the process of expansion of secondary education in Europe and Latin America. To do so, it considers the characteristics of this expansion in some countries in those regions with particular emphasis on two issues: the historical configuration of secondary schools’ institutional models and the most recent policies aimed at those schools.

Similarities can be found between the configuration of the educational systems in Western Europe and some Latin American countries (particularly those in the Southern Cone: Argentina, Uruguay, and Chile). In both cases, the systems took shape with the enactment of mandatory primary school education laws. The creation of secondary schools circuits, related to socioeconomic status, accompanied this process. During the post-war period, expansion of secondary education took place in Europe. In Latin America, this process ensued at a different pace and did not get underway until a few decades later.

In both cases, however, policies to expand secondary education have come against problems when it comes to adjusting classic secondary education institutional models to fit the social sectors with recent access to this level of education, these problems often mean increased dropout rates and the decreased graduation rates. Western European countries adopted different strategies, among them comprehensive schooling, to address this problem. Most countries in Latin America, on the other hand, still face very basic problems of expansion (infrastructure, completion of previous educational levels, teacher training, among others). Nevertheless, some recent policies are similar to those found in some European countries, which raises the question of the causes for similar political actions in such different regions. Policy comparisons that bear in mind the historical problems of secondary education expansion are helpful to provide a better understanding of these similarities as well as the effects on educational systems.

The chapter is organized in tree sections. In the first one, conceptualizations around the problem of the expansion of secondary education are presented. The second section introduces an overview of the development of the secondary school

F. ACOSTA

22

in European and Latin American countries. This overview serves as platform for the comparison of recent policies towards secondary education developed in the third section. Some concluding remarks are presented at the end of the chapter considering possible effects on historical problems of schooling.

CONCEPTUALIZATIONS: THE EXPANSION OF SECONDARY SCHOOL AND THE INSTITUTIONAL MODEL

This section sets out to conceptualize the historical process by which secondary school became a crucial item on the agenda of change in educational policy. Our argument revolves around the existence of problems common to Western educational systems specifically in relation to the expansion of secondary schools and their institutional model.

It is possible to identify three aspects pertinent to the emergence of this problem. The first is related to changes in economic structure and the labor market, and their effect on the expansion of schooling (training of human resources and/or containment of youth unemployment). The second is bound to demographic transformations, specifically the growth of the young population and the need to expand institutions geared to the social regulation of that population. The third aspect, which is of an institutional systemic nature, is linked to the ways educational systems expanded (the extension of the school career) as well as certain characteristics of the organization of secondary schooling associated with the trouble of ensuring successful school careers for all students.

Policies for the expansion of secondary schooling have historically faced problems related to adjusting institutional models to address the new social sectors that have gained access to this level of education. Studies performed for the IIPE UNESCO in 2010 (Acosta, 2011a) and OEI/EUROSOciAL (2013) confirmed the existence of problems common to the Western world as a whole related to the massification of secondary schooling, on the one hand, and its format, on the other: certain characteristics of the organization of secondary school appear to hinder the ability of all students to enjoy successful secondary school careers. New policies and reforms grasped the disconnection between mandatory education (forced expansion) and format. In this work, the problem is reformulated in terms of expansion, on the one hand, and institutional model, on the other.1

This work is based on the hypothesis that there has been a process of internationalization of ideas and models in the configuration of educational systems in general and the secondary school in particular. The concept of internationalization, as developed by Schriewer (2002, 2011), refers to the process of transnational migration, expansion, and reception, a process constructed historically in a range of logics of appropriation determined by deep cultural structures (Caruso & Tenorth, 2011, p. 16). At the same time, it assumes the global expansion of transnationally standardized educational models and the persistence of various networks of socio-cultural interconnection (Schriewer, 2011, p. 72). Here we will analyse these two

SECONDARY EDUCATION POLICIES IN EUROPE AND LATIN AMERICA

23

aspects of the process of internationalization—global models and socio-cultural networks—through an analysis of the configuration of the secondary school.

The following processes of internationalization are the basis for this analysis of the configuration of the educational system and secondary schools:• The triumph, in the late 19th century, of a school format based on the variables

of nationalization, simultaneity, graduality, and new positions (teachers and students)

• The shaping of educational institutions and systems for which systematization and segmentation served as the matrix during processes of configuration (Mueller, Ringer, & Simon, 1992)

• The configuration of the secondary school as an institution with a distinct role in the process of educational segmentation based on two considerations: its own institutional model (an organizational form—the grammar of schooling—a pedagogical form—the localization of this grammar—and an institutional history—secondary school as an institution that partakes of the practice of humanist colleges), and the expansion of the secondary school on the basis of models of institutions deemed decisive (Steedman, 1992).

THE DEVELOPMENT OF SECONDARY EDUCATION IN WESTERN EUROPE AND LATIN AMERICA: AN OVERVIEW

This section will provide a brief historical overview of the development of the secondary school in European and Latin American countries. It will also summarize the main tendencies for change in keeping with two distinct agendas, one geared to the expansion of secondary school and one geared to changes and emerging trends incorporated into the existing educational agenda (specifically, young people envisioned as vulnerable population and what that entails for the design of “socio-educational” policies).

In response to the common problem of expansion, states formulate goals on the basis of pre-existing situations (regarding the expansion of the educational system as well as traditions and particular sets of circumstances) such that the challenges are not always the same. In European countries, the problem would seem to revolve around the demands of new populations (immigrants, for instance), whereas most Latin American countries still grapple with the most basic problems of expanding secondary school (problems of infrastructure, student completion of earlier levels of schooling, teacher training, and others). Regardless of how much progress has been made, the educational policies of a number of countries in the Latin American region are geared to these issues.

Latin American countries today are faced with the challenge of furthering the expansion of secondary school and enabling the bulk of the young people enrolled to enjoy successful school careers. These countries and their states, then, are engaged in a process of expanding schooling that began decades ago in central countries.

F. ACOSTA

24

A series of hypotheses on the dynamic of the expansion of secondary school in central countries is proposed on the following pages in order to then analyse the situation in Latin America. On the basis of a seminal model of configuration, secondary schools in central countries are understood to have experienced two distinct moments of expansion with distinct strategies. The first, which ensued after World War II, entailed comprehensive reform. The second, which set in during the eighties, entailed focalized policies aimed at specific problems (the exclusion of the immigrant population, for instance).

As earlier works have argued, the behavior of secondary schools in Latin American countries can be understood in the framework of the tendencies discussed above. This means that educational systems in Latin America must tackle simultaneously the most basic problems that come with the expansion of secondary schooling (problems of infrastructure, student completion of earlier levels of schooling, teacher training, and others) as well as structural problems (altering the institutional model).

Secondary School in Western Europe: Continuities and Changes

As Savoir, Bruter and Frijoff point out (2004) the term “secondary education” first appeared at the turn of the 19th century, when some European states began to build public educational institutions. Indeed, at that moment public education was increasingly visible as a tool of the State. Nonetheless, an overview of the history of education indicates the existence of certain earlier educational practices and discourses that left their mark on the ultimate configuration of what came to be secondary education. This process can be seen in Argentina as well.

The institutional model for secondary education consisted of humanist colleges. These took shape in the 15th century, though their roots lay in earlier educational practices like the 11th century cathedral schools and liberal art schools of the 12th, 13th and 14th centuries, each of which had its own characteristics depending on the context. A series of institutional changes directly linked to the emergence of new functions for education took place from the 16th to the 19th centuries, changes that ultimately influenced the configuration of secondary education.

Secondary education’s origin is associated with a function that education tended to perform in the process of giving shape to modern educational systems: the propaedeutic function of the educational system, its cultural function in terms of general education, its social function originally geared towards the instruction of elites, and its political-economic function in terms of coordination with the needs of the modern State.

According to Muller (1992, p. 40), during the late 19th and early 20th centuries what had been a diverse group of vaguely defined schools gradually became a highly structured system of precisely delimited and functionally interrelated educational institutions. Indeed, the limits between existing institutions were more precisely defined, and curricula and requirements for degrees were more meticulously specified. The functional relations between the different parts of the system were more fully articulated.

SECONDARY EDUCATION POLICIES IN EUROPE AND LATIN AMERICA

25

In the late 19th century, the status of existing educational institutions was similar in most of the more advanced European states: elementary schools; gymnasiums, grammar schools and lyceum schools; and universities. There was no connection whatsoever between these sorts of institutions. Young people from the most privileged classes were generally speaking educated in their homes with private tutors and then went to the university. The young people in the rising bourgeoisie entered grammar schools or gymnasiums—which were paid, selective and offered a humanistic classical curriculum (general education)—to then practice liberal professions or to become government officials. Not all of them attended university; indeed, less than one percent of the population (and until 1914 only 3–4 % of age group) did (see Schneider, 1982; Anderson, 2004, p. 97).

As schooling became more widespread thanks to the expansion of elementary schools, there was growing pressure from middle social sectors to further their education after elementary school. Two processes took place at that juncture: State intervention that was able to position a certain type of educational institution as the model (the grammar school, the gymnasium, the lyceum school); and the binding of this type of institution to the ability to enter the university (in fact, those institutions prepared students to take exams that certified the end of one educational cycle and the possibility of being granted access to another).

In other words, once regulation had been imposed for the sake of expanding mandatory elementary education, the dynamic entailed differentiating on the basis of secondary education not only in terms of the number of years of schooling but also specific curricula that prepared students to occupy different positions in the social world (the university, the world of work). According to Viñao (2002, p. 44), the formation of educational systems implied a double process of systematization and segmentation, that is, of internal coordination and vertical as well as horizontal differentiation.

As indicated above, this first configuration affected only a very small percentage of the population: in Western Europe, the secondary schooling rate was 2.15% for the period from 1870 to 1910 and 5.7% from 1920 to 1940. Kaelbe (2011) adds that even until the 1950s 10-35% of the age group attended secondary schools. Educational systems, then, were structured on the basis of a matrix characterized by selectivity and segmentation.

It was in the spirit of the post-War period that laws were passed making secondary schooling mandatory and, in some cases, free of charge. This was the context in which secondary education took a mass scale; it was the moment in which capitalist democracy efficaciously fashioned an imaginary around the relationship between school and social mobility. These were the “golden 30s” when the West produced full citizenship for the vast majority of the population. Educational systems formed part of the mechanism of what was called the wage society.

In 1975, 35% of young people between the ages of ten and nineteen in Western Europe were in secondary schools and 13% of those between the ages of twenty and twenty-four attended university (some countries like England reached 50%

F. ACOSTA

26

enrollment rates; Schneider, 1982). Kaelbe (2011) highlights that by the 1970’s the European secondary school attendance rate had reached 66%. Thus, during the “golden 30s,” the school and educational systems became the guarantors of social cohesion since the combination of education and employment enabled many to ascend on the social scale.

The First Indication of the Limits of the Segmented Matrix: Comprehensive Reforms

As a hypothesis, we suggest that at present secondary schools are the product of the intersection of two major tendencies that respond to the challenge of expansion: the tendency towards the continuity of the institutional model of elite humanist schools versus the tendency towards rupture that comprehensive schools enacted in the context of the expansion of the secondary school.

From 1960 to 1980, attempts were made to adjust the traditional structure of the secondary school so that it would be “more suited” to this process of expansion. These changes included the comprehensive schools in Great Britain, the collège in France and, at the end of this period, Mandatory Secondary Education (ESO, for the acronym in Spanish) in Spain. These schools involved a common general education for all students who entered secondary school. They eschewed the early segregation of children into schools with different modalities, and they gave rise to a flexible curriculum through the system of electives whereby students could decide some of the subjects they would study over the course of their school career. In this framework, over the course of a fifteen-year period more than 50% of the population of the relevant age was brought into secondary school in countries like France and England.

The crisis of the welfare state in the mid 1970s found countries in Central Europe as well as the United States in a process of universalizing post-primary education. Economic stagnation and the employment crisis that followed years of economic abundance did not alter this spectacular increase in enrollment. In any case, and despite the universalization of secondary education, the important role that certain educational institutions would play as models for secondary-level education as a whole is evident throughout the long process by which secondary schools took shape. According to Weiler (1998), the attempts at inclusion through comprehensive schools have been partly successful, in the cases of Sweden and the United Kingdom, for instance; in other cases, as in Germany and France, they have largely failed.

This means that, to a large extent, the expansion of secondary education in Europe took place on the basis of the total or partial change of the institutional model. The importance of the institutional change is relative due to the range of mechanisms of social selection operative even in comprehensive schools. Regarding this question, Weiler’s (1998) hypotheses could be appropriate: “The modern State is basically incapable of putting into practice major reforms due to its structural commitment with the status quo in terms of the distribution of power and prestige” (p. 72).

It is nonetheless the case that the rapid expansion of secondary education began to be conceived in terms of the destructuring of certain issues, such as a rigid curriculum.

SECONDARY EDUCATION POLICIES IN EUROPE AND LATIN AMERICA

27

Over the course of a fifteen-year period more than 50% of the population of the relevant age was brought into secondary school (see OECD, 2011).

When the period of economic prosperity came to an end in the mid-seventies, the main challenges faced by society as a whole and by the educational system in particular consisted of absorbing the social and cultural impact of the redirection of production and of the reformulation of the welfare state, as well as incorporating immigrants from former colonies. Efforts along these lines involved encouraging study and concern with difference and how to approach it.

Economic stagnation, growing unemployment, and problems with integrating new flows of immigrants—all items on the agenda of a globalized world—ensued in a context where comprehensive educational reform and the universalization of post-primary education was a reality in almost all countries in the European community.

In Europe, upper secondary level education (ISCED 3A or 3B) is seen as the minimum level of education young people should achieve in order to make a successful transition to the labour market. However, at the moment one out of every seven young Europeans leaves the education system without having the skills or the qualifications seen as necessary for active participation in today’s knowledge-based economy (Nehala & Hawley, 2012).

Early school leaving has therefore become one of the biggest public policy priorities in Europe. In 2001, European ministers of education decided to set a target – within the strategic framework for education and training – to reduce the rate of early school leaving from 17.6% in 2000 to 10% by 2010. This target was not met; in 2010, the rate of early school leaving in the European Union stood at 14.1%.

Therefore, governments decided to raise the importance of this issue by lifting the 10% target on early school leaving to be one of the five headline targets for the European Union to achieve by 2020 (stipulated in the Europe 2020 strategy for ‘smart, sustainable and inclusive growth’). At the same time, the Member State governments committed themselves to setting their own national targets on the reduction of early school leaving (taking into account the starting point in each country) and drafting comprehensive strategies to address early school leaving by the end of 2012.

Currently, in those countries the rate of upper secondary school enrollment is on the rise: by 2002, 75% of the population between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-four had a high school degree, whereas, according to OECD data, the rate was just over 60% in those between the ages of forty-five and fifty-four. This data is important because it speaks of a high graduation rate from secondary school, a situation that, as we shall see, differs from that of Latin America.

Secondary Education in Latin America: Between Global Tendencies and Local Scenarios

It is widely known that educational systems in Latin America have operated and continue to operate at a pace different from their counterparts in central countries. It would seem that the origin of many of these differences lies in how the region

F. ACOSTA

28

took part in the Enlightenment’s emancipation project and the consolidation of the modern State.

There are commonalities between how educational systems took shape in countries in Latin America and in Europe. As Ossenbach has pointed out (1997), after the emancipation of the metropolis, public education was handled at the municipal level. It was not until the wars after independence had come to an end that central states began to take charge of primary education pursuant to the notion of common education where the State defined itself as the educating State. Thus, educational systems in Latin America contributed to both the forming of the nation through a process of social and cultural homogenization and to the emergence and development of the middle classes.

Puigróss (1994) sums up the main characteristics of the junctures between the modern educational system and Latin American societies:

• Introduction of the French model of a centralized State-run schooling system during the second half of the 19th century.

• Production of multiple combinations at the juncture between the centralized education system and the specific cultural, political, and educational features of local communities.

• Shaping of citizenry according to a single mold (homogenization) with unequal results: modern education’s goal of homogenizing society by means of public schooling was not met.

• Five groups of countries according to the historical context for the development of their educational systems:

○ Argentina, Uruguay, Chile (albeit to a lesser extent): small indigenous populations in the 19th century coupled with large influx of European immigrants; a wide segment of the population participated in education; socio-economic differences more important than cultural differences.

○ Bolivia, Ecuador, Guatemala, and Peru: large indigenous populations; due to a weak and monolingual State, the peasant and mining masses did not take part in the educational system; failure to impose cultural unity across the nation.

○ Mexico and Costa Rica: early development of an educational system that grew in conjunction with State hegemony, a system that included cultural instruction and the subordination or outright elimination of peasant and/or working class cultures. Brazil: later development of the educational system (not until 1930); difficulty providing widespread access until the 1990s; diverse cultural matrix.

○ Cuba and Nicaragua under the Sandinistas: educational transformation that included all social sectors in the modern educational system; educational and cultural centralization (high-quality training and authoritarian characteristics of the modern educational model). The process in Nicaragua was curtailed.

In terms of the project of homogenization that gave rise to national integration as the distinctive matrix of modern educational systems, there are two main traits that distinguish the configurations of those systems in Latin America from their

SECONDARY EDUCATION POLICIES IN EUROPE AND LATIN AMERICA

29

European counterparts: the precarious connection, until the fifties if not later, between the configuration of the educational system and economic development; a striking disparity within the Latin American region regarding the consolidation and expansion of educational systems.

The first of these traits tended to diminish starting in the fifties pursuant to developmentalist economic policies. This shift enabled the consolidation of educational systems in some Latin American countries and their significant expansion in others, as the massification of educational systems was taking place in central countries. The second trait—intra-regional disparity—persisted as many clusters of the population continued not to have access or to have significantly different access to schooling.

Regional differences were also marked by educational configurations of a hybrid nature that took shape with the massification of educational systems. In the countries of the Southern Cone where the system was modernized early on, primary school education was organized and expanded relatively quickly. The early development of secondary schooling was characterized by rapid expansion in volume and a significant pre-university bent. Thus, while these countries experienced a first great expansion in the middle of the 20th century, that expansion—unlike its European counterpart—took place on the basis of a middle-level educational system with little capacity for structural change; the secondary school’s institutional model proved equally resistant to change (there was no comprehensive reform).

The second great expansion took place in the late eighties. It was partly an attempt to respond to the criticism, formulated initially by some authors in the seventies, that educational practices had ceased to be meaningful with the weakening of the State’s role in the provision of schooling. The criticism also addressed the apparent inability of pedagogical theories to provide the actors in the educational system with guidance (Braslavsky, 1999). In some countries in Latin America, a process of economic and social disintegration that required changes in policies in all areas and spheres of schooling also beset this second moment.

After a lost decade, the educational reforms of the nineties placed the problem of change to the educational system back on the political agenda. Albeit with disparate results and educational segmentation due to the prevailing neo-liberal orientation, the region was, by 2000, more homogenous in terms of the universalization of basic education. Thus, the problem of providing mass-scale access to secondary schooling took center stage in debates on education.

The current situation. At present, the transition between primary and secondary levels of education is fluid. In the vast majority of the countries in the region, the rate of transition from primary to secondary school is high, with an average regional rate of 93.5% (UNESCO, 2011).

Regional heterogeneity is evident in other educational indicators. The percentage of children to receive some schooling ranges from 72% to 97% (SITEAL, 2008, 2010) and the percentage that attends secondary school fluctuates tremendously within countries according to socio-economic level. The regional average for this

F. ACOSTA

30

second rate ranges from 93.6% amongst a country’s wealthiest children to 78.9% amongst its poorest. The countries where the gap between the rich and the poor is the smallest are Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, Chile, and Colombia, with gaps of around 5%. Guatemala and Honduras, meanwhile, are at the other extreme with gaps of over 30 percentage points (UNESCO, 2012).

Lastly, and in keeping with the aforementioned limited capacity for structural change that lay at the origin of the creation of mid-level schooling, relatively extensive access to education does not seem to have altered the internal selection processes at the foundational matrix of the educational system. After the age of thirteen, the proportion of students that drops out of school increases steadily. Generally speaking, those who drop out at that age do so before they have finished primary school or, if they have finished primary school, they have not done so on schedule. After the age of thirteen, dropping out and repeating years become so widespread that almost half of adolescents between the ages of seventeen and eighteen (the age when, theoretically, secondary school should be completed in most Latin American countries) are not in school. Only 32% of all young people between the ages of seventeen and eighteen have completed middle school (SITEAL, 2010).

Another relevant indicator is repetition rate, which brings with it a change in the course of students’ school careers. On the basis of a regional average of 5.9%, this rate did not drop in the last decade. Failure rates are coupled with a high and sustained dropout rate in secondary school. In the eighteen countries with comparable data, the average dropout rate in secondary school dropped by less than two percentage points from 2000, when it stood at 17.8%, to 15.5%, the rate in 2010. In other words, each year one of six students drops out of secondary school in Latin America and the Caribbean. The exception is Bolivia, where the dropout rate plummeted from 41% to 12% over the last decade.

According SITEAL (2013), there are currently five categories of countries in the region in terms of the massification of the educational systems:

• Countries with high rates of enrollment in primary and secondary school: Argentina, Chile, and Peru. The problem for these countries is keeping students in the final years of secondary school.

• Countries with high rates of enrollment in primary school and mid-level rates of enrollment in secondary school: Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Mexico, and Panama. The problem for these countries is late access to secondary education and low completion rates.

• Countries with high rates of enrollment in primary school and low rates of enrollment in secondary school: Paraguay and Uruguay. The problem is falling behind in primary school and dropping out before secondary school is started.

• Countries with mid-levels of enrollment in primary school and secondary school: the Dominican Republic and El Salvador. The problem is falling behind at all levels.

• Countries with mid-levels of enrollment in primary school and low levels of enrollment in secondary school: Honduras, Guatemala, and Nicaragua. The problem is that primary education in these countries is not universal and access and completion

SECONDARY EDUCATION POLICIES IN EUROPE AND LATIN AMERICA

31

of secondary school extremely limited (only one quarter of the population between the ages of twenty and twenty-two has finished secondary school).

A comparison of the situations of these groups of countries at the time the region’s educational systems were configured and at present evidences significant changes, particularly in those countries where that configuration was late and non-inclusive. The comparison of these groups of countries at these two moments attests to the triple challenge facing the region.

First, the challenge of solving historical problems related to access and coverage, infrastructure, and the professionalization of teachers pursuant to the first great expansion. Second, the ability to effectively include all school age children and enable them to complete their school careers, a problem that dates back to the second great expansion and that could be linked to the institutional model. Third, the provision of quality knowledge that enables the development of human resources with skills relevant to the contemporary world, a problem particularly pressing in these times (if their use as an indicator were accepted, the results of PISA would evidence this challenge).

The historical and contemporary heterogeneity of educational systems in Latin America may well be one of the reasons that those systems have failed to formulate major agreements or common goals that would have a clear impact on the educational policy agenda. The Organization of American States’ so-called Education Goals for 2021 call for basic and upper-level secondary school enrollment and completion rates of 40% and 90% respectively.

For that to happen, the studies performed on secondary school education and the experience of educational reform in the recent decades indicate that a policy geared to expanding secondary school must take into account specific historical configurations, the heterogeneity of contexts even within a single country (urban versus rural), and problems specific to the massification of secondary school, chief among them a revision of the institutional model.

COMPARING POLICIES FROM DIFFERENT SCENARIOS

The public policy responses can however be grouped into three broad categories:

• Strategic level responses to address the problem;• Preventive strategies; and• Reintegration strategies to re-engage those who have already dropped out.

There are two categories of programs for secondary schools of interest for our purposes: programs geared to “keeping the school career on track” and programs geared to “re-enrollment.” The former employ the notion of “keeping the school career on track” rather than, for instance, preventing failure because, for reasons outlined in the section of this paper that addresses the historical configuration of secondary school, it envisions the problem to lie in the institutional model and the solution, at least in part, to lie in institutional adjustments that would enable schools to retain, rather than expulse, students. This category encompasses programs geared

F. ACOSTA

32

to accompanying schooling by means of devices that attempt to bridge the gap between the student and the school organization.

The second category includes those programs aimed at promoting the re-enrollment of students in the formal educational system in general and in secondary school in particular by means of alternative spaces connected to existing institutions or by means of the creation of new types of educational options. Table 1 shows the general characteristics of recent programs towards secondary education.

The beginning of this paper addressed the convergences and divergences in the processes of configuration and expansion of educational systems in Latin America and in countries in Europe that experienced early modernization. A common matrix bound to the homogenizing project of the modern school was identified, but differences due to hybrid configurations part and parcel of the region were identified as well. In terms of the expansion of secondary school, that heterogeneity meant that, despite major obstacles to changes in the institutional model, some systems were able to advance more quickly than others.

The expansion of secondary school is currently on the policy agenda of all the countries in the region. As stated above, how the issue is formulated varies insofar as the concern is not only keeping school careers on track (an issued faced by the countries that experienced the massification of education in the sixties) but also ensuring access to and developing of educational options pertinent to the contemporary world.

The heterogeneity of the situations that require attention as well as the diverse histories of local educational configurations is evident in the cases studied. The programs discussed below contain commonalities and differences. The commonalities are related to the problem of access and staying in secondary school. As Finnegan points out (2007), the shared framework of the programs is to ensure at least twelve years of schooling, hence the emphasis on access and the completion of secondary school.

The following characteristics are evident in policies and programs geared to young people (on the basis of Acosta, 2013; Finnegan, 2007):

• Binding secondary school expansion to goals related to the extension of social rights.• Expansion of secondary school in the framework of broadening the right to

education and effectively managing to deliver that right.• Binding non-specialized secondary school to training for the world of work.• Focus on populations whose transition between primary and secondary school tends

to be interrupted, on sectors with high secondary school dropout rates or high rates of older attendance or attendance not in synch with the educational career.

• Flexibilization of the secondary school institutional model (in terms of curriculum and academic regimen).

• Creation of support and aid mechanisms in secondary schools to further enrollment and staying in school.

• Development of and experimentation with alternative educational formats or formats that are complementary to (and capable of being combined with) existing secondary schooling.

• Contextualization of schooling options according to the local environment.

SECONDARY EDUCATION POLICIES IN EUROPE AND LATIN AMERICA

33

Tabl

e 1.

Pro

gram

s und

er c

ompa

risi

on. G

ener

al fe

atur

es

Cat

egor

yC

ase

Kee

ping

scho

ol c

aree

r on

trac

kRe

enr

ollm

ent t

o se

cond

ary

scho

olPe

riod

Targ

et

popu

latio

nAr

eas f

or

inte

rven

tion

Line

s of a

ctio

nPe

riod

Targ

et

popu

latio

nAr

eas f

or

inte

rven

tion

Line

s of a

ctio

n

Prog

ram

a de

refu

erzo

, or

ient

ació

n y

apoy

o PR

OA

(Spa

in)

2005

and

co

ntin

ues

Escu

elas

de

la E

duca

ción

Se

cund

aria

O

blig

ator

ia

(ESO

; be

twee

n 50

0 an

d 60

0 sc

hool

s by

2012

)

*Im

prov

e ac

hiev

emen

t*P

rom

ote

chan

ges

on p

edag

ogic

al

supp

ort

*Inv

olve

fam

ilies

an

d en

viro

nmen

t on

kee

ping

scho

ol

care

er o

n tra

ck

*Sch

ool

supp

ort

prog

ram

at

ESO

*Tut

orin

g an

d su

ppor

t pr

ogra

m fo

r st

uden

ts in

se

cond

ary

educ

atio

nM

icro

-lycé

es

(Fra

nce)

2000

and

co

ntin

ues

Dro

pout

yo

uth

betw

een

16

and

25 w

ith

6 m

onth

s at

2nd

degr

ee

or o

ne y

ear

left

to fi

nish

th

e ba

c

*Geo

grap

hica

l en

clav

e*W

ork

on

soci

aliz

atio

n m

odes

impo

rted

to sc

hool

in

orde

r to

beco

me

stud

ents

*Co

build

ing

of ti

me

and

spac

es fo

r te

ache

rs a

nd

stud

ents

(sal

e co

mm

une,

re

fere

nce)

*Red

uctio

n of

stud

ent

teac

her r

atio

(1

0 to

1)

*Fle

xibl

e tim

e ta

bles

(Con

tinue

d)

F. ACOSTA

34

Cat

egor

yC

ase

Kee

ping

scho

ol c

aree

r on

trac

kRe

enr

ollm

ent t

o se

cond

ary

scho

olPe

riod

Targ

et

popu

latio

nAr

eas f

or

inte

rven

tion

Line

s of a

ctio

nPe

riod

Targ

et

popu

latio

nAr

eas f

or

inte

rven

tion

Line

s of a

ctio

n

Scho

ol

com

plet

ion

prog

ram

SC

P (I

rela

nd)

2002

and

co

ntin

ues

Chi

ldre

n an

d yo

uth

betw

een

4 an

d 18

yea

rs

in ri

sk o

f dr

oppi

ng o

ut.

Con

tract

s w

ith 2

24

seco

ndar

y sc

hool

s

*Kee

p yo

uth

with

in sc

hool

sy

stem

unt

il up

per s

econ

dary

ed

ucat

ion

certi

ficat

e or

eq

uiva

lent

*Brin

g to

geth

er

all a

ctor

s inv

olve

d (f

amily

, sch

ool,

yout

h, c

omm

unity

, le

gal i

nstit

utio

ns)

*Pro

vide

ext

ra

supp

ort t

o pr

even

t ed

ucat

iona

l di

sadv

anta

ge

*Ins

ide

scho

ol

supp

ort

*Afte

r sch

ool

supp

ort

*Out

side

sc

hool

supp

ort

*Vac

atio

n su

ppor

t(C

olla

bora

tive

wor

k, fo

cus o

n dr

op o

uts o

r po

ssib

le d

rop

outs

, bot

tom

-up

)

Stra

tegy

for

redu

cing

sc

hool

dro

p ou

t (H

olla

nd)

2007

and

co

ntin

ues

Reg

ions

and

se

cond

ary

scho

ols

*Dro

pout

pr

even

tion

*Fin

antia

l in

cent

ives

to

scho

ols (

‘no

cure

, no

pay

’)

*Per

sona

l ed

ucat

ion

num

ber

*Dig

ital

abse

nce

porta

l*C

are

mea

sure

s*C

aree

r or

ient

atio

n

Tabl

e 1.

(Con

tinue

d)

SECONDARY EDUCATION POLICIES IN EUROPE AND LATIN AMERICA

35

Cat

egor

yC

ase

Kee

ping

scho

ol c

aree

r on

trac

kRe

enr

ollm

ent t

o se

cond

ary

scho

olPe

riod

Targ

et

popu

latio

nAr

eas f

or

inte

rven

tion

Line

s of a

ctio

nPe

riod

Targ

et

popu

latio

nAr

eas f

or

inte

rven

tion

Line

s of a

ctio

n

Escu

elas

de

Re in

gres

o Ed

R (C

ABA,

Ar

gent

ina)

2004

and

co

ntin

ues

Dro

p ou

t yo

uth

betw

een

16 a

nd 2

0 (8

new

sc

hool

s)

*Edu

catio

nal

incl

usio

n*C

reat

ion

of

new

inst

itutio

nal

offe

r*F

lexi

biliz

atio

n of

inst

itutio

nal

mod

el

Loca

lized

sc

hool

pl

anni

ng w

ith

chan

ges i

n:*C

urric

ulum

*Aca

dem

ic

regi

me

*Org

aniz

atio

nLi

ceo

para

todo

s LP

T (C

hile

)20

00–

2006

Som

e ar

eas

cont

inue

Scho

ols w

ith

stud

ents

at

risk

(424

lic

eum

)

*Im

prov

e ac

hiev

emen

t and

dr

opou

t rat

es*P

rom

ote

peda

gogi

cal

inno

vatio

n an

d in

stitu

tiona

l ca

paci

ties

*Sch

olar

ship

s*A

cade

mic

re

stitu

tion

*Ins

titut

iona

l pl

ans

*Sch

ool-

com

mun

ity

rela

tions

hip

Prog

ram

a au

las

com

unita

rias

PA

C (U

rugu

ay)

2006

and

co

ntin

ues

Dro

p ou

t or

at ri

sk y

outh

be

twee

n 12

an

d 15

*Re

enro

llmen

t at

lice

um*P

rom

ote

peda

gogi

c in

nova

tion

*Cer

tific

ate

for b

asic

cyc

le*S

choo

l life

su

ppor

t*B

ridge

“s

pace

s” to

en

ter l

iceu

m

(Con

tinue

d)

F. ACOSTA

36

Cat

egor

yC

ase

Kee

ping

scho

ol c

aree

r on

trac

kRe

enr

ollm

ent t

o se

cond

ary

scho

olPe

riod

Targ

et

popu

latio

nAr

eas f

or

inte

rven

tion

Line

s of a

ctio

nPe

riod

Targ

et

popu

latio

nAr

eas f

or

inte

rven

tion

Line

s of a

ctio

n

Prog

ram

a Im

puls

o a

la

univ

ersa

lizac

ión

del C

iclo

Bás

ico

PIU

(Uru

guay

)

2008

and

co

ntin

ues

Scho

ols

with

hig

hly

vuln

erab

le

and

at ri

sk

stud

ents

liceo

s)

*Im

prov

e le

arni

ng*I

mpr

ove

grad

e pr

omot

ion

*Tut

ors

*Soc

ial

aid

(sch

ool

mat

eria

ls)

*Psy

chos

ocia

l at

tent

ion

for

stud

ents

Sour

ce: O

rigi

nal t

able

from

pro

gram

s doc

umen

ts

Tabl

e 1.

(Con

tinue

d)

SECONDARY EDUCATION POLICIES IN EUROPE AND LATIN AMERICA

37

• Development of programs based on schools and other local organizations (generation of institutional capacity).

Beyond these common elements, there are certain divergences, many of them linked to a specific educational configuration. A re-categorization of the cases studied would yield four groups:

• Extensive retention modality: Programs that devise strategies to keep all students in secondary schools. Cases: Aapnuval Holland.

• Segmented retention modality: Programs that devise strategies geared to supporting vulnerable groups, specifically to keep them in secondary schools. Cases: PIU, LPT, PROA, SCP.

• Re-enrollment in/adaptation of the non-specialized secondary school: Programs that facilitate re-enrollment in secondary school by “adapting” the educational device. Cases: PAC, Micro Lycées.

• Re-enrollment in the educational system: Programs that create institutional alternatives within the formal educational system. Case: EdR.

As indicated by Terigi (2012), these four groups fall into two categories: those that entail extensive policies and those that involve intensive policies for the expansion of secondary school and changes or adjustments to the institutional model. As, once again, Terigi points out, the extensive policies (programs like PMI) can be readily generalized but they do not alter fundamentally the schooling device. What these policies aim to do, rather, is to perfect the device in order to keep students in school and their educational careers on track.

Due to their small scale, intensive policies (in this case, programs like CESAJ, PAC, and EdR) allow for greater experimentation and innovation in changes to the academic regimen, in support and follow-up modalities, and in curriculum. These policies are aimed at altering—in the sense of rendering more flexible—the schooling device to work around the issues at the crux of problems like falling behind and dropping out.

If the policy categories are grouped not only according to type of policy (that is, extensive or intensive) but also according to approach to change of the institutional model (perfecting it or altering it), we would find at one extreme extensive programs geared to student retention and, at the other, programs that propose an alternative modality; the programs in the first group do not propose fundamental change to the institutional device but, as we move to the other extreme, that concern grows more central.

The table below (Table 2) exemplifies the aforementioned program types and combinations thereof, with one case per group and one per policy type. The alternative modality is not included given that, by definition, it cannot form part of the formal educational system:

The experiences analysed attest to different ways of approaching the problem of expanding secondary school and its institutional model, from the perfecting of

F. ACOSTA

38

Tabl

e 2.

Pro

gram

s bet

wee

n in

tens

ive

and

exte

nsiv

e po

licie

s

Polic

y ty

peEx

tens

ive

Inte

nsiv

e

Effe

ct o

n in

stitu

tiona

l m

odel

Feat

ures

Exte

nsiv

e re

tent

ion

mod

ality

(Aap

nuva

l, H

olla

nd)

Segm

ente

d re

tent

ion

mod

ality

(PIU

-Uru

guay

, LP

T- C

hile

, PRO

A-Sp

ain,

SC

P-Ir

elan

d)

Re e

nrol

lmen

t by

adap

ting

educ

atio

nal d

evic

e (P

AC-

Uru

guay

, Mic

ro ly

cée-

Fran

ce)

Re e

nrol

lmen

t in

the

educ

atio

nal s

yste

m b

y al

teri

ng e

duca

tiona

l dev

ice

(EdR

-CAB

A, A

rgen

tina)

Aim

Impr

ove

scho

ol d

evic

e ef

ficie

ncy

Impr

ove

scho

ol d

evic

e ef

ficie

ncy

tow

ards

at r

isk

stud

ents

Cha

nge

scho

ol d

evic

es

to a

ssur

e re

enr

olm

ent o

r ce

rtific

atio

n

Cha

nge

scho

ol d

evic

es b

y cr

eatin

g an

alte

rnat

ive

offe

r

Stra

tegi

es*S

tude

nts f

ollo

w u

p by

m

eans

of d

ata

base

*Sch

olar

ship

s*R

emed

ial s

uppo

rt pr

ogra

ms

*Tut

orin

g*F

amily

and

com

mun

ity

bond

ing

with

scho

ols

*Brid

ge sp

aces

*Sm

alle

r ins

titut

ions

and

cl

asse

s*W

ork

on m

odes

of

soci

aliz

atio

n an

d sc

hool

so

cial

izat

ion

*Cha

nges

on

acad

emic

re

gim

es

*Cha

nges

on

acad

emic

re

gim

es*N

on g

radu

ated

*Per

sona

l tra

ject

orie

s*T

utor

ing

Impl

emen

tatio

n an

d re

sour

ces

Foca

lised

Foca

lised

Foca

lised

Foca

lised

Sour

ce: O

rigi

nal t

able

SECONDARY EDUCATION POLICIES IN EUROPE AND LATIN AMERICA

39

the modern format of the schooling device to its total (or near total) alteration. A consideration of the commonalities of the two approaches yields a list of aspects pertinent to conceiving policies aimed at “modifying” the institutional model:

• General modifications: ○ Appointing teachers to work outside the strict classroom context (teachers

who work a certain number of hours for the institution as a whole, teachers or counselors who provide extra-scholastic support or make-up classes, advisors (a figure that already exists));

○ Appointing school staff dedicated to effecting change in the school or institutional culture (“agents of change”);

○ Assembling teams of technicians from the federal and/or local government geared to counseling, supporting, and working with actors at schools;

○ Overall review of the curriculum to design alternative schooling career options and parallel programs that do not fail to provide shared knowledge.

• Specific modifications: ○ Greater flexibility of academic devices: course hours, forms of attendance,

curriculum options, making up previous courses while attending the classes that correspond to the next year’s level;

○ Offering courses and programs that capture students’ interest; ○ Allocation of funds for developing extra-curricular programs geared to

retaining students at risk of dropping out; ○ Focus on:

– Keeping the school career on track (preventing students from disengaging);– Key moments in the educational career, especially the transition between

primary and secondary school and between secondary school and later study or employment options (preventing school from becoming irrelevant to a student’s greater project).

CLOSING REMARKS

The historical and comparative approach presented at the beginning of this chapter provided a basis for comparing recent programs geared towards secondary education in different regions. The basic problem was formulated in terms of the tension between expansion and institutional model. The analysis of the above mentioned programs, together with the historical matrix underlying the configuration and expansion of secondary education offer at least four cutting cross issues to be considered for future policies.

Effects on Social and Pedagogical Segmentation

Educational systems take shape around two dynamics: systematization and segmentation (Viñao, p. 40). As institutions began to work in concert to configure

F. ACOSTA

40

educational levels, those geared to secondary instruction grew more diverse. With the creation of parallel paths of schooling according to the future occupation of the student and his or her social background, secondary schools have, historically, been marked by segmentation. While mandatory secondary schooling has contributed to certain commonalities at that level, the production of circuits of schooling continues to increase fragmentation in the educational system, albeit by other means. The cases analysed are not immune to that risk, one faced by all policies geared to secondary education. There is also a risk of socio-economic segmentation in policies based on the identification of students in contexts of social and educational vulnerability, policies that propose alternatives aimed specifically at those groups (LPT and EdR). One undesired effect of policy interventions might be creating what are, in effect, “schools for the poor.” The formulation of curricular alternatives (extra-curricular support, making up credits, efforts to even out educational levels) geared to students with academic difficulties can also present a risk of educational segmentation. As the case studies indicate, teachers often associate those alternatives with students’ background, assuming that the poorest students are the ones who participate in those alternatives. This is presented here not as inevitable, but as a possible effect to be avoided.

Effects of Focalization: New Stigmatization

Due to the aforementioned risk, focalized policies could produce new labels that can become stigmas. And, unlike the earlier case where a school or system might be subjected to the risk, in this case the student would be the one burdened by a label. Scholarship programs, for instance, run this risk since certain students are identified as needy. There is a tendency to forget that behind that scholarship there is a subject trying to survive in adverse conditions. Any educational alternative that distinguishes between groups (by school or within a school) also produces stigmas, and secondary schools have a particularly long history with a dynamic of selecting and relocating students according to “merit.” The cases analysed must find a way of offsetting this risk of the modern school. Certain policies identify a type of subject and label that subject (“not bright enough”). It can be very difficult for the student to break out of that circle. Once again, this is a possible effect that must be taken into account in focalized policies. It is essential, then, to ask the question “what new practice and what new stigma may be produced?”

Effects on the Teacher’s Work: Overburdening and New Demands

The cases analysed reflect a diagnosis and a precise goal, as well as an array of strategies to deal with the problems detected. Most of those strategies involve the work of teachers and, hence, may entail overburdening them as they have to deploy these new strategies in addition to performing their daily work. Furthermore, some of these policies (LPT, EdR) revolve around pedagogical innovation to obtain better results with students that tend to fail. This means, as analysed in the case descriptions,

SECONDARY EDUCATION POLICIES IN EUROPE AND LATIN AMERICA

41

that teachers must learn new ways to tackle their work. Significantly, overburdening is a result of a greater range of tasks and of new types of tasks, and this second factor affects one of the cores of teacher training, mainly how, on a practical level, teachers make decisions when they are actually engaged in teaching. As a result, policies of this sort must be accompanied by appropriate support mechanisms and technical aid. Most of the cases analysed address this issue. Crucial is awareness of the demand: it is not a question of requesting more dedication on the part of teachers but, rather, of teaching differently which requires appropriate strategies.

Effects on Pedagogical Work: Educational Limitations of the Remedial Strategy

As discussed, one common issue addressed by all the cases discussed is reinforcement of basic skill areas (language and math). From the perspective of educational policies, a focus on these areas may serve to reinforce the idea of a basic mandatory education at the cost of neglecting the integral formation of the subject. There is a risk that these policies be reduced to a remedial strategy that limits the potential of the educational project. It is true that, in terms of basic knowledge, secondary schools today play the role that was played by primary schools in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It is equally true, though, that for most of the young people who attend secondary school in Latin America, that institution constitutes their only contact with literary culture and with cultural worlds with which they would otherwise have no experience. It is crucial, then, that efforts to conceive of policies that fortify truly essential basic knowledge do not neglect other desirable aspects of the secondary school experience.

NOTE

1 In this work, the concept of institutional model encompasses organizational form (the grammar of schooling), pedagogical form (locating that grammar in a given academic regimen), and the institutionalization of secondary school as historical form (decisive institutions in the framework of process of educational systematization). See Acosta (2013).

REFERENCES

Acosta, F. (2011a). La educación secundaria en foco: análisis de políticas de inclusión en Argentina, Canadá, Chile y España. Buenos Aires: IIPE UNESCO Buenos Aires.

Acosta, F. (2011b). Escuela secundaria y sistemas educativos modernos: análisis histórico comparado de la dinámica de configuración y expansión en países centrales y en la Argentina. HISTEDBR, 42, 3–13.

Acosta, F. (2013). Trabajo analítico (multi país) sobre experiencias de cambio en la escuela secundaria con foco en políticas destinadas a la reinserción y permanencia de los jóvenes en la escuela en América Latina (Cono Sur). Informe de consultoría para OEI/EUROsociAL.

Anderson, R. (2004). The idea of secondary schooling in nineteen-century Europe. Paedagogica Historica, XL (1 & 2), 93–106.

Braslavsky, C. (1999). Re haciendo escuelas. Hacia un nuevo paradigma en la educción latinoamericana. Buenos Aires: Santillana/Convenio Andrés Bello.

F. ACOSTA

42

Caruso, M., & Tenorth, H. (2011). Introducción: conceptualizar e historizar la internacionalización y la globalización en el campo educativo. In M. Caruso & H. Tenorth (Ed.), Internacionalización. Políticas educativas y reflexión pedagógica en un medio global (pp. 13–35). Buenos Aires: Granica.

European Commission/ Directorate-General for Education and Culture. (2012, March 1–2). Reducing early school leaving: Efficient and effective policies in Europe. Conference Report. Brussels.

Finnegan, F. (2007). Tendencias recientes en políticas y programas que apuntan a la finalización de la escolaridad secundaria en América Latina. Tendencias en foco, 3. Red Etis. Retrieved from http://www.redetis.iipe.unesco.org.

Kaelbe, H. (2011). Hacia una historia social europea de la educación. In M. Caruso & H. E. Tenorth (Eds.), Internacionalización. Políticas educativas y reflexión pedagógica en un medio global (pp. 157–182). Buenos Aires: Ediciones Granica.

Mueller, F. (1992). El proceso de sistematización: el caso de la educación secundaria en Alemania. In D. Mueller, F. Ringer, & B. Simon (Eds.), El desarrollo del sistema educativo moderno. Cambio estructural y reproducción social 1870–1920 (pp. 37–86). Madrid: Ministerio de Trabajo y Seguridad.

Müller, D., Simon, B., & Ringer, F. K. (Eds.). (1992). El desarrollo del sistema educativo moderno: cambio estructural y reproducción social 1870–1920 (pp. 161–194). Madrid: Ministerio de Trabajo y Seguridad.

Nehala, A. M., & Hawley, J. (2011). La reducción del abandono escolar prematuro en la UE. Estudio. Resumen. Documento solicitado por la Comisión de Cultura y Educación del Parlamento Europeo.

OECD. (2011). Education at a glance 2011: OECD indicators. Retrieved from http://www.oecd.org/education/skills-beyond-school/48642586.pdf

OECD. (2013). Education at a glance 2013: OECD indicators. Paris: OECD.Ossenbach, G. (1997). Las transformaciones del Estado y la Educación Pública en América Latina en los

siglos XIX y XX. In A. Martínez Boom & M. Narodowski (Eds.), Escuela, historia y poder. Miradas desde América Latina (pp. 121–148). Buenos Aires: Ediciones Novedades Educativas.

Puiggrós, A. (1994). Imaginación y crisis en la educación latinoamericana. Buenos Aires: Aique.Savoie, P. H., Brutter, A., & Frijoff, W. (2004). Secondary education: Institutional, cultural and social

history. Paedagogica Historica, XL(1 & 2), 9–14.Schneider, R. (1982). El desarrollo de la educación en los estados de Europa occidental 1870–1975.

Revista de Sociología. Traducción de Sandra Carreras para Cátedra de Historia General de la Educación, UBA.

Schriewer, J. (2002). Educación comparada: un gran programa ante nuevos desafíos. In J. Schriewer (Ed.), Formación del discurso en la educación comparada (pp. 13–40). Barcelona: Pomares-Corredor.

Schriewer, J. (2010). Comparación y explicación entre causalidad y compeljidad. In J. Schriewer & H. Kaelbe (Eds.), La comparación en las ciencias sociales e históricas. Un debate interdisciplinar (pp. 17–62). Barcelona: Octaedro/ICE-UB.

Sistema de Información de Tendencias Educativas en América Latina/Organización de Estados Iberoamericanos (SITEAL). (2008). La escuela y los adolescentes. Informe sobre tendencias sociales y educativas en América Latina. Retrieved from http://www.siteal.iipe-oei.org/informe/227/informe-2008

Sistema de Información de Tendencias Educativas en América Latina/Organización de Estados Iberoamericanos (SITEAL). (2010). Metas educativas 2021: Desafíos y oportunidades. Retrieved from http://www.siteal.iipe-oei.org/informe/227/informe-2008

Sistema de Información de Tendencias Educativas en América Latina/Organización de Estados Iberoamericanos (SITEAL). (2013). 02 Resumen estadístico comentado. Escolarización en América Latina 2000–2010. Retrieved from www.siteal.iipe-oei.org

Sobe, N. W., & Kowalczyk, J. (2012). The problem of context in comparative educational research. ECPS Journal, 6, 51–74.

Steedman, H. (1992). Instituciones determinantes: las “endowed grammar schools” y la sitematización de la educación secundaria inglesa. In D. Müller, B. Simon, & F. K. Ringer (Eds.), El desarrollo del sistema educativo moderno: cambio estructural y reproducción social 1870–1920 (pp. 161–194). Madrid: Ministerio de Trabajo y Seguridad.

SECONDARY EDUCATION POLICIES IN EUROPE AND LATIN AMERICA

43

Terigi, F. (2012). La escolarización secundaria de adolescentes y jóvenes en América Latina. Aportes para el análisis de la situación y la deliberación de políticas. Eurosocial/OEI.

UNESCO. (2011). Compendio mundial de la educación 2011. Canadá: Instituto de estadísticas de UNESCO.

UNESCO. (2012). Situación Educativa de América Latina y el Caribe, Hacia una educación para todos 2015. Santiago: UNESCO. Retrieved from http://www.orealc.cl/

Viñao, A. (2002). Sistemas educativos, culturas escolares y reformas. Madrid: Morata.Weiler, H. (1998). Por qué fracasan las reformas: política educativa en Francia y en la República Federal

Alemana. Revista Estudios del curriculum, 1(2), 54–76.Wiborg, S. (2009). Education and social integration. Comprehensive schooling in Europe. New York,

NY: Palgrave MacMillan.

Felicitas AcostaInstituto del Desarrollo HumanoUniversidad Nacional de General Sarmiento (UNGS, Argentina)

F. Acosta & S. Nogueira (Eds.), Rethinking Public Education Systems in the 21st Century Scenario, 45–57. © 2017 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

ADRIANA BAUER AND SANDRA ZÁKIA SOUSA

4. TEACHER EVALUATION

Contributions from Literature and Propositions in America’s Countries

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

In this section, the theoretical framework used to support the analysis is presented. First, it will be outlined the current context for teacher evaluation proposition. Then, dimensions on which fall the teaching evaluation approaches nowadays are highlighted. The section ends with the presentation of studies that were conducted on teacher evaluation policies, which information based the assumptions made in this paper.

The Context for Teacher Evaluation Approaches Expansion

Educational policies recently in progress consider teacher evaluation one of its pillars, regarding teachers as one of the main determinants for increasing quality in education. This understanding contributes to, among other initiatives, the creation of procedures for measuring teacher performance, based on competencies established to determine a desirable professional profile. Furthermore, considering the evaluation results, policymakers may offer different incentives to teachers, considering their merit.

In recent years, the teachers and the quality of teaching practice became the focus of a broad debate on education policies. In 2002, the OECD initiated a major project on education policies, which eventually involved 25 countries and whose results were published in a volume entitled Teachers Matter (OECD, 2005). The academic debate on professionalism, standards of teaching and the impact of globalization on teaching happens at the international level as shown by the recent Handbook of Teacher Education, Townsend and Bates (2007). (Connell, 2010, p. 165)

In this movement, different evaluation actions are proposed worldwide, ranging from initial education to the teacher career development. But what is the reason underlying the expansion of teacher evaluation models? Darling-Hammond argues that in the last thirty years, reform movement focused on improving education, including teacher evaluation on the policy agenda:

A. BAUER & S. Z. SOUSA

46

Two major concepts characterize the educational reform movement that has gathered momentum throughout the 1980s and promises to extend well into the 1990s. Teacher professionalism and school restructuring are the major watchwords used to describe efforts to reform teaching and schooling so that they will focus more directly on learner’s needs. The many initiatives launched during this reform movement seek to improve education by recruiting, preparing, and retaining competent teachers and by better utilizing their knowledge and talents over the course of a reshaped career. These initiatives rely on teacher evaluation for a wide variety of purposes, including selection, training, improvement, and advancement. They often envision broader roles for teachers in evaluation and for evaluation in schools. As schools are asked to define their own improvement strategies, agendas for individual evaluation and organizational renewal are increasingly intertwined. (Darling-Hammond, 1990, p. 17)

In other study, the author points out that such movement differs from the 1970s’ reforms, which focused on the class size reduction, curriculum renewal, school management improvement, among other strategies that were not directly aimed at teachers. To discuss the importance of this new focus of educational policies, Darling-Hammond states that “there are no policies to improve schools if the people who work there do not have the knowledge and skills they need” (Darling-Hammond, 2010, p. 198).

The pillars of recent reforms, which began in developed countries and expanded to developing ones, have focused on school renovation and teacher assessment, including strategies for recruitment, selection and retention of teachers in the educational policy agenda, as well as the need for enhancing teacher training and attainment of information, which allows for the improvement of teacher practices. While portraying the American context, Darling-Hammond points out that:

At least 46 states have adopted teacher-competency tests, such as the National Teacher Examinations, as a prerequisite for teacher certification; 25 have required tests for admission to teacher-education programs. Most states have replaced lifetime teaching certificates with requirements for continuing licensure. Some have adopted comprehensive programs that include higher admission standards for colleges of education; competency tests force certification and recertification, evaluation of performance, and continuing teacher education. (Darling-Hammond, 1990, p. 18)

Similarly to Darling-Hammond, Stronge (n/d. p. 2) relates the need for teacher evaluation to the aim of improving teaching and student learning, which is the ultimate goal of education. According to this author, educational reforms have neglected teacher evaluation, forgetting they are the actual implementers of school reform. Therefore, a well-elaborated program is not sufficient to ensure the success of such reform.

TEACHER EVALUATION

47

[...] So why does teacher evaluation matter? Because regardless of how well a program is designed, it is only as effective as the people who implement it (Stronge, 1993). Thus, a conceptually sound, well designed, and properly implemented evaluation system for teachers is an important – indeed, essential – component of an effective school. (Stronge, n.d, 1–2)

We conclude, based on the authors’ arguments, that to disregard teachers in educational reform is a step towards failure, since teachers are the actors who will materialize the reform itself in schools.

The definition of new curricula, the creation of new teaching techniques and school management approaches, as well as the determination of goals to be achieved through education, for instance, do not constitute sufficient steps to generate the expected results if the teachers are not prepared to revise their practice in accordance with what is stipulated by those responsible for educational reforms. The assumption here is that the teachers should embody what is proposed in the curriculum documents, in textbooks and teaching manuals through their classroom practice, becoming key players in the learning process. According to this view, educational policies focused on school management, which put aside teachers’ role in the learning process, would not be sufficient to guarantee the effectiveness of teaching.

It is in this context, which highlights the importance of teachers in promoting improvements in teaching and learning, that teacher evaluation approaches, covering different aspects, are proposed.

However, although there is a constant defense of teacher evaluation as a promoter of better teaching and of the development of these professionals, the academic literature also points out limits of such initiatives to achieve these objectives.

Stronge, for example, recognizes that the teachers’ evaluation models, which have been formulated, may not contribute to support and improve the quality of education. The author argues that often these evaluations are used as a mere formality on the part of those who participate in it.

Similarly, Popham, while analyzing the teachers’ evaluation initiatives existing in the United States of America context, pointed out, in 1983, the ineffectiveness of teacher evaluation systems that, despite being discussed since the early twentieth century, would be a bureaucratic activity and a ritual meaningless held that the education system. (Bauer, 2013)

Huver and Cadet (2012) argue that the teacher evaluation contrasts with a discourse of reflexivity, usually present on teacher training models. In this sense, the academic discourse which defends autonomous professionals, which reflect on their practice to transform it, would be incompatible with the current forms of teachers’ assessment present in educational systems, leading to conforming practices according to standards previously established, particularly if there are incentives or bonuses related to the evaluation outcome.

A. BAUER & S. Z. SOUSA

48

Teacher Evaluation Strands

According to its starting point, the teacher evaluation strands can be classified as: initial education evaluation, evaluation for career admission and evaluation to career development. These strands are associated with specific analysis foci, and with their respective evaluation indicators, systematized on Table 1.

The strands and dimensions listed here illustrate features usually present in the literature about teacher evaluation (see Barreira & Rebelo, 2008; Darling-Hammond, 1997; Day, 1993; Duke & Stiggs, 1997; Gatti, 2011; Iwanicki, 1997; Torrecilla, 2007).

It should be noted that, regardless of the aspects of teacher evaluation being analyzed, two purposes are either associated with these strands or apply to them: formative and summative (Barreira & Rebelo, 2008; Barret, 1986; Day, 1993; Scriven, 1967). Formative evaluation aims at personal development and professional improvement, based on understanding the factors and values which influence the teacher action. Summative evaluation is used for classification and selection,

Table 1. Strands, dimensions and indicators for teacher evaluation

Strands Dimensions(what to evaluate)

Indicators

Beginning teacher education

Subject knowledge and pedagogical knowledge

Graduates’ assessment (final course testing)

Academic performances Information about the students’ performance in the course

Career admission Training and experience Licenses and TitlesProfessional activities

Subject knowledge and pedagogical knowledge

Performance on knowledge and skills test

Career development Training and experience Licenses / TitlesWorking timeProfessional activities

Subject knowledge and pedagogical knowledge

Performance on knowledge and skills test

Performance Institutional bondProfessional development and updating on continuing education

Professional performanceStudent’s performance Performance on knowledge and

skills test

TEACHER EVALUATION

49

focusing on results, rather than concerning itself with the factors that conditioned or influenced those results.

“Different possibilities of results use, which can serve both to teachers to perceived themselves more recognized and valued in their practice, and for classificatory and selection purposes” (Sousa, 2010, p. 1) can be derived from the purposes of evaluation. The relationships that teachers establish with the evaluation process are conditioned by the use that is made of their results, which also determines the climate in which the evaluation process is developed: trust and cooperation or, in opposition, suspicion and competition.

According to academic literature, different goals are pointed out to teacher evaluation, not necessarily mutually exclusive (Barreira & Rebelo, 2008; Barret, 1986; Day, 1993; Gatti, 2011; Milanowski, Heneman III, & Kimball, 2011). Among them, it is common to mention that teacher evaluation should serve:

• for the professional development;• for teaching improvement;• to improve proposals and practices on the school;• to diagnose teacher training needs;• to support decisions about increasing salary;• to increase accountability and to set incentive policies to teachers;• for career admission and advancement;• for the resolution of special cases, when the process is not systematic, for example,

for the selection of teachers applying for professional advancement leave.

Interviews with teachers, tests based on competencies, skills and knowledge, classroom observation, and student test results can be used, among others, as evaluation procedures.

In a study which characterized the structure and operation of career systems and teacher evaluation models in American and European countries, Torrecilla (2007) highlights common approaches to evaluation procedures:

• External evaluation combined with self-evaluation;• External evaluation using performance tests of subject knowledge and pedagogical

knowledge;• External evaluation conducted by the hierarchical superior;• Surveys with teachers and hierarchical supervisors.

A special mention should be made on the use of results obtained from student external evaluations as a main criterion for teacher evaluation, considering that this practice has recently been implemented in Brazil.

The idea of using student results on achievement tests to evaluate teachers is not new. Much criticism regarding that idea can be found in American literature already in the 1950s and it is possible to observe an increase of literature on that topic in the 1980’s.

Although the discussion seems to be renewed with the emergence of new public management logic in the educational field, it is possible to pinpoint some

A. BAUER & S. Z. SOUSA

50

agreements and disagreements among scholars, policy-makers and those who are researching this subject. To support the discussion, it is necessary to understand what the meaning is and the main questions related to teacher bonus programs and school award policies, and what was already produced regarding the relationship between teacher performance and student outcomes.

According to Harvey-Beavis (2003), three main models of performance-based reward programs are more commonly discussed in the literature: “merit-pay”, “knowledge and skill-based” and “school-based compensation”, defined by him as follow:

The first model is ‘merit-pay’, which generally involves individual pecuniary awards based on student performance, and classroom observation (McCollum, 2001). The second model is ‘knowledge and skill-based’ compensation, which generally involves individual pecuniary rewards for acquired qualifications and demonstrated knowledge and skills, which are believed to increase student performance (Odden, 2000b). Knowledge and skill-based pay differs from merit-pay because it provides clear guidelines on what is being evaluated (Odden & Kelley, 2002). The knowledge and skills evaluated are, it is argued, linked to teacher proficiency, meaning knowledge and skill-based pay increases teachers’ ability (Odden & Kelley, 2002). The third model is school-based compensation, which generally involves group-based pecuniary rewards, typically based on student performance. (p. 4)

Initiatives that take these aspects into account express the assumption that the student results on performance tests reflect the quality of teachers work, disregarding other factors that influence those results, such as school conditions and its context, as well as their student body characteristics. There is, however, agreement in literature on the assertion that teacher training and work make a difference in terms of increasing student learning; but the degree of this relationship needs to be further investigated. What is the exact correspondence between teacher training/performance and student learning? (Bauer, 2012)

Another controversial aspect is the combination of incentives, monetary or otherwise, with evaluation results. It is what Pedro Ravela (2003) calls the use of evaluation results with “strong effects” (high stakes), i.e. the use of results as a mechanism for applying incentives and sanctions. This strategy is based on the need for mobilizing school professionals and students to seek better performance on tests (Sousa, 2008).

The teacher evaluation initiatives which have been proposed in the last years in different contexts have motivated studies on evaluation design and effects, some within a comparative perspective, such as those conducted by Isoré (2009), Schulmeyer (2002) and Torrecilla (2007). These studies illustrate the expansion of teacher evaluation models as part of education policies implemented in multiple contexts, highlighting specific approaches and evaluation purposes prevailing in different countries.

TEACHER EVALUATION

51

EXISTING INITIATIVES IN COUNTRIES OF THE AMERICAS

Elements that allow for characterizing and comparing current teacher evaluation initiatives in countries of the Americas are briefly presented here, with emphasis given to their purposes and procedures. This study is based on other teacher evaluation researches provided by literature, focusing especially on the contributions of Day (1993), Darling-Hammond (1997), Torrecilla (2007) e Isoré (2009). The highlighted aspects of this analysis were: evaluation purposes according to the each government; different foci of teacher evaluation given to the teacher career phases; trends of analyzed proposals.

The analyzed dimensions were the following: purposes/phases/and procedures. The study covered 8 countries: Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, USA, and Mexico. In six countries, we analyzed teacher evaluation proposals nationwide, but in Canada we considered the Ontario Province only and in United States we analyzed only Texas. A brief view of teacher evaluation proposals can be seen on Table 2.

According to Table 2, one can observe there are few approaches in which there is a clear delineation of what is a good teacher and what defines a good education.

Chile and Ontario have proposals that exemplify systems seeking to establish clear guidelines of what is expected of teachers and teaching. In other examples, what is observed is the definition of criteria and evaluation indicators often

Table 2. Teacher evaluation proposals in some countries

Country What has been evaluated Goals

Bolivia No information was found Stimulate the teacher work;Contribute to improving the quality of education;Provide career progression;Determine incentives (Bono de Actualización Docente).

Brazil National Competition Test for Admission to Teaching Career

Subsidize the states and municipalities in conducting selection of teachers.

Canada (Ontario) (1)New teachers

The assessed competencies reflect the standards defined in the Teachers’ Standards of Practice for the Teaching Profession. The new teachers are evaluated through the following dimensions: commitment to students and their learning, professional knowledge and professional practice.

Assess the skills, knowledge and attitudes of new teachers;Identify strengths and areas for development;Plan strategies for improvement.

A. BAUER & S. Z. SOUSA

52

Country What has been evaluated Goals

Canada – Ontario (2)Expert Teachers

The 16 competencies assessed reflect the standards set in Teachers’ Standards of Practice for the Teaching Profession. The dimensions assessed are: commitment to students and student learning, professional knowledge, professional practice, leadership in communities of learning and continuous professional learning.

Give directions for teacher development;Provide meaningful evaluations to encourage professional learning and growth;Identify opportunities for additional support where necessary.

Chile The evaluation is based on the Framework for Good Teaching, which determines various aspects and expected teachers’ capabilities in classroom (behaviors, expectations regarding the development of tasks and other work-related activities). The aspects evaluated are: preparation for teaching, creating a positive environment in the classroom, effective teaching for all students, professional responsibilities.

Determine salary increments;Encourage professional development.

Colombia There is no frame of theoretical reference systematized. However, the legislation establishes 14 performance aspects that should be valued: the construction and development of the Institutional Educational Project, compliance with standards and educational policies, knowledge about the students, pedagogical reasoning, planning work, the pedagogical strategies, strategies for participation, evaluation and improvement, innovation, commitment to institutional life, interpersonal relationships, conflict mediation, teamwork and leadership.

Determine salary increments;Encourage personal development;Determine career progression;Stimulate institutional improvement.

(Continued)

Table 2. (Continued)

TEACHER EVALUATION

53

Country What has been evaluated Goals

Cuba The basis of the evaluation are the results of the work, the preparation for its development, the personal characteristics of teachers and the compliance of behavior´s standards and of pedagogical and professional ethics principles.

Improve quality of teachers work;Contribute to teacher professional development;Subsidize the individual training plan preparation;Determine salary increment based on performance.

United States (Texas)

For evaluating teachers, criteria in eight domains are used: active and successful student participation in the learning process; learner-centered teaching; evaluation and feedback on student progress; management of student discipline, teaching strategies, time and materials; professional communication; professional development; compliance with schools policies, procedures and operational requirements and improving the academic performance of all students.

Ensure that each educator has the professional knowledge and prerequisites necessary for entry into the Texas education system;Measure knowledge of candidates in relation to established criteria (TExES);Allow the renewal of employment (Excet)

Source: Bauer (2013, pp. 56–63)

detached from a more systematic reference of what is desirable to teachers and their classroom practice characteristics.

Among countries that define patterns or a conceptual framework from which evaluative criteria is defined, there is a tendency for the use of three distinct aspects: (1) the results obtained by students on standardized tests, associated or not to the analysis information about the school flow, (2) the dimensions of teaching (such as lesson planning, classroom management, etc.) and (3) more general skills of the teacher regarding their daily tasks (such as commitment to student learning, commitment to the educational project of the school, preoccupation with own continuing education, etc.).

The teacher evaluation falls upon different foci defined by purposes and career phases: initial education, career admission, and career development. It is important to note that it is common for a country to enunciate more than one purpose (summative or formative or both) to justify a teacher evaluation initiative. The most emphasized purpose is the career development associated with bonus or salary differentiations, as can be seen in Table 3.

Table 2. (Continued)

A. BAUER & S. Z. SOUSA

54

For instance, in Brazil, as in other countries, more state legislations tend to give bonuses to teachers or schools, according to their merit. Teacher merit is usually understood as the improvement of student results in standardized assessments. Therefore, the usage of student as well as teacher assessment results has become more frequently applied in order to award teachers paying pecuniary bonuses to them. It is important to highlight that the bonuses are not incorporated to teacher salaries.

On the proposals that associate incentives to student or teacher’s assessment results, are few available studies that attempt to analyze its effects; so, there is no evidence to conclude about its impacts. For Alejandro Morduchowicz (2003, p. 38), proposals of this nature are based on the criticism of the traditional salary structures and teaching career, and “do not stimulate [teachers work], promote egalitarianism and discouraged, by omission, the teaching initiative.”

Casassus (1997), when pondering about the adoption of initiatives, which associate evaluation results to incentives as a tool of state policy, alert to its possible effects, as diminish the dignity of teachers, undermining their intrinsic motivation, stiffen curricula and destroy links between teachers and students.

Warnings about the risks of assimilation of the concept of quasi-market in educational administration, and in particular, in the teaching profession management, are not rare in the literature, and they stress that educational and social inequalities may be intensified.

Some countries take a broader perspective when considering evaluation procedures, by associating institutional evaluation, school self-evaluation and personnel evaluation. In these cases, teacher performance is taken into account,

Table 3. Teacher evaluation purposes per country

Teacher selection and hiring

Teacher career progression

Bonus upon teacher evaluation

Teacher education support

BoliviaBrazil

Canada (Ontario)Chile

Colombia

Cuba

Mexico

USA (Texas)

Source: Original table based on Schulmeyer (2002), Torrecilla (2006) and Isoré (2009)

TEACHER EVALUATION

55

and the assessment of other players related to school management, such as schools principals, is incorporated to the evaluation. This is the case of Chile and Colombia. In that context, the evaluation can be potentially combined with their professional development and appreciation, which would also be defined within the institution, in a participatory approach.

The literature contributions made in this paper demonstrate that teacher assessment focuses at different times in the career, with several purposes. The purposes on which teacher’s evaluation serve must certainly be examined in the light of the nature of teachers work, taking into account the context of its realization.

Therefore, it is appropriate to cite Goe, Bell and Little (2009) who observe that teacher effectiveness need to consider different contexts: “Teaching contexts differ greatly across subjects, grades, intentional groupings of students in schools, and subgroups of students and between schools with different student populations and local circumstances” (p. 15). The teaching practice is interactive by nature, with people and factors that continually condition and is conditioned by it. Therefore, it is needed to consider these various conditioning factors, which go beyond personal characteristics and individual professionals. Thus, it is necessary that a teacher evaluation proposal contemplates the school context factors and school extra that relate directly or indirectly with the performance of teachers.

SOME CONSIDERATIONS ABOUT TEACHER EVALUATION

The contributions in this text allow illustrate approaches made by eight American countries to teacher evaluation, highlighting their purposes and procedures, systematized from the contributions of the teacher evaluation literature.

After analyzing the literature and official documents accessed by internet, some trends can be observed regarding the evaluation processes currently taking place in the countries selected, as summarized below:

• Performance analysis and proficiency measures have been aggregated to traditional criteria considered in career development, such as years of experience and education;

• The legalization of teacher evaluation within the federal government proposals tends to be generic, leaving the states, provinces, and districts responsible for doing specifications onto the law;

• The proposals of teacher evaluation combine formative and summative purposes;• The evaluation methodologies combine different procedures, such as: document

analysis, teacher assessment throughout teacher careers, practice observations, and others;

• The usage of student test results to increase salaries and career progression is very common, focusing on individual teacher performance and not articulating the results of teacher evaluation towards institutional improvement

A. BAUER & S. Z. SOUSA

56

The examples of teacher evaluation models implemented in the eight selected countries analyzed on this paper show the undeniable expansion of this evaluation model. However, it is still necessary to understand what factors can explain this expansion. Would this evaluation model be related to state’s management policies or reflect professionalism and career valorization movement? These questions remain unanswered and new research that focuses on motivation related to the adoption of teacher evaluation models in different countries is needed.

Moreover, the analysis shows the trend of using teacher evaluation mainly for salary increment and career advance, focusing on individual teacher performance, usually determined by superiors, and not articulated with institutional and contextual analysis. This tendency to understand the quality and productivity of teaching work in an individualized perspective deserves to be deepened in subsequent studies. Placing individual skills as a teacher evaluation focus tends to obscure the labor conditions and relations in which teaching performance is produced.

The experiences of some countries covered in this text illustrate the worldwide movement of valuing teacher evaluation as one of the educational policy strategies that is presented to the service of professional development and, consequently, as a promising way to improve the quality education. However, to accomplish those purposes it one’s must bear in mind that the evaluation is not only a technical activity, but also political, hence an explanation of the values that have guided the judgments and decisions arising from the evaluations is essential and demands studies exploring their implementation and use of their results.

REFERENCES

Barreira, C., & Rebelo P. V. (2008, September 2–3). Avaliação do desempenho docente, desenvolvimento profissional e sucesso escolar dos alunos: uma conciliação possível? VII Colóquio sobre questões curriculares, Florianópolis.

Barret, J. (1986). The evaluation of teachers. The clearinghouse on teacher education office of educational research and improvement. Washington, DC: ERIC.

Bauer, A (2012). É possível relacionar avaliação discente e formação de professores? A experiência de São Paulo. Educação em Revista, 2(28), 61–82. Retreived from https://dx.doi.org/10.1590/S0102-46982012000200004

Bauer, A. (2013). Avaliação de desempenho de professores: pressupostos e abordagens. In B. A. Gatti (Ed.), O trabalho docente: avaliação, valorização, controvérsias. São Paulo: Autores Associados.

Casassus, J. (2007). El precio de la evaluación estandarizada: la pérdida de calidad y la segmentación social. Revista Brasileira de Política e Administração da Educação, 23(1), 71–79.

Connell, R. (2010). Bons professores em um terreno perigoso: rumo a uma nova visão da qualidade e do profissionalismo. Educação e Pesquisa, 36, 165–185.

Darling-Hammond, L. (1990). Teacher evaluation in transition: Emerging roles and evolving methods. In J. Millman & L. Darling-Hammond (Eds.), The new handbook of teacher evaluation – assessing elementary and secondary school teachers. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

Darling-Hammond, L. (2010). Reconhecer e potenciar a eficácia docente: guia para decisores políticos. In M. A. Flores (Ed.), A avaliação de professores numa perspectiva internacional: sentidos e implicações. Porto: Areal Editores.a.

TEACHER EVALUATION

57

Day, C. (1993). Avaliação do desenvolvimento profissional dos professores. In A. Estrela & A. Nóvoa (Eds.), Avaliações em educação: novas perspectivas. Porto: Porto Editora.

Duke, D. L., & Stiggs, R. J. (1997). Más allá de la competencia minima: evaluación para el desarrollo professional. In L. Darling-Hammond, & J. Millman (Ed.), Manual para la evaluación del profesorado. Madrid: La Muralla/ Ed. Espanola.

Gatti, B. (2011). Avaliação de professores: um campo complexo. Estudos em Avaliação Educacional, 22(48), 77–88.

Goe, L., Bell, C., & Little, O. (n.d). A practical guide to evaluating teacher effectiveness. National comprehensive center for teacher quality. Washington, DC: National Comprehensive Center for Teacher Quality.

Harvey-Beavis, O. (2003, June 4–5). Performance-based rewards for teachers: A literature review. 3rd Workshop of Participating Countries on OECD’s Activity Attracting, Developing and Retaining Effective Teachers, Athens, Greece.

Huver, E., & Cadet, E. (2012). A formação profissional dos professores: reflexividade e avaliação são compatíveis? In L. Paquay, P. Wouters, & C. Nieuwenhoven (Eds.), A avaliação como ferramenta de desenvolvimento profissional de educadores. Porto Alegre: Penso.

Isoré, M. (2009). Teacher evaluation: Current practices in OECD countries: A literature review (OECD Education Working Papers No. 23). Paris: OECD Publishing.

Iwanicki, E. F. (1997). Evaluación de profesorado pra la mejora de escuelas. In L. Darling-Hammond & J. Millman (Eds.), Manual para la evaluación del profesorado. Madrid: La Muralla/ Ed. Espanola.

Milanowski, A., Heneman III, H., & Kimball, S. (2011). Teaching assessment for teacher human capital management: Learning from the current state of the art. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin, Wisconsin Center for Education Research.

Morduchowicz, A (2003). Carreiras, Incentivos e Estruturas Salariais Docentes. Santiago do Chile: Série Preal Documento (23).

Ravela, P. (2003). Como os sistemas nacionais de avaliação educativa da América Latina apresentam seus resultados. Santiago do Chile: Série Preal Documentos (22).

Schulmeyer, A. (2002). Estado atual da avaliação docente em treze países da América Latina. Conferência regional O desempenho dos professores na América Latina e no Caribe: novas prioridades, Brasília.

Scriven, M. (1967). The methodology of evaluation. In R. W. Tyler, M. Gagné, & M. Scriven (Eds.), Perspectives of curriculum evaluation. Chicago, IL: Rand McNally.

Scriven, M. (1987). Validity in personnel evaluation. Journal of Personnel Evaluation in Education, 1, 9–23.

Sousa, S. Z. (2008). Avaliação e carreira do magistério: premiar o mérito? Retratos da Escola, 2, 81–83.Sousa, S. Z. (2010). Avaliação de desempenho do professor (Verbete). In D. Andrade Oliveira, A. Duarte,

& L. Vieira (Eds.), Dicionário: trabalho, profissão e condição docente. Belo Horizonte: UFMG//CDROM.

Stronge, J. H. (n.d). Teacher evaluation and school improvement: Improving the educational landscape. Retrieved from http://www.sagepub.com/upm-data/7808_stronge01.pdf

Torrecilla, J. M. (2007). Avaliação do desempenho e carreira docente: um estudo em 50 países da América e Europa. Brasília: Consed/ UNESCO.

Adriana BauerCollege of EducationUniversity of Sao PauloEducational Research DepartmentCarlos Chagas Foundation (Brazil)

Sandra Zákia SousaCollege of EducationUniversity of Sao Paulo (Brazil)

F. Acosta & S. Nogueira (Eds.), Rethinking Public Education Systems in the 21st Century Scenario, 59–81. © 2017 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

CRISTIAN PEREZ CENTENO AND MARIANA LEAL

5. PISA IN A LATIN AMERICAN CONTEXT

The Cases of Argentina, Brazil and Chile

INTRODUCTION

This paper compares the explicit and implicit objectives established by the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) with those of developing Latin American countries as expressed in their regulations and action lines. In particular, we will consider the cases of Argentina, Brazil and Chile with a focus on secondary education,1 since this level presents the biggest challenge for Latin America. While the coverage of primary level is virtually total, when the middle level education is considered, it decreases rapidly.

The ultimate purpose of this comparison is to analyze the reasonableness of the participation in the PISA Program of countries which are not involved in the development of the tool, only in managing testing among their students, questioning its relevance to assessing (or making contributions that would facilitate the evaluation of) the countries’ own national goals.

The comparison is made simply and directly. Methodology, logic, goals, and policies of both players are contrasted, OECD on the one hand and the three countries mentioned throughout the documentary analysis on the other. It starts by discussing what, how and for what purpose PISA evaluates, then identifies national goals of Argentina, Brazil and Chile associated to secondary school education (which is the application scope of the Program), to finish by considering the degree of alignment between both of them.

Consequently, the results of the study seek to call into question the articulation between national goals that guide the policies of emerging countries and the guidelines of the supranational policies designed from quality assessment systems and standardized measurement instruments. These instruments are constructed by central countries based on their own criteria and interests, and do not necessarily reflect the interests and needs of Latin American developing countries, whose educational systems are inserted in a context of strong inequality in the access to education. While work regarding inequalities is a highly relevant aspect for the governments of Argentina, Brazil and Chile, the PISA reports do not necessarily have this priority.

C. P. CENTENO & M. LEAL

60

Before proceeding, it should be noted that this paper is part of a more extensive research effort – still at the initial stage – directed at the contextualization of the results of standardized international assessments for the Argentinean national case and the relevance of such tools. It is part of the research work Mariana Leal is developing for a Master degree under the tutorship of Cristian Perez Centeno.2 Here a partial preview of the results of the same is provided.

The choice of the PISA Program to develop the proposed comparison is because it is precisely the only international assessment applied systematically to the secondary education level in the region, and because of its high international impact which favors the approach of the subject matter outlined in development research. This decision does not disregard other international studies conducted by other multilateral or international organizations (such as the Regional Comparative and Explanatory Study conducted by OREALC/UNESCO, or others implemented by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement – IEA-) that do not assess the level of education under study or are not consistently applied or do not have the required minimum number of participants from Latin American countries.

Regarding the agenda of the Comparative Education World Congress conducted3 under the motto, “New times, new voices”, the article attempts to present a Latin American opinion addressing the current debate about such tools and thze problems associated with them. In particular, in the Argentinean and regional sphere, this has become unusually relevant basically due to Latin America’s poor results compared to those from other regions of the world, the political and communicational use of results – an oversimplified, reductionist use causing no impact on the educational system – and the proposals and educational-political recommendations derived from the analysis of results by international agencies. It is worth mentioning the fact that several countries in the region are currently analyzing and developing alternative routes of international evaluation that respond to their own goals and realities.

PISA PROGRAM

The Program for International Student Assessment is a program of the OECD which evaluates the learning of 15-year-old students enrolled in the formal educational system of OECD member countries and other associated countries.

PISA tests have been implemented since 2000 on a triennial basis and in each cycle, they establish a central domain of evaluation – Reading, Mathematics or Science literacy; 60% of the test corresponds to questions relating to the main area. So far it has been developed on 5 occasions. Latin American countries have not participated massively or systematically in this assessment although they are gradually increasing their participation.

In the year 2000, year of the first edition of PISA, 32 countries participated. The number of participating countries had grown to 65 by the last round, which was carried out in 2012. Its objective is to assess learning in the areas of Science, Math and Reading using a skills approach. In other words, they focus mainly on the ability

PISA IN A LATIN AMERICAN CONTEXT

61

of young people to apply their knowledge and skills to meet future life challenges rather than testing how well they have mastered a specific curriculum. The results of these evaluations are then systematized in Reports presenting the results obtained for each of the countries and a section with educational recommendations to states whose students were evaluated.

Students’ performances are rated in 6 levels with 6 representing the highest score, and 1 the lowest.

In addition, PISA includes contextual variables – socio-economic and cultural variables – to analyze the results of the learning test based on them. That means that, according to the evaluation of student’s skills, it analyzes their distribution in each of the categories of contextual variables to draw conclusions.4 The socio-economic, socio-educational and cultural variables do not operate under this logic, but as explanatory factors that contextualize and offer a framework of meaning to the obtained educational outcomes.

On the other hand, the program is conducted by a Governing Board composed of representatives of all the members of the OECD and the countries associated with the Program. Chile and Mexico are the only two countries in Latin America that are members of the OECD, while Brazil is the only state associated with PISA in the region. Each member state and each state associated with PISA has a representative on the Governing Board, appointed by its Ministry of Education. Other states participating in PISA participate in the JGP as “observers”.

The design and implementation of these tests, within the framework established by the JGP, is the responsibility of the PISA international consortium which, according to its reports, is attributed to institutions in Australia, Netherlands, Japan and an American company, among others. Although formally, participating countries in PISA are entitled to make requests or suggestions for changes and adjustments to the Program, the real chance of making changes is slight and is related to the political capacity to do so. Recently, MERCOSUR countries made a request for technical and methodological5 changes that is still pending.

PISA AND OECD: OBJECTIVES AND APPROACH

The OECD is an intergovernmental organization that brings together the 34 most developed countries of the world committed to the market economy and democracy, and aims at establishing, development and improvement of economic and social policies as a forum for discussion. Its main purposes are to contribute to a healthy and solid economic expansion in countries, contribute to the expansion of world trade, and achieve maximum economic growth and employment development, among others.

From the above, we can easily conclude the function assigned by the OECD to education: it is not only essential for social cohesion, but especially for economic growth. Thus, education is the central tool for training the workforce to contribute to the economic growth of countries. In the year 2006 report the following is mentioned:

C. P. CENTENO & M. LEAL

62

At age 15, many students come to great transitions from education to work or higher education. Performance at school and motivation and attitudes towards science may have a significant influence on future paths in education and work. These, in turn, can have an impact not only on professional careers and individual wage prospects, but also on the effectiveness with which human capital is developed and used in the economies and societies of the OECD. (OECD, 2008: 67)

More clearly, in the report corresponding to the year 2009, the OECD proposes:

While educational outcomes are a strong predictor of economic growth, profit and expenditure on education do not guarantee the best results. Generally, PISA shows that the image of a world clearly divided between rich, well-educated countries and poor countries with low educational level, is not frequent. This finding represents both a threat and an opportunity. It is a threat for the developed economies as they will not have better human capital better than in other parts of the world forever. In times of stronger global competition, these economies will have to work hard to maintain a base of knowledge and skills to meet their changing demands. (OECD, 2010 a: 3, Author’s translation)

An analysis of the type of tasks that the fifth grade students are able to carry out suggests that those who reach this grade will be workers with future ‘world class’ knowledge so the proportion of students in the country who will reach this grade is relevant for its future economic competitiveness. (OECD, 2010b: 52)

The rapid growth of demand for highly skilled workers has resulted in a global competition for talent. High levels of skills are critical to create knowledge, technologies and innovation, and therefore are key to economic growth and social development. Looking at the best performances of students in Reading, Mathematics and Science literacy enables countries to estimate their future mass of talent. (OECD, 2010b: 154. Author’s translation)6

Rizvi and Lingard (2012) point out that this technical viewpoint under the imperative framework of globalization imposes an instrumental perspective of education on the basis of economic development that shapes social subjects where information networks play a crucial role to support the activities of the market. They also suggest that the OECD has become the main international source of technical expertise in educational statistics and that technical capacity contributes to quantitatively addressing politics and a cost-benefit approach, bypassing more extensive discussions in order to promote an opinion focused on efficiency and effectiveness of educational policies. In this way the authors continue:

The OECD promoted a specific definition of good governance in education focused on the transparency of the decision-making process, measurement technologies for educational performance, international references of

PISA IN A LATIN AMERICAN CONTEXT

63

excellence, mechanisms to ensure the quality of education and the effective use of public resources, among others; issues that respond mostly to economic efficiency, which is the capacity of the educational systems to respond to the labour market of the global economy. (Author’s translation of Rizvi and Lingard, 2012: 532–533)

Torres Santomé (2007) adds that education, even in its obligatory stages, is -increasingly construed as professional training; i.e., something that enables work and, if possible, with good pay. In this way, education conceived as a right becomes of secondary importance.

To sum up, PISA is a technical tool fashioned by an international organization whose central objective for the educational field is the formation of skilled, qualified labor to contribute to economic growth. This is true even though the OECD states that the purpose of PISA is to provide information to enable the surveyed countries to:

• Adopt decisions and public policies needed to improve educational levels (OECD, n.d.: 1)

• Orient national policy, both with regard to school curricula and the work of teachers and in relation to the learning of students and (…) define and implement educational objectives, through innovative methods that reflect the core competencies for adult life (OECD, 2008: 3).

It should be noted that, as stated by Ravela et al. (2008), although standardized, large scale learning assessments are increasingly frequent in the region and their design, methodology and use have improved, there are still significant deficiencies. Among these we highlight weaknesses in capitalizing the results and translating them into concrete and effective actions which would result in the improvement of the systems and, especially, in teaching practices. A breakthrough in this regard is the production of a specific report for the Ibero-American region within the framework of PISA, from the 2006 assessment.

In the document “El programa PISA de la OCDE. Qué es y para qué sirve” (The OECD PISA program. What it is and what it is for), the OCDE adds:

PISA examines the degree of preparation of young people for adult life and, to a certain extent, the effectiveness of educational systems. Its goal is to evaluate success in connection with the underlying objectives (as defined by the community) of the educational system, and not in relation to the teaching of a particular body of knowledge. (OECD, n.d.: 7)

As to the foregoing it is interesting to highlight two issues. On the one hand, the interest of the OECD in assessing the “effectiveness of educational systems” is to define the strategy to use the learning outcome measurement as an indicator of effectiveness of systems. On the other hand, the statement concerning “goals” of evaluating the results from the perspective of each assessed educational system establishes a paradox, since the assessment instrument is rather based on shared,

C. P. CENTENO & M. LEAL

64

general objectives, common to all systems and supposedly representing true desires in relation to the education students should receive. It represents an ultimate goal that, subsequently, each country could achieve through the exploitation of the results of the assessment and therefore it is referred to as a “goal” only in the utopian sense.

In another line of thought, Neirotti (2005) proposes that the evaluation of public policies may gradually become effective through the evaluation of curricula or projects representing the political orientation of a country or a state either considering certain courses of action implemented, which are considered to be political biases, or assessing conceptual aspects (such as participation, equity, quality, etc.) cross-cutting the set of courses of action of this policy.

Under this framework, it is possible to consider the way that PISA implements to assess national educational systems: it does not consider national curricula or projects; instead it pays attention to the “quality” of education limited to the learning outcomes and contextual factors that affect them or could detrimentally affect or explain them. The results of these assessments are the key aspect of the assessment tool developed by PISA; they are its basic quality indicator. Contextual aspects – such as the socio-economic characteristics of students – are analyzed on the basis of the results obtained in the tests.

Reports prepared by the OECD arising from each operation, identify errors and problems that hinder the actions and include general recommendations to the various participating States, based on the analysis and interpretation of results. Its recipients are responsible for educational policies.

A critical aspect of the reports is their accuracy since they are assessments. The weighting process and general explanations of the outcomes prevent an analysis tailored to each specific case, linked with each country’s own objectives and with sufficient information to be able to read data from each contextual perspective. The upcoming international comparative analysis, particularly regarding the countries getting the best results, – is expected to be the framework for the interpretation of the results of each country, to provide data to identify strengths and weaknesses of each country in comparison with others and to serve as an incentive so that each country may exceed its expectations.

TECHNICAL-POLITICAL DIMENSION OF EVALUATION

Several authors have amply noted the technical and political dimensions of the evaluation. As defined by Spanish Royal Academy (Real Academia Española), “assess” – among other meanings – is to “point out the value of something”. In other words, an assessment is the registration of that ‘something’ (technical level), but also their appraisal (political dimension). The evaluation cannot do without any of both aspects because they are part of their own nature.

If we focused only on the first approach [technical dimension] we could become unrealistic, could imagine processes and identify results from a

PISA IN A LATIN AMERICAN CONTEXT

65

perspective outside the social scene where the events take place. We would evaluate in ideal terms, without providing useful knowledge for decision-making. And what is worse, we would apply our own values, since there are no value-free technical positions. If, on the other hand, we only support political arguments, we would be belittling the scientific-technical knowledge that has been evidenced through experience and resulted in the formation of specific fields of knowledge. (Neirotti, 2005: 15)

Thus, if we consider the evaluation as a key element for decision-making, the political function of evaluation is essential and allows a constant feedback for planning and decision. Providing data, information and value judgments is the richest source for decision-making in complex contexts, even when it is not the only or the main ground for a political decision.

Tiana Ferrer (1997:6) proposes that the assessment is a cut of the reality and that this cut makes the intention; quoting Shadish, Cook and Leviton7 she points out that the evaluation is a political action in a context in which power, ideology and interests are paramount and influence decisions more than the information from the evaluation’ and that ‘even when the results of the assessment and decisions of Governments concur, the first serve often to justify decisions based on other criteria. Examples of an immediate and frequent instrumental use of the assessment are still fairly rare (Shadish, Cook, & Leviton, 1995:448–449).

It is important to take into account that for an assessment to be fair it is necessary to represent and interpret the stories of actors and sectors involved in this process. In this sense Neirotti indicates that the political aspect of the evaluation is that related to actors, institutions, their values and interests and emphasizes the importance of “knowing who are the actors involved in the intervention, what are their strengths and weaknesses, what they pursue, how they participate and to what extent of involvement, what is their degree of participation in the assessment” (2005:15).

The political aspect is always present anytime we ask about the values that guide elections between different options and already established priorities. Also, at the time we discuss the limitations and potentials, when we investigate power relations, disputes or consensus.

Under this logical analysis, assessments developed under PISA – as in all evaluations – are an inevitable life cross-sectional view to achieve objectives and establish conclusive, comparative and viable evidence to define its scope. It would not be possible, as for any evaluation, to consider all the variables involved in the educational systems or take all kinds of variables into account, nor to consider the diversity of singularities involved in every educational system, which – in turn – should be compared to each other. The cut made by PISA is based on learning outcomes.

In previous papers (Perez Centeno & Leal, 2011) we have highlighted the problem of considering the assessment of quality systems in a restrictive sense- as equivalent to learning outcomes- since it fails to account for the underlying processes regarding such outcomes. Rivas is moving in the same direction:

C. P. CENTENO & M. LEAL

66

the look on the educational quality can hardly be in a neutral or a-sociological way. The contents and methods of knowledge acquisition are part of a constant social and political debate, irreducible in many ways to standardized assessments (…) assessments are only very specific cross-sectional views of the learning process that do not reflect the diversity of situations that occur in the classroom. (2010: 25)

The presentation of quantitative results, especially in the form of rankings, is not helpful, either, since it offers an out-of-context analysis and political and educational recommendations which are not based on data, and cause very low impact on everyday school life. Corrective actions deriving from the assessments hardly influence the macro-structural, institutional or psycho-social conditions on which educational processes are based.

We cannot disregard, either, that evaluation strategies, although necessary and valuable, respond to needs and interests of the great actors of the political decision-making processes- sometimes on a worldwide basis-, where transformations subjects play a secondary and subordinate role, as well as Southern and peripheral countries. They reserve only the responsibility for the execution. As stated by Ravela et al.

Standard external assessment will only have positive effects on education if it is perceived, conceived and employed as a mechanism for public accountability regarding all stakeholders related to the educational task (…) there will always be the risk that educational policies focus on the implementation of evaluations only and then disregard the implementation of specific actions to address and solve the problems evidenced by them (2008: 9).

NATIONAL GOALS FOR EDUCATION

Nirenberg, Brawerman and Ruiz state that “the depth and relevance of the recommendations formulated will depend on the usefulness of the evaluation and, therefore, the feasibility of its subsequent implementation in decision-making processes and courses of action” (2007: 35). For that reason, the perspectives of the various actors involved are of the essence; in our case, the national states and their educational systems.

Our paper focuses exclusively on the cases of three countries in the Latin American region: Argentina (given our particular interest in the domestic case), Brazil and Chile, and their national objectives for secondary education, since it is the scope of implementation of the PISA Program. It should be noted that Argentina and Brazil are not OECD members; thus, they are not required to implement the assessment; they do so on a discretionary basis; Chile has been a member since 2010, thus, assessments under consideration – period 2000–2009 – have been developed under the same rationale.

Based on regulations and curricula, we will identify national interests and educational goals relevant for the secondary education level since they refer to the age of the students evaluated under PISA.

PISA IN A LATIN AMERICAN CONTEXT

67

Argentina

In 2006, Argentina enacted a new Law on National Education (LN N ° 26,206/06) that established, among the purposes of education, quality, equal opportunities, comprehensive education, community-oriented education, access to the labor market and higher education. Besides, it sets forth as education goals “to ensure inclusive education through global policies, pedagogical strategies and resource allocation that assign priority to the most disadvantaged sectors of the community” and “ensure access and favorable conditions to continue and complete the different levels of the education system” (2006, article 11). The law states:

In 2006, Argentina enacted a new Law on National Education (LN N ° 26, 206/06) that established, among the purposes of education, quality, equal opportunities, comprehensive education, community-oriented education, access to the labor market and higher education. Furthermore, it sets out as education goals “to ensure inclusive education through global policies, pedagogical strategies and resource allocation that assign priority to the most disadvantaged sectors of the community” and “ensure access and favorable conditions to continue and complete the different levels of the education system” (2006, article 11). The law states:

• Education as a public property and social law, guaranteed by the State.• Education as a national and political priority of the State.• Middle level education is obligatory.

Recently, in 2009, policies to be implemented in relation to compulsory secondary education were agreed on the federal level.8 The main concern guiding the decisions made with regard to the secondary level are based on the recognition of the situation of vulnerability and social exclusion that affects many adolescents and young adults. School is defined as a tool to recover their sense of integration and is committed to preventing the creation of social gaps in terms of education.

The National Compulsory Education Plan (2009a), which is triennial, directs policies to be developed at the national, provincial and local levels of administration and their articulation with the cross-sectional interventions of other ministries and social organizations. In order to extend and improve secondary education across the country and ensure compliance with obligation, the Plan develops three strategies:

• Increase level coverage and improve the school careers of students. This seeks to extend the coverage of education and improve the background of students, decreasing repetition, over-age students and dropping out rates and encouraging graduation from secondary school by adolescents and young people and adults.

• Improve the quality of the educational offer. The actions pursued include the provision of pedagogical equipment and resources for the secondary level; improvement of the professional development of teachers; promotion of greater articulation between primary and basic cycles and between secondary and higher education levels as well as with the social and work scenarios; supervision of

C. P. CENTENO & M. LEAL

68

the priority learning population in the basic cycle; and improving educational outcomes.

• Strengthen Institutional Management.

The provincial and municipal levels of administration must develop plans with goals for the short and medium term to progressively comply with the mandatory educational offer, producing institutional adaptation to meet specific educational needs. They must also renew the educational proposal at that level and design new pedagogical alternatives to improve the learning and socialization experiences offered. The national government implements programs and projects for inclusion and democratization at the secondary education level, such as the FINES Plan (Plan for primary and secondary education graduation), PROMEDU (Program for support to the policy of improvement of educational equity), PROMER (Improvement of Rural Education Project, Project for the Prevention of Dropping Out, Conectar Igualdad Program), among others.

With regard to quality, it is addressed in the perspective of the professional development of teachers and the acquisition of main skills and knowledge by students. The National Ministry of Education conducts regular National Assessment Operations (Operativos Nacionales de Evaluación – ONE) in all educational jurisdictions in the country. They participate both in the formulation of the evaluation criteria and the implementation of tests and analysis of results. Their objective is to give an account of the performance of students in Language, Mathematics, Social Sciences and Natural Sciences, according to the content of the national and provincial curricula.

This assessment is conducted every 2 or 3 years on a sample basis; although in 2010 it was conducted as a census at the end of high school. The results are expected to constitute useful information for the analysis and review of classroom practices and represent a benchmark for the work of each institution to improve its performance. The directors of establishments participating in the assessment can have access to general results and those of their own establishment. From the obtained general results Methodological Recommendations for Secondary Education are prepared.

An important feature of the ONE, distinguishing it from the PISA Program, is that evaluations carried out at the secondary level are not taken for students of a certain age, but from given school year, regardless of the student’s age. This allows a tighter assessment of the achievements obtained in each educational level because it is about educational systems with high heterogeneity, based in strongly unequal societies. Not taking into account this last aspect would involve having biased school results that would say more about the school’s impact on underlying social inequality than about the specific achievements of the educational systems.

It is worth mentioning that the results obtained by the ONE do not seek to guide an educational policy nationally, but to make methodological recommendations for the improvement of teaching in the classroom; they have a strictly pedagogical scope.

PISA IN A LATIN AMERICAN CONTEXT

69

Regulations and various national programs under analysis, aimed at the secondary level of education, deal with inclusion and retention in the educational system, particularly of vulnerable sectors. They also address graduation from secondary school by young people and adults, equity and equal opportunities, expansion of coverage, expansion of compulsory education, among the policy priorities. Likewise, the school is seen as the means to recovering the sense of social integration and seeking to break with the reproduction of the social gaps in educational terms.

Concurrent with these priorities, it is important to highlight a very significant element with incidence at the secondary level namely, the “Universal Allowance per Child” (UAC) that the national government has implemented since 2009. It is not a strictly educational action, but a universal comprehensive social policy, which seeks to protect socially vulnerable families and achieve schooling, control of health, vaccination and documentation of all children under 18 years of age. This allowance is intended for all children and adolescents who do not receive any other allowance and belong to family groups whose salaries do not reach the minimum wage or who are unemployed. To receive this allowance children must comply with health checks, compulsory vaccination plan and- at age 5 or over- certify attendance at public educational establishments.

Brazil

In the last decade and especially in the last few years – like Argentina, Brazil has been developing important activities related to universalizing and improving secondary education. Already in 1996, the Law “Diretrizes e Bases da Educação Nacional” – LDB – [Guidelines and Basis of National Education Law] set forth that public school education ensuring the fundamental teaching on a mandatory and free basis is the duty of the State (1996). In 2009, Brazil made a modification to it and amended its Constitution, extending compulsory school from early childhood education to the secondary school – from 4 to 17 years old, which will have to be guaranteed by the year 2016. Furthermore, in 2010, the objective of achieving a net rate of secondary school enrollment of 85% of that age group by 2020 was defined in the National Compulsory Education Plan (PNE).9

When secondary school attendance became mandatory in 2011 the Innovative Secondary Education Program (Ensino Médio Inovador – PROEMI) was created); it sought to guarantee the right to high-quality secondary education in the context of globalization, promoting school curricular restructuring, extension of the school time and diversity of pedagogical practices. In 2009, the Money Directly to Schools program (Dinheiro Direto na Escola) was also implemented to overcome the lack of equal educational opportunities and promote global access and retention of teenagers from 15 to 17 years old in secondary school, through financial and technical support directly provided by the federal government.

In terms of quality, the curricula restructuring projects promoted by PROEMI should ensure: the formulation of goals to improve the Primary Education Development

C. P. CENTENO & M. LEAL

70

Index (Índice de Desenvolvimento da Educação Básica,- IDEB), a minimum of 3,000 class hours to be implemented gradually, development of studies and activities to help students pursue their careers and respond to the diversity of interests, wishes, conditions and life projects; and the participation of the students in the National Secondary Education Examination (Exame Nacional do Ensino Médio, ENEM).10

Regarding the measurement of learning outcomes, Brazil has the National System of Basic Education Evaluation (Sistema Nacional de Avaliação da Educação Básica – SAEB) that provides information about the performance of Brazilian students. Similarly to the case of Argentina, the SAEB implements tests in Mathematics and Portuguese to students, and questionnaires to students, teachers and directors in order to be able to link the learning outcomes with various factors associated with the quality and efficiency of education. Tests are applied in various educational stages and at the end of middle school. As in Argentina there is an online system that allows the directors of the schools to access the information from the questionnaires and any additional results in order to favor some contextualization and comparison thereof. In addition, the ENEM analyzes students’ competencies and profiles individually. The goal is that teachers and directors may identify gaps and good practices in the educational field.

The IDEB was created in 2007 as an indicator of educational quality and used to measure the quality of each school and each educational system. It combines the performance information in standardized tests (Prova Brazil/INEP) and approval rates in the system. Families – as well as officials, directors and teachers – can monitor the performance of their children and the school, through the IDEB of the institution, which is presented on a scale of 0 to 10. The index is measured every two years and the aim is that by 2022 the country should achieve a rate of 6, which corresponds to the educational quality in the developed countries. To increase the IDEB of a school or network the student is required to learn, not to repeat the course, and to attend classes. It is, ultimately, an instrument to monitor and measure the progress of the programs in relation to the goals and desired results established for Brazilian education.

On the other hand, the PNE presents ten educational goals for the year 2020 for all levels of education, specifying the strategies to be carried out and the indicators for its monitoring. Several of the goals commit to middle education, such as:

• Universalizing schooling for the entire population aged between 15 and 17;• Offering extended sessions or complete load time – 7 hours – in 50% of public

elementary schools;• Increasing national averages of the IDEB (to reach it, among other things, the

results obtained by PISA should be improved);• Raising the middle schooling of the population between 18 and 24 years old to

achieve a minimum of 12 years of schooling for the rural population – the poorer region of the country with lower schooling levels;

• matching the middle schooling of Afro-Brazilians with that of other Brazilians;• duplicating matriculation in mid-level technical professional education, and

ensuring its quality.

PISA IN A LATIN AMERICAN CONTEXT

71

There are also various programs aimed at improving school management (School Development Plan), extending school hours (More Education Program) or improving basic education and enhancing professional education (Fundo de Manutenção e Desenvolvimento da Educação Básica e de Valorização dos Profissionais da Educação, FUNDEB), among others.

Moreover, as in the case of the Argentinean UAC, since 2004 Brazil has implemented the “Bolsa Familia” program constituting the e federal government’s main social assistance program. It reaches 23% of the 190 million people that inhabit the country and basically consists of a transfer of income to low-income families, especially favoring households with the presence of children. The only requirement to access the additional income per child is that they are of school-age and comply with relevant vaccination plans. Due to the severity of poverty, the program is deliberately aimed at a specific population sector even though it has a welfare and health-oriented approach rather than an educational one. To keep receiving it, the schooling of the families’ minors is essential. The impact of the plan on the reduction of poverty and destitution and inequality between rich and poor, indirectly influences the educational performance of the population to which it is addressed.

From the regulations and plans mentioned above we can infer that Brazil’s interests and objectives in regard to education are expanding compulsory education, universal access to secondary school for teenagers from 15 to 17 years old, improving access and permanence of young people in education, increasing the hours of classes, and increasing the years of education for the rural and Afro-Brazilian populations. On the other hand, there are goals that include the improvement of the learning outcomes that are reflected both in PISA and the IDEB.

Chile

In 2003, Chile made a constitutional amendment that establishes compulsory and free secondary education up to 21 years old. In 2009, the general law of education was passed to maintain the principles of democratization and globalization of education in Chile namely, universal access, learning throughout life, equity of the system to ensure equal educational opportunities, promotion of respect for the diversity of educational projects and processes, integration of students with different multicultural conditions, among others. Likewise, the principle of a quality system is stated in the law as “the general objectives and learning standards” to be achieved by students.

These guiding principles, quality, globalization and democratization, are structured into the system by a set of laws that organize the secondary educational system: preferential school grants, retention and full school day educational grants.

• Law on Retention Educational Grants (2003) [Ley de Subvención Educacional Pro-retención de Alumnos]: the law established a grant to educational institutions for students from indigent families who attended classes regularly – from 7th

C. P. CENTENO & M. LEAL

72

grade to 4th grade in a secondary school – and for every graduate from fourth grade in a secondary school.

• Law of Full School Day (2004) [Ley de Jornada Escolar Completa]: this forced municipal and private subsidized educational establishments to incorporate full-day system from 3rd year of the elementary level up to 4th year of secondary education. It does not include adult and special education establishments or those that demonstrate high levels of quality in national tests). The Law provides for the financing of special infrastructure projects and equipment necessary for its implementation.

• Law on Preferential School Grants (SEP): was passed in 2008 and in 2011 included students of secondary schools. It provides financing for the education of vulnerable families to ensure basic conditions of equity and quality to “priority” students and subsidizes schools with a minimum of 15% of their students in vulnerable socio-economic conditions, assigning an amount for each enrolled priority student. Beneficiary establishments are required to develop plans to improve education in a 4-year period. The grant should be used to develop improvement plans for priority students to “improve the school performance of the students with low academic performance” (H. National Congress, 2008. Article 6, section e).

• Also, the plan sets goals on the academic performance of their students, in particular of the priority students, taking into account the level of compliance with standards of learning and other indicators of quality.

• Grant for Performance Excellence (SNED): in the year 2008 this began to measure the performance of educational institutions at all levels in order to promote the improvement of the quality of education. The SNED gives a “Grant for Performance Excellence” to best ranked institutions which must be assigned to teachers and students of these institutions.

• The performance of institutions is evaluated according to the following criteria: effectiveness, achievement (educational achievements by the institution), initiative (ability to innovate), improvement of the working conditions and performance, equal opportunities (accessibility and permanence) and integration and participation of teachers and the educational community in the institutional project.

• For the evaluation, the SNED groups institutions according to certain external features that affect their results in such a way as to compare the performance of institutions with similar characteristics (such as the average income at students’ home and parents’ average education level).

In addition, Chile developed a series of courses of action, plans and educational programs for secondary schools, such as Universal Actions for Secondary Education Institutions, Support Scholarship for School Retention, Territorial Integration, Student Housing, among others.

Homologous to the Argentinean UAC and the Brazilian Bolsa Familia Program, Chile has developed the System “Chile Solidario” [Solidary Chile] since 2002, but it has several features that distinguish it. Focused on extreme poverty, it has gradually

PISA IN A LATIN AMERICAN CONTEXT

73

been expanding its coverage and scope. Unlike the Brazilian and Argentinean programs, Chile Solidario is composed of four supplementary programs (“Puente” [Bridge], “Vínculos” [Links], “Calle” [Street] and “Caminos” [Ways]), all aimed at providing financial assistance and characterized by a number of conditions to be complied with and participation of the State in the household situation. In particular, monetary assistance does not respond to previously outlined guidelines, but it is mostly assigned on the basis of the assessment carried out by social workers that study cases one by one. Access of every family to different programs then depends on their specific situation. In addition, the program provides psychosocial services mainly intended for vulnerable households or children at family risk.

Due to the above-mentioned characteristics, its size is comparatively small in comparison with the UAC and the Bolsa Familia although its organizational structure is complex and includes the discontinuity of the grant to those families which, given their development, can do without assistance granted by the State. By the end of 2008, the plan registered a total of 333,000 families as beneficiaries, and a year later, 125,000 (208,000 households were declared as “graduates” of the plan).

In short, the Chilean model presents a more focused and complex alternative, which is not intended for the eradication of mass poverty, but for the social integration of the most vulnerable sectors, hence its huge administrative structure and complementariness with different programs. In terms of results, some studies (Larrañaga et al., 2009) indicate improvements in absolute levels of income, households, and occupation of the beneficiaries of the plan, especially in rural areas.

With regard to learning assessments, Chile develops the National System of Learning Outcome Evaluation of the Department of Education (Education Quality Measurement System, SIMCE). Its tests are annual and evaluate the achievement of the Fundamental Objectives and Minimum Compulsory Contents (Objetivos Fundamentales y Contenidos Mínimos Obligatorios, OF-CMO) of the current curriculum framework in different areas of learning, through a measurement that applies to all students in the country who study at the evaluated levels.

The SIMCE applies tests to students of 4th grade and 8th grade in grade school, and 2nd and 3rd grade in secondary school. In the year 2010, in 4th grade tests of Reading, Math Education, and Comprehension of Social and Cultural Environment were applied; tests of Reading and Math Education are also applied to students with sensory disabilities in the Metropolitan regions and Valparaiso. In the 2nd year of Middle school, tests of Reading and Math were applied; in 8th grade for the first time an evaluation of Physical Education was applied to a representative sample of students, and in 3rd grade in secondary school, the first test of English.

SIMCE aims at “providing information to the process of curriculum development, providing parameters to improve the allocation of resources, contributing to improving the quality of education (…) and delivering an explicit signal to the educational system about learning objectives considered as fundamental by the Department of Education” (Agency for the Quality of Education, s.f). Evaluation outcomes allow sorting the schools according to their outcomes in achievement assessments of

C. P. CENTENO & M. LEAL

74

learning and other Indicators of Quality, and they guide the establishments on the basis of their performance. Furthermore, the SIMCE test results provide important information so that each educational community may reflect on the learning achieved by students, and identify challenges and strengths that contribute to the development or reformulation of teaching methodologies to improve learning. Schools, parents, students, teachers, assistants and researchers may have access to this information.

Thus Chile, in its regulations determines an increase in the number of years of compulsory education. It also recognizes the socio-economic disadvantages of priority students and sets forth various laws and policies that benefit priority students; i.e., those who are at a disadvantage due to their socio-economic conditions. It also has a strong policy on learning outcomes. They are presented as standards for measuring compliance with other policies. The law of the Public Education Department (SEP), for example, connects the funding system (grants) with educational outcomes: there will be more resources if quality improves as reflected by the improvement of students’ performance, especially the most vulnerable or priority ones (Roman Carrasco & Murillo Torrecilla, 2012).

In relation to the PISA Program, the SIMCE applies it in the 2nd year of the middle level schooling that corresponds to those aged 15 years old, in the disciplines that this evaluates and with a philosophy and analog logics. Though, of course, it is broader and more adjusted to the national educational goals, being applied annually and in census form, also in other courses of elementary education and incorporating other fields of knowledge. When appropriate, the results are provided at the level of establishments that is the unit of comparison used.

Although it lies outside the objective of this text, we must nevertheless note that today there is a strong political challenge to the SIMCE within the framework of the national debate on the educational system. There is a social movement called “Stop SIMCE”11 that has been able to overcome boundaries, involving academics and researchers, federations of undergraduate and graduate university students of several universities, associations of parents, the Coordinating Assembly of High School Students (Asamblea Coordinadora de Estudiantes Secundarios) and the Chilean Teachers Organization (Colegio de Profesores de Chile), among other organizations. Its main allegation is that SIMCE has become one of the main tools of the education market with harmful consequences for schools and educational actors. Basically, it is stated that students and teachers are pressured to achieve a certain position in the ranking that emerges from the SIMCE and that many establishments invest time in training children to correctly answer their tests, by skewing the curriculum towards fields which are addressed by the evaluation and at the cost of courses that are not evaluated. They also protest that the system is used to highlight differences between schools, teachers and students installing a logic of competition producing winners and losers, by favoring selectivity and exclusion, violating the possibility of educational equality and forcing the losers, with the excuse of improvement, to accept the intervention of private entities without any democratic accountability.

PISA IN A LATIN AMERICAN CONTEXT

75

PISA IN THE LATIN AMERICAN CONTEXT: FINAL CONSIDERATIONS

We have established the objectives pursued by some Latin American countries for their secondary education, in order to analyze the degree of relationship and adjustment with those of the PISA Program developed by the OECD. We can summarize what was considered for PISA and OECD in the educational field in the following manner:

• Education has an instrumental value as a means to achieving the economic development of nations.

• The quality of national education systems is critical to the future competitiveness of each country. Best-performance countries and students will be better positioned than those with poorer performances.

• PISA is the evaluation tool of educational systems measuring 15-year-old students’ learning outcomes but only for those enrolled in the formal educational system.

• PISA does not evaluate curricula or processes, but competence in certain disciplines, particularly those with greater future significance in terms of competitiveness and employment.

• PISA compares the results of different countries as rankings, by distinguishing those who achieve good results from those who do not, doing a general assessment, and promoting the emulation of the “successful” countries.

• The socio-economic aspects are considered according to their impact on results, but not as a contextualizing factor.

• The OECD is legitimized as an expert body in educational statistics worldwide with a technical, “apolitical” claim.

• On the other hand, generally speaking the countries concerned are focused on:• Increasing the years of secondary education (determination of the obligation of

the level and time of classes), and particularly the access of disadvantaged and vulnerable sectors.

• Improving the educational careers of adolescents (access, retention and completion of the medium level).

• Training not only for the working world, but also for citizenship and access to higher education.

• Improving the access to knowledge (educational quality).• Improving processes that involve learning and teaching.• Assessing learning in order to improve the pedagogical practices, identify gaps

and good practices in the educational field, establish parameters to improve the allocation of resources and contribute to improving the quality of education.

As can be seen, though the evaluation of quality and even the learning outcome measurement, are among the national interests, they are not the only or the most important factors of interest for the States, or the way they evaluate the educational system as a whole.

Even when the results of the PISA Program provide information that countries can use to inform themselves about the learning outcomes of their students under

C. P. CENTENO & M. LEAL

76

this evaluation framework and that systematic approach of their application makes it possible to study their temporal dynamics or even make some limited intra/international comparisons, the fact that the OECD, in some way, is imposing its game rules by measuring the quality system from the learning outcomes and relying on them to make a ranking cannot be ignored. Thus, through its reports and the different studies developed by agencies and academics, it develops and establishes the orientation of educational policies towards results, particularly toward those measurable ones associated to competencies.12 At the same time, it drives a curricular organization of knowledge based on them and an orientation to systems in that direction. Given the vast diversity among the participating countries and even their own inner diversity, the different starting points of each of them should be distinguished from the outset and furthermore the general unique recipes proposed for the improvement of the quality of educational systems should not be viewed as having any absolute value.

What should be the criterion for quality? Is it the successful model that leads to the top of the ranking or the scope of the objectives that each of the countries proposed? If PISA assesses results and not process, what value do PISA results have for each of the countries? What might be the relevant and contextual recommendations in order to improve educational systems?

If an educational system is evaluated on the basis of students’ learning outcomes in certain fields of knowledge and at one single point of the schooling trajectory, can the quality of the whole educational system be inferred from that?

What happens with those educational systems such as the Latin American ones situated in contexts of strong social inequality translated into educational systems which exclude significant proportions of the population, or which include it but with strong differences in trajectories, segmentation, retention and completion of schooling? Let’s imagine that a country that with those characteristics achieved high quality standards under the evaluative framework of PISA… Could we really then talk about a quality education system? In that regard, analysis done by Baudelot and Establet (2009) for the French case, investigating school year repetition and over-age students as compared to other countries that do not have such a practice is interesting. In addition to highlighting that over-age students “tend to be uniformly the weakest group of a schooled population” (2009): 53, Author’s translation), they point out that they also impact on the results of international evaluations.

Particularly for the three countries studies it is important to recognize a vulnerable population that is at a disadvantage both to stay in and finish the level and to access the same level of knowledge. Inclusion, retention and completion of the level are today part of the priority of secondary education policy of the three States. If you prioritize those who are within the educational system and develop policies that will revolve around improving the competitiveness (i.e., the improvement of the position in the ranking), policies focusing on those who are outside the educational system or that are inside but in situations of strong insecurity will not be prioritized any more (and that is what is being denounced today, in Chile, for example).

PISA IN A LATIN AMERICAN CONTEXT

77

If we examine the net secondary enrollment rates – percentage of school-age youth eligible to attend middle level school who are actually attending in Argentina, Brazil and Chile, we can see that between 15% and 25% of the group still does not have access to the system and differences between adolescents belonging to more favored sectors and those belonging to the most vulnerable sectors are still highly significant, as shown in Table 1.

Furthermore, in all these countries, there is a high degree of heterogeneity. A significant proportion of 15-year-old students are not found in the corresponding theoretical course and accumulate schooling retardations of one, two, three or more years, sometimes without even having completed primary school. In Argentina, Brazil and Chile, between 6% and 12% of adolescents aged 15 years old had not finished primary school. In fact, primary and secondary school completion rates are still highly unsatisfactory (see Tables 2 and 3).

Table 1. Net rate of secondary schooling for Argentina, Brazil and Chile according to household educational climate,13 2011

Educational Climate % (2011)

ARG Low 61.0Average 83.3High 91.3TOT 84.5

BRA Low 71.41Average 80.2High 80.54TOT 76.60

CHI Low 74.91Average 80.76High 85.63TOT 82.34

Source: SITEAL

Table 2. Percentage of population aged 15 and older with incomplete primary education. Argentina, Brazil and Chile in 2011

Argentina 5.9Brazil 22.8Chile 12.2

Source: SITEAL

C. P. CENTENO & M. LEAL

78

With this situation, there is no doubt that inclusion is and should remain a primary objective of the countries in the Region. It is also equally important that all students have equal access to the same level of knowledge.

Obviously, the results that may be obtained in international systems will be determined by a contextual situation marked by a strong educational inequality and social inequality. Results very likely “say” more about inequities than about the quality of the educational systems. On the other hand, this does not mean that the learning outcomes of the students should not be assessed. The results of international assessments, such as the PISA ones, provide information countries should consider, but in the light of additional data on their educational system sand not as the central and unique indicator of their quality.

How to fully evaluate the scope of the objectives of the educational system is the radical question that must be addressed and the answers should guide the construction of the various technical tools that will allow countries to do so.

What is a real priority is that all children, adolescents and adults should have guaranteed income, permanence, egress and access to knowledge, during their passage through the educational system.

The matching of the national objectives with those of the OECD addresses the need to visualize and register the limitations that systems of external evaluation, which are not fully suited to national educational goals have, to appropriately interpret the results that they obtain. The evaluation of learning made by the PISA, is a particular cross-section used to evaluate educational systems as a whole and performed by organizations whose members have the highest GDP in the world, and whose material conditions, needs and political, economic and educational interests are not the same as those of other countries. On the contrary, they are clearly far removed from those defined for the countries of the Region, as we have seen.

It is important to be clear what the scope of PISA is and how convenient it is to adopt the look of an external actor to assess our own educational systems and our educational policies, and to process the recommendations derived from it. In Tiana Ferrer’s words, the challenge is to “design evaluation systems that are at the same time useful for improvement, respectful of the complexity of the educational action and fair in assessing subjects and institutions which are their subject matter” (2010: 97).

Table 3. Percentage of the population between 25 and 34 years old who has completed at least secondary school. Argentina, Brazil and Chile in 2009

Argentina 65.7Brazil 52.6Chile 75.0

Source: Elaborated by the authors based on Mercosur Statistical Indicators of the Educational System for 2009

PISA IN A LATIN AMERICAN CONTEXT

79

NOTES

1 We use the term “Secondary Education” or “Middle level” as synonymous and referring to ISCED levels 2 and 3 (lower and upper secondary education).

2 The thesis work (for a Master’s degree in Educational Policies from the Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero) will analyze the relevance of the PISA assessment to evaluate the Argentinean Educational System. To that end, PISA reports and the Argentinean national educational legislation are being analyzed, results of Argentinean National Assessment Operations will be addressed and interviews with ministry officials responsible for the implementation of the PISA program will be carried out in that country.

3 We refer to the 15th Comparative Education World Congress “New Times, New Voices”, organized by the Argentinean Society of Comparative Education Studies (Sociedad Argentina de Estudios comparados en Educación, SAECE) and the World Council of Comparative Education Societies (WCCES), in Buenos Aires in June 2013.

4 PISA, in addition to the evaluation of learning, develops and manages other questionnaires: for school principals, students, parents, and one about the degree of familiarity with the use of computers (the two latter are optional). From 2015 on, one aimed at teachers will be included. In them, emphasis is placed on the social environment, study habits, investment in education and educational level, among others. On the other hand, during the evaluation process, the relationship between outcomes of PISA and GDP assessments per capita or public investment in each country in education is examined.

5 The joint presentation of the MERCOSUR countries calls attention to the need for performing the evaluation in particular educational courses and not in terms of the student’s age, considering regional differences of competencies to assess and meet the “unwanted” effects of the hierarchical presentation of the results (rankings), to be among the most important.

6 The ideas that express these paragraphs – extracted from the reports corresponding to tests of 2006 and 2009 — can be found in all the reports of the PISA Program and exemplify the philosophy supporting its development and implementation.

7 Shadish, W.R.; Cook, T.D. and Leviton, L.C. (1995): Foundations of Program Evaluation. Theories of Practice. Newbury Park, London & New Delhi: Sage.

8 The Federal Council of Education approves a series of measures related to secondary education contained in a set of specific documents: ‘Political and strategic guidelines of the compulsory secondary education’ (Federal Council of Education, 2009c), “National Compulsory Education Plan” (Federal Council of Education, 2009a) and “Institutionalization and strengthening of the compulsory secondary education” (Federal Council of Education, 2009b).

9 Currently, upon its submission to the National Congress this continues being bill, failing to be passed after a four-year period.

10 The National Secondary Education Exams (Examen Nacional de la Enseñanza Media, ENEM) was created in 1998. In 2009 it was reformulated and “despite the fact that it represents voluntary accession and comes to: (i) have as one of its objectives the induction of the curricular organization of secondary education;” (ii) to be adopted as a unified vestibular for federal universities; (iii) to be used for the certification of young people and adults and (iv) to constitute verification of the academic performance of the freshmen to comparable higher education every year”(Pini and Gomes Melo, 2011: 10).

11 For more information see www.alto-al-simce.org/12 Although it is not the specific subject matter of this work, we want to highlight the development

of a line of studies examining the influence of actors and international ideas in the formation of national educational policies and the way in which they manage to penetrate them by redirecting them (Bujazan et al., 1987; Carnoy, 2002; Steiner-Khamsi, 2004 and 2006; Cowen, 2009; Ferrer, 2010; Edwards, 2014; among others). Even though in theoretical terms it is not a necessarily negative fact and globalization favors the movement of ideas, knowledge and facts at the planetary level, given the unequal and asymmetrical distribution of power in international relations, processes that establish an exchange between global and local forces should be carefully addressed to prevent processes of control or imposition by hegemonic factors of power.

C. P. CENTENO & M. LEAL

80

13 We take the concept of Educational Climate proposed by SITEAL (OEI-IIEP-Buenos Aires/UNESCO), defined as the “average years of study reached by all people aged 25 or older residing ina household”. This is categorized into: Low (less than 6 years), medium (6–12 years) and high (more than 12 years).

REFERENCES

Agencia de la Calidad de la Educación. (s.f). Retrieved from http://www.agenciaeducacion.cl/simce/Baudelot, C., & Establet, R. (2009). L’élitisme républicain. L’école française à l’épreuve des comparaisons

internationales. Seuil: La République des idées.Bujazan, M., Hare, S. E., La Belle, J., T., & Stafford, L. (1987). International agency assistance to education

in Latin America and the Caribbean, 1970–1984: Technical and political decision-making. Comparative Education, 23(2), 161–171. Retreived from http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0305006870230204

Carnoy, M. (2002). Latin America: The new dependency and educational reform. In H. Daun (Ed.), Educational restructuring in the context of globalization and national policy (pp. 289–321). New York, NY: Routledge Falmer.

Cowen, R. (2009). The transfer, translation and transformation of educational processes: And their shape-shifting? Comparative Education, 45(3), 315–327. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/ 03050060903184916

Edwards Jr. D. B. (2014) ¿Cómo analizar la influencia de los actores e ideas internacionales en la formación de políticas educativas nacionales? Una propuesta de un marco de análisis y su aplicación a un caso de El Salvador. Archivos Analíticos de Políticas Educativas, 22(12). Retrived from http://dx.doi.org/10.14507/epaa.v22n12.2014

Ferrer, A. (2010). The impact of the Bologna process in Ibero-America: Prospects and challenges. European Journal of Education, 45(5), 601–611. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1465-3435.2010.01454.x

Institucionalidad y Fortalecimiento de la Educación Secundaria Obligatoria. Planes Jurisdiccionales. Planes de Mejora Institucional. Resolución Nº 88. Ministerio de Educación de la Nación Argentina: Consejo Federal de Educación (2009b).

Larrañaga, O., Contreras, D., & Ruiz Tagle, J. (2009). Evaluación de impacto de Chile Solidario para la primera cohorte de participantes. Santiago: PNUD–Chile

Lei de Diretrizes e Bases da Educação Nacional, Nº 9.394. Congreso Nacional del Brasil. (1996).Lei de Alimentação Escolar, Nº 11.947. Congreso Nacional del Brasil. (2009).Ley de Educación Nacional, Nº 26.206. Congreso de la Nación Argentina. (2006).Ley de Jornada Escolar Completa, Nº 19.979. H. Congreso Nacional de Chile (2004).Ley de Subvención Educacional Pro-retención de Alumnos, Nº 19.873. H. Congreso Nacional de

Chile (2003)Ley General de Educación, Nº 20.370. H. Congreso Nacional de Chile (2009).Ley Subvención Escolar Preferencial, Nº 20.248. H. Congreso Nacional de Chile (2008).Lineamientos políticos y estratégicos de la educación secundaria obligatoria, Resolución Nº 88. Ministerio

de Educación de la Nación Argentina. Consejo Federal de Educación (2009c).Ministerio de Educación. (2011). Programa Ensino Médio Inovador. Brasilia: Secretaria de Educação

Básica Diretoria de Currículos e Educação Integral Coordenação Geral do Ensino Médio. Ministério da Educação, Brazil.

Neirotti, N. (2005). Elementos conceptuales y metodológicos para la evaluación de políticas y programas sociales. 8º Curso Regional de Planificación y Formulación de Políticas Educativas. Buenos Aires: Instituto Internacional de Planeamiento de la Educación IIPE – UNESCO.

Nirenberg, O., Brawerman, J., & Ruiz, V. (2007). Evaluar para la transformación: Innovaciones en la evaluación de programas y proyectos sociales. Buenos Aires: Paidós.

OCDE. (2008). Informe PISA 2006: Competencias científicas para el mundo del mañana. Madrid: Santillana – OCDE.

OCDE. (2010). PISA 2009 Results: Overcoming social background – Equity in learning oportunities and outcomes (Vol. II). Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264091504-en

PISA IN A LATIN AMERICAN CONTEXT

81

OCDE. (2010). PISA 2009 results: What students know and can do – Student performance in reading, mathematics and science (Vol. I). Retrieved from www.dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264091450-en

OCDE. (s.f.). El programa PISA de la OCDE. Qué es y para qué sirve. París: OCDE. Retrieved August 23, 2013, from http://www.oecd.org/pisa/39730818.pdf

Perez Centeno, C., & Leal, M. (2011). ¿Han funcionado las reformas educativas en América Latina? Los casos de Argentina, Brasil y Chile. Educational Policies Analysis Archives, 19(36). (Arizona State University.)

Pini, M., & Gomes Melo, S. (2011). Argentina y Brasil: cambios y contradicciones en las políticas educativas. IV Congreso Nacional y III Encuentro Internacional de Estudios Comparados en Educación. Buenos Aires: SAECE.

Plan Nacional de Educación Obligatoria, Resolución Nº 79/09. Ministerio de Educación de la Nación Argentina. Consejo Federal de Educación (2009a).

Projeto de Lei. (2010). Plano Nacional de Educação para o decênio 2011–2020, e dá outras providências. Congreso Nacional del Brasil.

Ravela, P., Arregui, P., Valverde, G., Wolfe, R., Ferrer, G., Martínez Rizo, F., Aylwin, M., & Wolff, L. (2008). Las evaluaciones que América Latina necesita. Santiago: PREAL. (Document n ° 40.)

Rivas, A. (2010). Radiografía de la Educación Argentina. Buenos Aires: Fundación CIPPEC – Fundación Arcor – Fundación Noble.

Rizvi, F., & Lingard, B. (2012). A OCDE e as mudanças globais nas políticas de educação. In UNESCO, Educação Comparada. Retrieved from http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0021/002177/ 217707por.pdf

Román Carrasco, M., & Murillo Torrecilla, F. J. (2012). Políticas educativas de apoyo a escuelas de sectores pobres y de bajo logro académico en Chile: 1990–2011. Revista de Educación, 46–66.

Steiner-Khamsi, G. (2006). The economics of policy borrowing and lending: A study of late adopters. Oxford Review of Education, 32(5), 665–678. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03054980600976353

Steiner-Khamsi, G. (Ed.). (2004). The global politics of educational borrowing and lending. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

Tiana Ferrer, A. (1997). Tratamiento y usos de la información en Evaluación. Madrid: U.N.E.D.Tiana Ferrer, A. (2010). Calidad, evaluación y estándares: algunas lecciones de las reformas recientes. In

A. Marchesi, J. C. Tedesco, & C. Coll (Eds.), Calidad, equidad y reformas en la enseñanza. Madrid: OEI/Fundación Santillana.

Torres Santomé, J. (2007). Educación en tiempos del neoliberalismo (Segunda edición). Madrid: ediciones Morata.

Cristian Perez CentenoUniversidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero (UNTREF, Argentina)

Mariana LealUniversidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero (UNTREF, Argentina)

F. Acosta & S. Nogueira (Eds.), Rethinking Public Education Systems in the 21st Century Scenario, 83–93. © 2017 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

FERNANDA DA ROSA BECKER AND FABIANA DE ASSIS ALVES

6. QUALITY AND MONITORING IN BRAZIL

Prova Brasil and its Impacts on Public Education

INTRODUCTION

Large-scale educational assessments are an important tool of different levels of government and may well determine the consequences of certain policies, such as correcting the course of ongoing programs. It is possible to add the functions of planning and monitoring as it requires projection and analysis of results over a period. Together, these functions make up the main reason to use the results to evaluate and guide the action of the government in a more integrated way.

Currently, the results of the systems of educational assessment are being used for purposes ranging from the creation of indicators of educational development to individual performance evaluations. Thus, teachers, students and administrators discuss the indicators of their school or district. Mayors and governors are also constantly asked about the performance of the education systems.

This article aims to bring to the debate the biggest large-scale assessment in Brazil focusing on primary education: Prova Brasil. In the next sections we will discuss the design of the exam, its range, its use as an instrument of public policy at the local level and the possible contributions to the education provision.

SAEB AND PROVA BRASIL

The objective of this section is to present the National Assessment System of Basic Education (SAEB). The Saeb was the first large-scale evaluation conducted in Brazil; the first version of SAEB was administered in 1990. Currently it consists of two complementary evaluations, ANRESC and ANEB. ANRESC, known as Prova Brasil, is a census assessment applied to students from the 5th and 9th grades from public elementary schools. ANEB, known as SAEB is a sample assessment that complements Prova Brasil. The sample applies to students from 5th and 9th grades in private schools.

SAEB is held every two years and evaluates knowledge, skills and competencies in the Portuguese language focusing on reading and on problem solving in Mathematics. In addition to the assessment instruments, some questionnaires are administered. There is a questionnaire consisting of questions of socioeconomic and cultural factors that reflect on the context that may be associated with student performance. There

F. DA ROSA BECKER & F. DE ASSIS ALVES

84

are also questionnaires allocated in assessed series to teachers of the Portuguese Language and Mathematics and to school principals. These questionnaires provide information on teachers’ pedagogical practices, socioeconomic and cultural leadership styles, forms of management, academic climate, working conditions, teaching resources and infrastructure.

Before 2005, SAEB was only administered to a sample population. The first version took place in 1990 with the participation of urban public schools that offered 1st, 3rd, 5th and 7th grades of elementary school. Students were assessed in Portuguese, mathematics and science. The 5th and 7th grades were also assessed in writing. This same format was adopted three years later in the 1993 version.

By 1995, SAEB had gone through some major changes. The first was the introduction of Item Response Theory (IRT). Through IRT tools were developed to measure an unobservable variable not directly measurable. In the case of SAEB, this variable would be the ability of the respondent. A major advantage of using the IRT is the comparability of results of ratings over time. The second change was the decision to apply the test in the final stages of each cycle of schooling; namely the 5th and 9th years of elementary school and 3rd year High School. Finally, there was the inclusion of the private network in the sample that had not participated in the evaluation until this edition.

In 2005, SAEB underwent restructuring defined in the Ministerial Decree No. 931 of 21 March 2005 and Prova Brasil was first administered in November 2005. This assessment was developed in order to provide more detailed data that make it possible to draw a profile of the reality of each public school and thus supplement the information already provided by SAEB. The Matrix of reference of Prova Brasil (Mathematics and Portuguese) is the same as SAEB. The reference population of Prova Brasil in 2005 was urban public schools with at least 30 students enrolled in the last grade of the initial years (5th year/4th grade) or the final years (Year 9/8th grade) Elementary School.

In the 2009 version, rural schools with at least 20 students, who were once part of the target audience of ANEB, became part of Prova Brasil. In 2011, to fulfill a request from several municipalities there was a decision to apply the test in locations that have at least 10 students enrolled in the 5th year (4th grade), even if those students are divided into separate schools but the council was responsible to administer the tests to the pupils in the same place, on the same day and shift. Note that this feature only applies to municipalities that in 2011 had no municipal schools with at least 20 students in grades assessed by Prova Brasil, or did not meet the criterion and, therefore, would not have the Index of Basic Education Development- IDEB.1

Table 1 depicts the scope and growth of Prova Brasil throughout its various versions. It is possible to verify the number of students, schools and municipalities that participated in the 2005, 2007 and 2009 versions. It is possible to observe a significant increase from 2005 to 2007, primarily due to the change of the decrease of required number of students (30) evaluated in the series to 20. Thus, a larger number of schools now meet the new criterion, which consequently increased the

QUALITY AND MONITORING IN BRAZIL

85

number of students assessed. From 2007 to 2009, the observed increase is due to the inclusion of rural schools in the target audience of the assessment.

This section presented Prova Brasil, its characteristics, scope and growth over the first three versions of the exam. The following sections present the implications for public policy on schools.

PROVA BRASIL AND MUNICIPALITIES

This section aims to explore the interface of Prova Brasil with municipalities through public education policies. This interface occurs mainly in two ways: the use of the results by municipalities for planning the school system and the use of evidence by the federal government for tracking and monitoring public programs for basic education.

As explained in the previous section, Prova Brasil has a census element and delivers results for Brazil, Regions, Federation units, municipalities and schools. Besides Prova Brasil it is important to emphasize the creation of IDEB. The index was created in order to make possible the monitoring of Brazilian public schools, allowing the identification and monitoring of schools whose students have a low average performance. An educational system that systematically fails its students resulting in most of them dropping out of school before the completion is not desirable. Neither is it satisfactory to pass their students allowing them to leave school without acquiring the appropriate level of knowledge (Fernandes, 2007).

It was necessary to have an indicator that could combine the information about the performance of students with school flow (promotion, repetition and dropout). The index calculation is done through a combination of standardized outcome expectation levels of Prova Brasil (indicator of proficiency) and the average rate of success for students (student flow indicator). Thus, the IDEB can be calculated by state, municipality and even by school.

With regard to the use of Prova Brasil for planning educational systems as a whole, there are still challenges ranging from the dissemination of results to the ownership of data across networks. It is not difficult to find statements such as

Table 1. Number of students, schools and municipalities participating in the 2005, 2007 and 2009 versions of Prova Brasil

Students Schools MunicipalitiesGrade/Year

2005 2007 2009 2005 2007 2009 2005 2007 2009

4 1.975.635 2.310.302 2.524.518 30.090 37.483 43.582 5.027 5.486 5.4598 1.422.200 1.798.963 1.943.158 22.017 27.381 31.963 5.193 5.527 5.484

Source: INEP

F. DA ROSA BECKER & F. DE ASSIS ALVES

86

“Prova Brasil serves no purpose. I need the information in real time so we used this other evidence to assess the network.” It cannot be generalized, but refers to two important issues: the creation of local evaluation systems and the time it takes between the application and the delivery of results.

According to Castro (2009), the development of regional or local assessment, in conjunction with the national system, has some advantages. First, they enable further research on specific regional or local areas, which is not possible in SAEB and Prova Brasil.

Second, they enable the collection of information of interest to the network manager, which cannot be done in a national assessment. Only decentralized systems can analyze each school and identify what they need to do to improve student achievement, considering the characteristics of each. Currently, about eleven Brazilian states and two cities already have their own systems to assess their educational systems, producing results by school.

Moreover, networks have made advancements in creating local indexes, influenced and encouraged by the creation of the IDEB at the national level. Some states, including Pernambuco (Idepe), Amazonas (IDEAM), Sao Paulo (Idesp) Ceará (IDE-Alpha), Rio de Janeiro (Iderj), and the cities of Rio de Janeiro (Rio-IDE), Sao Paulo and the Federal District (IDDF) have created such indicators.

Regarding the time between application and diffusion, sometimes the context has completely changed concerning not only students but also teachers, as the reality in Brazil is that approximately 24% of teachers in public elementary schools are hired on a temporary basis. Because of this, faster delivery of results so that the data can be better used by the networks is still a challenge.

The second interface with states and municipalities to be explored is the way the federal government tracks and monitors public programs for basic education. This is an indirect link with municipalities since it occurs through IDEB. With IDEB, municipal systems, state and federal education have quality goals to achieve. It was stipulated that the Brazilian education system in 2021 is expected to reach level 6 in IDEB for the early years of elementary school. This date was chosen with reference to the symbolism of the Bicentennial of Independence in 2022.

According to these goals, each system must evolve starting from different points and considering a larger effort of those who are worse off, so that there is an improvement in the quality of education and reduction of inequalities observed. The definition of the goal of IDEB 6.0 for the early years of elementary school took over as the quality standard average performance of OECD countries (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) in Pisa. Table 2 presents the IDEB for Brazil and education networks for the years 2005, 2007 and 2009 and some intermediate goals.

From the analysis of the indicators of IDEB, Ministry of Education -MEC increased the transfer of funds to municipalities with better performance through the Money Direct to School Program (PDDE) and, in the case of municipalities with the worst results (the so-called priority municipalities) offered technical and/or

QUALITY AND MONITORING IN BRAZIL

87

financial support. The IDEB is also used as criteria for schools to be given priority to receive technical and financial assistance through the School Development Plan (PDE-School).

PDE – School is a management tool that assists the school to diagnose the problems better: ensure team work to achieve the same goals, and evaluate and adjust its direction in response to a changing environment. The Development Plan goes through three stages: the diagnosis, the development of the plan and the technical analysis performed by technicians from MEC. It is a process that allows the integration of external evaluations, school and educational indicators. In this sense it contributes to a better relationship among the different levels of government and also can be used as a direct link between school and the ministry of education.

Thus, IDEB is currently the main performance indicator of basic education, used in various programs of MEC and even in some local programs. For this reason it is important for municipalities “to have IDEB.” As Prova Brasil is a component of the index it became essential for municipalities to participate in the evaluation of the federal programs. Table 3 shows the evolution of the number of municipalities with IDEB.

Table 3 shows the number of municipalities with IDEB, the number of municipalities that participate in the 4th and 8th (5th and 9th year) series assessment according to the census and the number of school districts for the years 2005, 2007 and 2009. When looking at the first line, referring to municipalities that have grade 4/year 5 of elementary school and IDEB, there is a substantial increase in the number of cities between the years 2005 (79.75% of the total number of municipalities that have 4th grade and/or 5th year of basic education) and 2007

Table 2. IDEB 2005, 2007, 2009 and 2011 / Goals for 2015 and 2021

IDEB Goals

2005 2007 2009 2011 2015 2021

4ª Brasil 3,8 4,2 4,6 5,0 5,2 6,0Public 3,6 4,0 4,4 4,7 5,0 5,8Private 5,9 6,0 6,4 6,5 7,0 7,5Municipal 3,4 4,0 4,4 4,7 4,8 5,7State 3,9 4,3 4,9 5,1 5,3 6,1

8ª Brasil 3,5 3,8 4,0 4,1 4,7 5,5Public 3,2 3,5 3,7 3,9 4,5 5,2Private 5,8 5,8 5,9 6,0 6,8 7,3Municipal 3,1 3,4 3,6 3,8 4,3 5,1State 3,3 3,6 3,8 3,9 4,5 5,3

Source: INEP

F. DA ROSA BECKER & F. DE ASSIS ALVES

88

(92.57%). This was due to the reduction of the number of students required for the assessment from at least 30 to 20 students, and the participation of a large number of municipalities.

The third row of the table shows that the total number of municipalities in the country has 97.41% enrollment in 4th grade and 69.80% in 8th grade in 2009. 91.51% of these municipalities have IDEB to grade 4/year 5 and 79.81% for grade 8/year 9. So, most of the municipalities with elementary school participate in Prova Brasil and have IDEB, especially for grade 4/year 5.

However, there are other reasons that go beyond participation in the trail for a municipality that does not have IDEB. As shown, the index is comprised of the results of Prova Brasil and the success rate. The rate is calculated based on the information provided by the networks through the school census, so if there is problem in this data report, the municipality will not have IDEB. This section presented some interfaces between Prova Brasil and the municipal level; the next section will explore the interfaces with the school networks.

PROVA BRASIL AT SCHOOL

In the literature of educational assessment, different roles are assigned to large-scale educational assessment, among them, control, diagnosis and accountability. This section aims to explore these tasks through the interfaces of Prova Brasil and schools from the time of its administration to the dissemination and analysis of assessment results.

As an external assessment, the design of the trial, the construction of the reference matrix and the process of preparing items take place outside school. In the specific case of Prova Brasil, there was a broad debate involving the academic community and civil society in the defining moment of the matrix; however, the perception of many teachers is that it is an instrument of government control imposed on schools.

Table 3. Municipalities with IDEB for 4th and 8th grades 2005, 2007 and 2009

IDEB 2005 IDEB 2007 IDEB 2009Total % Total % Total %

Municipalities with IDEB

4 4.345 79.75 4.986 92.57 4.959 91.518 2.458 66.63 3.162 83.89 3.099 79.81

Municipalities with students in these grades

4 5.448 97.95 5.386 96.84 5.419 97.418 3.689 66.33 3.769 67.76 3.883 69.80

Total of Municipalities

5.562 100.00 5.562 100.00 5.563 100.00

Source: INEP

QUALITY AND MONITORING IN BRAZIL

89

The exam is not an end in itself. If teachers, managers and trainers not take it into account, the results will not contribute to the improvement of education. It is important that the exam be seen as an instrument of the evaluation process, an element that allows a broader view of the educational system, comparisons between schools in the same network and even among networks.

As mentioned above, the exam is an instrument and not the evaluation process itself. As an assessment that enables comparison among networks nationwide, there are items concerning basic skills of mathematics and Portuguese; that is, skills expected that every child has acquired at that level of education regardless of other curriculum components or regional and local specificities. Strasburg (2010) criticizes the exam for stimulating, according to the author, an existing hierarchy of curriculum components.

The School Curriculum establishes a link between principles and practice, including not only the subject to be taught but also regional characteristics. Formed by a common national basis, the elementary school curriculum contains: Portuguese language, Mathematics, Science, History and Geography, as well as Arts, Physical Education, Foreign Language, and optional religious education. For these reasons, the array of skills presented in Prova Brasil should not be seen as a proposed curriculum and not be used as such.

There are two perspectives regarding the contribution of Prova Brasil on the school unit: feedback on the educational process and internal policy of the school. The feedback process is meant to encourage rethinking and change as a function of self-assessment practices promoted by the discussion of the results of the test. On the other hand, the contribution to the internal politics of the school takes place after reflection about the results and incorporating data from external assessments to planning and internal documents from school (Esquinsani, 2010).

The second section which presented the composition of Prova Brasil, showed that in addition to measuring students ‘skills at the time of administration information is collected about the teachers, principals and students’ socio-economic background. This additional information allows the analysis of related factors to the learning process and a better interpretation of the results obtained.

A pivotal moment to the quality of the information collected is therefore the application of the assessment at school. The first interface between the exam and the school is defined by Andrade (2010) as the day in which several unknown actors intervene in everyday school life. This intervention should be well organized and planned to avoid upsetting students.

However, there are reports of problems in the administration as, for example, situations in which teachers of mathematics and/or Portuguese are not in school at the moment and consequently cannot respond the questionnaire.

In the 2009 version of Prova Brasil, taking into account classes that actually did the exam, it was found that 20.2% of the classes of the 5th year (4th grade) and 24.1% from the 9th year (or 8th grade) had no teacher responding to the questionnaire, which affected the analysis of associated factors.

F. DA ROSA BECKER & F. DE ASSIS ALVES

90

The quality (and quantity) of data collected at each participating school is also and foremost the responsibility of the manager of the school. The distribution of the exam is based on data from the School Census. The educational network in each locality reports the information provided to the Census electronically. However, there are situations where at the moment of administration the technicians find out that a particular class does not exist or that the number of students is not the same as contained in the database.

The declaration of correct information by the secretary of education is critical to the success of the administration of the assessment. More serious than errors in the School Census data is the fact that in a small number of schools the participation is manipulated. When Prova Brasil is administered some students whose expected result is lower than that of peers are not permitted to attend in order to make the results of the school better.

Fernandes (2010) examined the implementation of the exam in eleven schools in the city of Vitória (ES) and distortions were found in two schools, among them the fact that only students with the highest grades took the test. This practice aside from the possibility of distortion in the analysis of results affects the right to the quality of education of students. If a school/network has some kind of fragility, it is important to identify it in order to solve it. It is the responsibility of the manager of the school to control the frequency and accuracy of information given at the time of administration of the test. By analyzing the database from Prova Brasil 2009 and School Census it is possible to verify that the average rate of participation by school students in the 4th grade/5th year was 87.76% and 79.35% of 8th grade/9th year.

The second moment of interface with school is the report of the evaluation results. Among them are three points to note: the arrival of the school result, the contents of the report and the use of data by teachers, principals and coordinators.

The results of the Prova Brasil assessment are sent to all schools and are also available on the Internet. Later, the micro data is published and made available for download so that it is possible to anyone interested to analyze the performance of each school evaluated and the related factors.

It is assumed that the analysis of the information, in the case of Prova Brasil, is not a function of the administrator in order to respect the autonomy of the school networks; therefore it is fundamental to provide the information necessary to make it possible to judge the results.

According to Becker and Silva (2010), the report should allow a view of the status of the school concerning the expected level of knowledge, enabling the identification of the skills that were not addressed and skills that could be developed so to get a better result. Without this, the review loses transparency and does not become a self-assessment. A school principal that receives a report saying that the average was 175 needs to know what that number means, and if this is a good result.

The scale of Portuguese proficiency has nine levels to explain the performance of pupils: 125, 150, 175, and so on up to level 350. The scale of Mathematics consists of ten levels ranging from 125 to 375 points.

QUALITY AND MONITORING IN BRAZIL

91

It is possible to tell by the location of the numerical performance range, which skills students have already accomplished, which they are developing and which remain to be achieved. It is expected that students in the 4th grade (5th year) will reach at least the level 250 ranges. As for the students in the 8th grade (9th year), level 350 and above this level is the expected proficiency for students in the 3rd grade of high school.

Thus, knowing the proficiency scale is essential for the evaluation process. Within the school, it is up to the director and educational coordinator not only to present the results to the teachers, but also to discuss them.

The debate over the competences matrix and the results scale provides a joint construction of the implications and meaning, promotes an understanding of the collective dimension of the exam and gives legitimacy to the evaluation process. When the process acquires political legitimacy (not only technical), the results and the reports are received in other way and tend to become part of a wider assessment process that will actually reach the classroom.

In a recent survey conducted by the Carlos Chagas Foundation in the five geographic regions of the country it was found that most of pedagogical coordinators are aware of Prova Brasil and IDEB; however, when asked about the IDEB, almost half (47%) of the school teachers cited a number above 10. Taking into account that the index can serve for planning actions in order to reach the school’s goals, this lack of information is extremely problematical.

Perreli and Rezende (2011) analyzed the application of external evaluations in Campo Grande (MS) and one of the questions that was investigated was how teachers become aware of the results of Prova Brasil. Most teachers interviewed reported that the process was explained superficially and meetings with directors or was restricted to presentation of results and comparisons between school networks.

Pereira and Mori (2011) analyzed the same question in Paraná schools and the interviewed teachers said they had access to the results through the material sent by National Institute for Educational Studies and Research Anísio Teixeira- INEP and discussions held by the Regional Center of Education.

Soligo, Esquinsani and Santos (2010) studied the experience of continuing education for teachers and administrators of schools of Rio Grande do Sul State through educational workshops using Prova Brasil data and concluded that this is an important opportunity for building knowledge and identifying problems and school needs.

Horta Neto (2007) investigated the use of the results by schools of the Federal District. It was possible to identify that to discuss student performance based on the information is a process that still faces resistance. According to the author, even those who used the data collected did so as if the improvement of student performance were an end in itself, without regard to school factors that could be behind this performance.

Thus, there are several regional and local initiatives in order to approach the results and teachers seeking to overcome the challenge of connecting the assessment and the classroom.

F. DA ROSA BECKER & F. DE ASSIS ALVES

92

The third interface of Prova Brasil and schools is through accountability, both to government and to society in general. There are two routes for the dissemination of results to society: media and school. Ribeiro, Ribeiro and Gusmão (2005) evaluated the publication of the results by the media and concluded that, in general, that disclosure creates unease in the school community. The presentation of data decontextualized and often in the form of ranking reinforces the negative image of public education and of some schools in particular. Alves and Passador (2011) argue that this model of dissemination triggers the lack of responsiveness of education professionals and often in reaction, they dismiss the test results.

On the other hand, external dissemination of results done by the school community and parents has proven to be a practice that contributes to the improvement of teaching. Parental involvement in school life contributes to the expansion of democracy and a more autonomous school. Also, to explain Prova Brasil and its data makes the school community interpret the results differently than the ones disseminated by the local media.

This section presented the interfaces and possible uses of Prova Brasil by the school community. The next section includes some final comments.

FINAL COMMENTS

As with any public policy, the assessment of basic education has gone through several phases since its entry into the government’s agenda for implementation and evaluation.

As explained in the text, Prova Brasil expanded the possibilities of using large-scale assessment in the country, raised the possibility of an expanded vision for schools, municipalities and the comparability between networks. The use of the results to calculate an indicator of quality of education resulted in more importance being given to the results in different spheres ranging from the student and his family to the manager of the city/state assessed.

In this sense, the evaluation entered the school agenda (not just public) and various state and even municipal systems were created. The dimension achieved by this exam from the evaluation of quality of schools to indicators and consequently as a fundamental element for entrance into public programs made the implementation of this initiative receive greater attention from stakeholders, academia and even the general population.

Accordingly, various studies and reports can be found in the literature. The paper aims to present the most relevant issues for understanding how much progress has been made in the evaluation of basic education and how much there is still to be done to achieve the desired result. It is time to evaluate the assessment, give feedback for the practice, move forward and overcome the challenges that still exist in the process, as presented, from the application to the interpretation and use of results.

NOTE

1 IDEB ranges on a scale from 0 to 10, which was adopted by Educational Development Plan (PDE). A target of 6 was set for 2021 in order to have the whole country in the same pattern observed in

QUALITY AND MONITORING IN BRAZIL

93

private schools at the time of the creation of the index. The index is reached through the multiplication of P times N. From the average passing rate of a specific schooling level one calculates the average time T needed to complete one school year. Its inverses give P, the probability that a student passes on the following school year. N is the average of the Maths and Portuguese language tests taken in Saeb and Prova Brasil.

REFERENCES

Alves, T., & Passador, S. (2011). Educação Pública no Brasil: a origem socioeconômica dos alunos e as condições de oferta de ensino no contexto da avaliação da educação básica. São Paulo: Ed. AnnaBlume/INEP/CAPES.

Andrade, A. (2010). Cotidiano Escolar e processos de aplicação da Prova Brasil: diversas temporalidades. In Avaliação em larga escala Foco na Escola. São Leopoldo: Ed. Oikos.

Becker, F., & Silva, D. (2010). Considerações sobre o informe de resultados de uma avaliação externa. In V Congresso Internacional em Avaliação Educacional, 2010, Fortaleza. Avaliar e Intervir: novos rumos da avaliação educacional. Fortaleza

Fernandes, R. (2007). Índice de desenvolvimento da educação básica – Série Documental. Brasília: INEP.Fernandes, F. (2010). O IDEB e a Prova Brasil na gestão das escolas municipais de Vitória – ES. In Anais

da 33rd Reunião Anual da Associação Nacional de Pós-Graduação e Pesquisa em Educação – Anped Caxambu-MG.

Horta Neto, J. (2007). Limites e possibilidades de utilização dos resultados do SAEB na gestão do sistema público de ensino: o caso do Distrito Federal. In I Colóquio Ibero Americano de Política e Administração Escolar, Porto Alegre.

Pereira, S., & Mori, V. (2011). Avaliação e políticas publicas em educação: a Prova Brasil no contexto das práticas escolares. In III seminário do Observatório da Educação. Brasília: INEP/CAPES.

Perreli, M., & Rezende, E. (2011). A Prova Brasil – Matemática em escolas municipais de Campo Grande, MS: contextos e concepções de professores. In III seminário do Observatório da Educação. INEP/CAPES Brasilia.

Ribeiro, V., & Gusmão, J. (2005). Indicadores da Qualidade para a mobilização da escola. Cadernos de Pesquisa, 35(124), 227–251.

Soligo Esquinsani & Santos. (2010). Analisando uma prática: as avaliações em larga escala nas oficinas de formação de gestores da educação básica. In Avaliação em larga escala Foco na Escola. São Leopoldo: Ed. Oikos.

Strasburg, Q. (2010). Relato de experiência da SMED de São Leopoldo a respeito da avaliação de larga escala. In Avaliação em larga escala Foco na Escola. São Leopoldo: Ed. Oikos.

Fernanda da Rosa BeckerResearcher at Anísio Teixeira National Institute of Educational Studies and Research – INEP – Ministry of Education of Brazil (Brazil)

Fabiana de Assis AlvesResearcher at Anísio Teixeira National Institute of Educational Studies and Research – INEP – Ministry of Education of Brazil (Brazil)

F. Acosta & S. Nogueira (Eds.), Rethinking Public Education Systems in the 21st Century Scenario, 95–115. © 2017 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

DANIEL PINKASZ

7. RE-SYSTEMATIZATION OF SECONDARY EDUCATION IN THE PAST TWO DECADES

IN THE PROVINCE OF BUENOS AIRES

A Conceptual Framework for the Study of Recent Changes in Education Systems

PRESENTATION

The purpose of this paper is to present some ideas for the study of the recent dynamics of expansion of education systems by adopting the concepts of “systematization”1 and “segmentation”2 that have proven productive in the description of the processes of constitution of education systems in several European countries during the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Our goal is to read the reforms and recent changes in the systems in the logical framework we call “re systematization” of education systems.

Historical studies that are reference today (Müller, Ringer, & Simon, 1992) described the process of formation of the education systems and their articulation with the social system, studying dynamics identified as “systematization” and “segmentation”. In addition to these specific contributions, these papers showed us a model of analysis of the relationship between education and social systems “in motion”. In Latin America and in Argentina particularly over the last 20 years the social and educational systems have been constantly changing, so it seems appropriate to return to the study of systematization since we are in a real process of re systematization in the XXI century. Globalization, the loss of centrality of national systems, the emergence of sub-national states and of local actors, the organization of social movements, the “exit” of the middle classes from public schools, the social closure, the state reforms, the succession of educational reforms, all these processes can be read as the twilight of the structures and functioning of education systems as were systematized in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century. Going back on the dynamics of systematization and segmentation could improve the understanding of the current processes and their dynamics of change. From our perspective and object of investigation, we are interested in reviewing those dynamics to incorporate them as categories to the comparative studies of the implementation of public policies in education.

In the past 20 years, the systems in the region have undergone reforms that have profoundly changed their settings. This paper argues about the importance of studying

D. PINKASZ

96

the dynamics of such changes as well as the resulting physiognomy of the reforms. It also argues that the description emerging from the rules and formal specifications of systems does not fully describe the actual structure by various factors among which are accounted reasons such as that the processes of re systematization are still ongoing, that residual elements from previous stages still endure, also that the changes have affected some components differently from the others, for example: the recruitment and training of teachers working at the secondary level, curriculum changes; movement of students by new circuits of offering. It is also influenced by symbolic dimensions related to the way the population has perceived the changes and how they behave as “demand”, etc.

The paper is divided into two parts. In the first one we will describe in a panoramic way, in a jurisdiction of Argentina, the differentiation process of the education offers for secondary level composed of different institutional types. This is the process we call “re systematization”. Likewise, we will present some conceptual elements present in available research papers which identify social dynamics that articulate the demand with the differentiated institutional offer, which allows us to speak of segmentation.

In the second part, assuming the existence of a segmented system in the province of Buenos Aires, we will develop a short case study focusing on two administrative units (districts) in the mentioned province and in eleven schools of both districts. In this second part we will try to provide evidence to argue that to the different institutional types correspond different institutional cultures and that these cultures are related to the results and the educational experiences of students. The material for reflection for this second part arises from the analysis of socio-economic indicators of the neighborhoods where the schools are located, of indicators of efficiency of those schools and of qualitative data collected in interviews with principals and teachers and observations in the schools (Appendix I).

PART ONE SYSTEMS AND SUBSYSTEMS IN THE STRUCTURE

OF EDUCATION IN ARGENTINA

Historically, Argentina was shaping a differentiated education system from the perspective of its administrative management, composed of a set of schools under a national central authority and another set of institutions dependent on the provincial authorities. Therefore, and until 1993, year of the educational decentralization, in each province coexisted at least two subsystems with their own authorities and administrative systems although similar from the point of view of their academic offerings, of the curriculum structure and of its functioning: a compulsory elementary school of seven years (6–12 years old), a secondary school divided into four categories of five years each (13–17 years old3) and of 6 years for the technical modality (13–18 years old), a post-secondary teacher training of 2 and a half years for teachers of primary education (basic), 4 years for secondary school teachers. Moreover, the private

RE-SYSTEMATIZATION OF SECONDARY EDUCATION

97

offer, which has enjoyed and enjoys autonomy -dependent in a major proportion of the Catholic Church, but also of other faiths, of foreign communities who have settled in the country and of a growing secular private offering – was regulated by a national state4 office in central dependencies that were also transferred from 1993 onwards.

In regard to its expansion the Argentinean secondary education has grown steadily during the second half of the twentieth century. The enrollment at this level grew three times between 1947 and 1960 and has doubled between this year and 1970. From a net enrollment rate of 38% in 1980 it passed to a 68% in 2001 (Census of Population and Housing, in Acosta, 2011). This expansion has been explained by several converging factors: by the historical tendency of the urban middle class to demand secondary education (Tedesco, 2003), by the policies of incorporation of the non-manual urban working classes (Wiñar, 1970, 1974) and by processes of social modernization and economic expansion in the sixties that hit the education system (Braslavsky, 1980), or by a combination of these factors (Acosta, 2011). Since the nineties of the twentieth century the expansion process enters a new phase driven by state policies of extension of compulsory schooling. This stage can be divided into two phases: the first from the sanction of compulsory education in the lower secondary school in the early nineties and the second, from the mid-2000s, with the sanction that made the upper secondary school mandatory as well.

EXPANSION OF SECONDARY EDUCATION IN THE PROVINCE OF BUENOS AIRES, 1996–2011: FORMATION OF A DUAL SYSTEM

The decentralization of the early nineties and a new Education Act changed the scenario described in the preceding paragraphs.5 In 1996, the province of Buenos Aires, under the new national legal framework, placed the compulsory lower secondary school for high school as an extension of primary school and established a three years Polimodal6 level to assimilate all existing modalities up to that time. That is to extend “upwards”7 for two more years the compulsory basic education (called basic general education – EGB (for its initials in Spanish)) and created a three-year high school, called Polimodal Education.

The manner in which this change was reflected was conditioned by the structure of the offer of an already existing system. Since primary school network was more extensive than the secondary school network, in densely populated regions of the suburbs but without secondary school network coverage – as well as in rural8 and semi-rural areas – the less expensive decision in terms of budget – albeit it demanded a huge effort to build classrooms – and of immediate application would be to locate it as an extension of the primary education network. This decision was also political because it was aimed at creating educational offerings in the lower secondary school, there where was concentrated the demand of those social sectors that traditionally have not been favored by the dynamics of expansion of the secondary education previous to this stage (Freytes, 2007; Gorostiaga, Acedo, & Senen Gonzalez, 2004).

D. PINKASZ

98

This orientation was accompanied by the complementary objective of favoring the retention of students who traditionally dropped out of school in 1st or 2nd year – equivalent to 8th and 9th year of EGB – fostering EGB unit; that is to say, under the assumption – correct though insufficient as was demonstrated – that for the students, changing institution and institutional culture favored the existing high rates of early school leaving (Freytes, 2007). Simultaneously such measures were accompanied by a set of targeted social policies aimed at improving the conditions of demand from these sectors in a context of social reconfiguration and of growing poverty increase. It is to say that the “location” of the lower secondary school in primary schools was part of a kind of alliance between the ruling political force in the province – the PJ (Partido Justicialista) – and those social sectors of low income that were target of social policies.

There were, however, other ways to locate the compulsory cycle – also called EGB- similarly constrained by the location of the existing school network and under the motto of maintaining “unity of EGB”. These ways were on one hand, those called EGB “articulated”, which consisted in linking 1st and 2nd years – thereafter 8th and 9th – to existing and neighboring primary schools and to rename the third cycles (EGB) that were already part of the same institution. The latter institutional type was verified, usually in former national normal schools9 or private schools offering primary and secondary education in the same educational unit.

The following table shows the location models of the third cycle of the EGB.

Location model of EGB Description

EGB complete A primary school that incorporates the 8th and 9th year

EGB “articulated” The first two years of an existing secondary school that relates to a nearby elementary school

EGB in a greater educational unit Third cycle administratively differentiated in a school that has more than one educational level

One consequence of the policy that prioritized and achieved the inclusion of socially and educationally excluded sectors was to maintain the historical institutional type of secondary school for the middle and upper classes, since in the urban circuits where circulated or in the neighborhoods where inhabited these sectors, remained the “articulated” type that corresponded in most cases with the dominant institutional type of the humanist school, or its variation the commercial modality, around which was structured the institutional model that hegemonized the expansion of the level. Facilities of former Normal National schools with complete offer of all levels -primary, secondary and in some cases tertiary- or private schools offering secondary education level were also maintained; that is to say, institutional models that in fact were not divided between a nine-year EGB and a three-year Polimodal.

RE-SYSTEMATIZATION OF SECONDARY EDUCATION

99

In practice emerged a segmented dual system formed by the extension of the old primary schools, to which were added the newly created lower secondary school on one hand and on the other, by institutions comprising the existing lower secondary schools that persisted in the old buildings of the traditional high schools and were linked in a “virtual”10 way with old primary school or institutions of complete offer that only introduced administrative changes.

Between 2005 and 2011 the province of Buenos Aires makes a new series of changes in the structure of the provincial education system aiming at reunify a secondary school of six years, which focuses on two stages. From 2006 it starts a transformation of the lower secondary school of secondary school -which was physically and administratively housed in primary schools – into a Basic Secondary Schools (ESB for its initials in Spanish) and upper secondary schools called Polymodal schools are turned into Higher Secondary Schools (ESS for its initials in Spanish), also modifying its academic structure organized in modalities. Finally, from 2011 onwards, it is established that the Basic Secondary Schools should join Higher Secondary Schools to form new schools called “Secondary Education Schools” (EES for its initials in Spanish), lasting six years.11

The span of 15 years of assembly and reassembly of the educational offer, with modifications in the normative basis, in the administrative units, in the academic structure, in the curriculum, in the professional profiles of teachers and principals, with high turnover of authorities and teachers; the educational institutions struggled to maintain its basic features or to adapt to the new audiences that changing circumstances imposed on them, making every effort to maintain, increase or “improve” the enrollment profile, while families increased and sophisticated their strategies for choosing their children’s schools, choosing the moment in their trajectories to make them change institutions (Gorostiaga and others, 2004).

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE SOCIAL SYSTEM AND THE EDUCATION SYSTEM IN THE CONFIGURATION OF

O SEGMENTED EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM

This differentiated structure resulted from the confluence of the rearrangement of the offer with the existing system as we have said, but also from the demand, it is to say, from the society. Indeed, the circuit formed by elementary schools and new cycles or years added, was oriented to meet the demands of social groups whose children were first generation schooled that corresponded and still corresponds to low income and informal economy social groups (Freytes, 2007; Gorostiaga & others, 2004). Meanwhile the circuit that maintained similar characteristics to those of the traditional high school, continued accommodating the middle classes who had already conquered secondary education, because the families who have historically had access to the level persisted in staying in institutions called “articulated” or that offered several levels, which had similar characteristics to those valid before the law

D. PINKASZ

100

established the extension of the lower secondary school. This distribution is what allows us to speak of a segmented structure of the new system.

Adaptations and persistence resulted from the combination of social practices and formal and informal mechanisms for allocation and reallocation of the students’ flow. Already in the mid-eighties a pioneering study noted that the unitary structure of the Argentine Education System was not really such, when detected patterns of school attendance associating social origin with groups of formally equal institutions but with important differences in the characteristics of the offer: shortened duration of the school day, deterioration of infrastructure and equipment, among other factors (Braslavsky, 1985). These studies warned of the existence of an increasing differentiation, which they called “segmentation”, and delineated the existence of informal mechanisms of enrollment allocation. Two decades and more after this pioneering work, other studies (Feijoo & Corbetta, 2004; Gallart, 2006, Veleda, 2012) provided partial evidence of the existence of mechanisms for selecting enrollment in primary and in secondary education.

ARTICULATION OF EDUCATION SYSTEMS WITH THE SOCIAL SYSTEM

The successive transformations described in the province of Buenos Aires can be read as re-systematization processes of its education system and in particular of the secondary education subsystem. By saying “re-systematization” we are referring to: the modification of much of its regulatory system, the creation of new institutional types and school types, the alteration of the systems of authority and bureaucratic dependence, changes in the professional profiles and the curricular structure, the entry of new public under the processes of enrollment expansion. Therefore refer to historical studies that showed the systematization processes in the origins of education systems, can help the understanding of the recent processes of change in the education systems in the region.

Comparative studies have revealed the existence of two models of relationship between education systems with the social system to explain the dynamic of systematization with segmentation they describe. The French and Prussian models correspond to centralized education systems and the English or Anglo Saxon corresponding to decentralized education systems. Our thesis is that in the dynamics of re-systematization of secondary education in the province of Buenos Aires, these two models have operated simultaneously and in recent years a shift towards the decentralized model is verified as a result of the decentralization and the consolidation of a model of federal government that consists in granting increased autonomy to the provinces and them, in the case of the province of Buenos Aries, to the schools (Freytes, 2007).

This shift can be verified in five aspects. First on the jurisdictional dimension, a condition of this shift and a shift in itself: the unification of State powers in a territorial unit (province) and its deconcentration from national to provincial level. Second, on the federalization of decision-making. Third, on what we shall call the

RE-SYSTEMATIZATION OF SECONDARY EDUCATION

101

“consensus model” as result of federalization (Pinkasz, 2010). This model consists in moving certain types of decisions to the next “inferior” jurisdictional level by the enunciation of criteria or rules leaving “the game open” for its concretion to the province or school, depending on the level of the original decision: e.g. certain curricular definitions for schools, decisions of “articulation” between institutions or choice of orientations at the upper secondary school. Fourth, the idea of institutional project as a technology for change in the school unit. Fifth, linking schools with the “community”, understanding by that, the parent community and/or social organizations. The scenario product of this displacement is the range of possibilities in which is verified a dynamic that tends to the segmentation that emerges from a combination between the action “by default” at the state leadership – bureaucratic – and an “effective” action with formal and informal components linking at the base of the system authorities of local administrative units, principals and families.

In centralized models, the link between education system and social system tends to be established through political processes, whereas in the decentralized model there would be more interplay for micro political processes and market actors (van Zanten, 2008) and for the local level (Veleda, 2012). Although these actors and factors also play their role in centralized models, in the decentralized ones this game is accentuated, reducing the influence of macrosocial groups and their political mediators, and enabling the direct influence of the families on educational institutions. These are processes in which the mediation of the bureaucratic structure is less homogeneous and less aligned with objectives driven from the top.

Thus in decentralized educational models whose origins have played a predominant role on civil society, as has been highlighted by studies on systematization in English history (Müller et al., 1992), the dynamic of segmentation seems to be explained by the role of educational units or by the interaction between this dynamic and the decisions of systematization of the regulatory authorities. For example, the existence of defining institutions (Steedman, 1992), a group of select public schools that radiated their influence to the whole of secondary education in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, played a central role. These institutions influenced the process of systematization imposing circuits of elites formation articulated with the universities at Oxford and Cambridge. In the diffusion process of the model, competition between schools for the students and attraction of faculty played a key role, a type of school organization that facilitated the management of youth sociability in “total institutions”, the definition of academic orientations, among other factors.

The mechanisms described in decentralized models show some fertility when describing the factors that have a decisive influence on the dynamics of re-systematization of the school system in the province of Buenos Aires. Their identification and the description of their dynamic are important to review approaches that involve the unit of the system based on structural descriptions, static with source in the reading of the formal organization.

D. PINKASZ

102

SOCIAL ARTICULATION MECHANISMS OF SUPPLY AND DEMAND BETWEEN HOME AND SCHOOL

These mechanisms were recently taken as a case study in a qualitative research in the Province of Buenos Aires, which reveals with a little more detail their specific operation (Veleda, 2012). Though Veleda’s work refers to the primary level shows the factors that play a role in the interest of establishments to attract demand. Students are an “indirect resource” since, also for official schools, of the amount of students depends staffing and the informal hierarchy they occupy in the state bureaucracy. A continuing decline in student enrollment involves closing of courses and staff reductions. The reduction represents a decrease of prestige and also declining margins of school action, less administrative personnel, less management, less hall monitors. Schools are also concerned about the “type” of student who aspires to join, which is selected by informal mechanisms according to a reading of their social origin, place of residence, school history (not conflictive in their behavior and fluid in terms of educational trajectories), that does not exhibit learning difficulties and discipline.

There are also local prestige hierarchies that order the preferences of families for the schools. These preferences articulated social images, social closure operations (Tiramonti, 2004), school traditions rooted in the area and a more or less constant flow of students between public and private schools, to which the families and the authorities pay close attention. (Braslavsy, 1985; Veleda, 2012)

To the role of number and “profile” of students as a resource and the existence of a scale of local prestige of educational institutions, we must add a dynamic selection, relieved by Veleda’s work (2012), consisting in playing a set of strategies to attract families by the casual promotion of the “goodness” of the school, through mechanisms of open selection (although forbidden by the rules), by improving the offer with extra-curricular activities with other institutions,12 by the association between public schools of different levels and cycles for referral and acceptance of students. Although principals are the architects of these strategies, local authorities are involved to varying degrees by action or omission.

Another strategy is that, in times of change, some principals may choose the orientations or modalities of the upper secondary school13 that their school will offer. Although the margin of maneuver of the principal is restricted by the specialties of his teaching staff according to which the school can provide modalities, for example, science instead of Economics and Management or Communication, eventually and with some changes, the principals have learned to read the expectations of the communities and to offer attractive orientations for these communities, so as to encourage or increase the flow of incoming students.14 The expectations of the communities can be related to what the families perceive to be the less difficult orientation and that puts fewer barriers to the students’ graduation. The genesis of these social representations should be explored.

Of all the mechanisms described in the literature mentioned above, we wish to emphasize those linking different public institutions, because they constitute true

RE-SYSTEMATIZATION OF SECONDARY EDUCATION

103

informal circuits of articulation and because, as we intend to prove by the model we propose to discuss, are configured from 1996 around institutions with different characteristics.

PART TWO ANALYSIS OF THE CULTURE OF EDUCATIONAL

ORGANIZATIONS IN A SEGMENTED SYSTEM

In this second part we will develop the hypothesis that the described re- systematization brought as consequence institutions with different organizational cultures and that patterns of institutional culture can be found associated to the institution type. These cultural patterns configure educational practices that have consequences for the students. Therefore, if the segmentation is shown and if different types of institutional cultures correspond to the circuits, we can talk about a heterogeneous education system with educational practices systematically different. We shall now proceed to present a model for analyzing the culture of educational institutions to apply this model to a case study.

In our case study, we performed an adaptation of the model of analysis proposed by Dimmock (2010) for the comparison of educational organizations between different education systems. While this model has been designed for comparison between institutions in different cultures, we believe that can be adopted for the comparison within the same culture, because it accounts for differences between organizational cultures and would allow us to speak of subsystems into a single administrative unit.

DIMENSIONS OF THE “ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE”

“Most of the variation of the practices could be categorized into six dimensions though they require further validation” (Dimmock, 2010, p. 353). The dimensions presented by the author are:

• Process oriented – Outcomes oriented. The opposition presented by the author refers to the classical opposition between culture oriented to technical or bureaucratic processes against performance oriented culture. Overall, this opposition partly reflects the difference among many other forms of regulation. The first one between education systems with a strong bureaucratic and regulatory control on the one hand, and on the other education systems in which the regulation is exerted by mechanisms for control and evaluation of results. In our context, this opposition is not verified since there is no tradition of assessment practices or accountability mechanisms. However, it is possible to distinguish concerned practices about bureaucratic control and the response to that control and even the refuge in the regulations or the use of the rules as an obstacle and practices guided by the pedagogical effect on students, although the latter cannot be verified in the aggregate learning outcomes for the entire province.

D. PINKASZ

104

• Person oriented – Task oriented. This category refers to the tasks of teachers and other professionals in schools, opposes the practices whose orientation are referenced to personal well-being and care of people, against orientations to the task that require maximum effort and concern about performance and maximizing results. According to Dimmock this second orientation neglects the welfare and working environment although both can complement each other. In our adaptation this dimension does not refer to work environment, but what teachers and principals favour at the time of making choices when performing their educational proposals. In our model, person oriented refers to whether their decisions are guided by criteria of personal or occupational convenience or by professional suitability criteria for the pedagogical task.15 We must explain why to present as opposed decisions improving labor welfare and decisions related to the task. Let’s say then, that this opposition is not always dependent or manageable by principals and teachers but are “iron” options against which the actors are laid by certain decisions of educational policy. However, in our study we have circumscribed to consider decisions that when they are of genuine professional interest, such as waiving a certain task because it is not convenient to the professional career, have an immediate consequence on the task and its immediate mitigation is not in the hands of the head teacher. Therefore, the explanation of the kind of option refers not only to people but also to the organizational conditions.

• Parochial or Professional. Cultures with parochial orientation favour the application of criteria and practices generated in the same institution in which they work and, in our case, even though they work in more than one institution seem to have a local criterion, that is to say, defined practices in the framework of a situation that are no always applicable to other institutions. Professional culture implies the existence among the qualified personnel, of standards defined outside the local sphere (national or international) or standardized by communities of practice, for example, mathematics teachers. The opposition comes down to the existence of external or internal reference frameworks on which to rely to make decisions and evaluate or self-assess practice. The reference frameworks purely internal or endogenous, little related to standards or practices validated by communities of practice would have different pedagogical consequences to those that are referenced in broader professional models.

• Open – Close. Refers to the degree to which schools are permeated by the surrounding culture, families, for example. We do not include this dimension in our model since we have not got how to measure it in our approach.

• Control and Linkage. Refers to how the authority and control is exercised. Dimmock model concerns three sub dimensions

○ Formal – Informal: according to the degree of adjustment to formal procedures ○ Tight – Loose: refers to the degree of cohesion of values and practices among

its members ○ Direct – Indirect: the manner of exercise of leadership

RE-SYSTEMATIZATION OF SECONDARY EDUCATION

105

• In our context we do not follow the three sub dimensions because in the first case, the degree of attachment of the provincial education system to the informal dimension is really high and the actors behave within a framework of a range of formal and informal practices, to “measure” this sub dimension there would be necessary to count with instruments developed ad hoc that we do not have. Regarding the second dimension, we have information associated with the exercise of a specific program at schools and we consider it depending on the degree of tasks division with which the principal faces this program. In relation to the third sub dimension we do not have information as we have not measured it in the original design.

• Pragmatic – Normative. Dimmock’s model refers to the way the organization “serves” their customers. Applied to the school, refers to the extent to which educational institutions can be adapted to their students’ individual needs or they are forced to adapt to the institution. In our case, we will modify the sense of “pragmatic” and “normative” performing two operations. On one hand we shall refer this dimension to decisions and curriculum practices, that is to say whether or not the curriculum content is adapted and the way these contents are adapted. The second operation is the interpretation on adaptations that schools make to “their customer” in contexts of poverty, based on the literature (Gallart, 2006; Veleda, 2012). In our model the pragmatic adaptation of the curriculum is not strictly adaptation to the “needs” of the students, but a simplification of the contents and requirements under a debased image of students’ social destinations by their social background and educational path.

TYPOLOGY: INSTITUTIONS WITH INTEGRATED INCLUSIVE PRACTICES AND INSTITUTIONS WITH SEGMENTED INCLUSIVE PRACTICES

For several years it has been studying the role of educational institutions in promoting learning opportunities for students. A body of research starting from different approaches agrees on the concern for identifying those factors that make up the “school factor” (Murillo, 2003; LLECE, 2002). It has been highly influential, for example, the movement called effective schools, originated in countries with decentralized education systems in which the establishments enjoy relative autonomy, it has expanded to other countries. Some of these studies related to experiences in the region (Murillo, 2003) noted for example, the role played in the educational organizations by: shared goals, consensus, teamwork, type of leadership, orientation to learning of the different institutional actors, school and classroom atmosphere, high expectations on students’ achievement, quality of curriculum, classroom management, monitoring of students and frequent assessment, organizational learning and professional development of teachers, the involvement and participation of the educational community, among other factors.

It has been recently pointed out the importance of the school, as an organization, provides an adequate framework for interaction and defines targets with clarity and

D. PINKASZ

106

focuses the task to them, among other factors (Ruiz & Feldman, 2012). One of the common points of the various studies is the weight of organizational culture in the sense of configuring the pedagogical action around a consistent set of formal and informal patterns articulated with institutional frameworks (schedules, curriculum, standards, assessment systems, professional performance frameworks, etc.).

In our model and in a convergent manner with the results of studies on school factors, institutions whose institutional culture is oriented towards pedagogical results to the teaching task, assumes the criteria and practices of a professional culture, maintains a differentiation scheme and specialization of functions and adheres to the curriculum content selection as a common framework for teaching, instead of making its own selection, are institutions that provide better learning opportunities for students and a tendency to generate learning integrated with the requirements of the society.

By contrast, those institutions that are oriented to the processes in a ritual manner, privilege in their decisions and practices, personal convenience or the individual requirements of teachers such as timetable conveniences, guide their practices by criteria that are special, built and dependent of the endogenous organizational dynamics and presents a low level of specialization and differentiation of functions; reduce opportunities for learning and quality of content and privilege socialization. When these institutions are concentrated in low-income social contexts this reduction of opportunities becomes segmentation.

Of all five dimensions that we will take, we organized a dichotomous typology that summarizes the characteristics of each of the two institutional groups; the first called “A” concentrates predominately the features that in the model we have called “inclusive” and the other called “B” concentrates the practices of the model we call “segmentation”.

Below there are three tables showing the distribution of institutional culture models “A” and “B” whether they are of junior and upper secondary school and by their location in relation to a social vulnerability index (SoVI). The SoVI is an index built with information from the 2001 census that seeks to explain the conditions of life and vulnerability of the population and households, by census radius. Weighs socioeconomic and educational aspects and includes five dimensions (see Appendix II). As higher is the index, greater are the conditions of social vulnerability. We proceed by assigning to each of the dimensions of the model, an “A” (integrator) or “B” (“segmenter”16) as evidenced in the analysis of data from interviews with principals and a selection of teachers and observations in the 11 schools (see Appendix I). When most of the dimensions are assigned “A” we shall consider the institution as generative of learning opportunities and when most of the dimensions are assigned “B” we will classify it in the model of narrowing of learning opportunities, as we have developed in the preceding paragraphs.

Table 1 shows result not entirely conclusive but that allow us to maintain some statements. Six of the eleven institutions correspond to the model of reduced educational opportunities and four show integrated educational practices. One is in an intermediate degree.

RE-SYSTEMATIZATION OF SECONDARY EDUCATION

107

Tabl

e 1.

Inst

itutio

ns o

f the

sam

ple

by ty

pe o

f org

aniz

atio

nal c

ultu

re (a

ccor

ding

Dim

moc

k)

Inst

itutio

nC

ycle

Proc

esse

s /O

utco

mes

Pers

on/

Task

Paro

chia

l/ Pr

ofes

sion

alD

ivis

ion

of

func

tions

Prag

mat

ic/

Nor

mat

ive

Effe

ctiv

e pr

omot

ion

SoVI

1I

BB

BB

B57

,53

0,23

2I

BB

BB

B63

,37

0,41

3I

AA

AA

A91

,33

0,17

4I

AB

BB

B77

,27

0,28

5I

AB

AB

A51

,06

0,23

6S

BB

BB

B77

,67

0,33

7S

AA

AA

A71

,18

0,17

8S

BB

BB

B82

,72

0,2

9S

BB

BB

B74

,47

0,46

10S

AA

AB

B86

,76

0,17

11S

AA

AA

A77

,67

0,12

Sour

ce: O

rigi

nal t

able

bas

ed o

n in

terv

iew

s w

ith p

rinc

ipal

s an

d te

ache

rs (P

inka

sz, 2

010)

and

on

indi

cato

rs

deve

lope

d by

the

Dire

cció

n de

Info

rmac

ión

y Es

tadí

stic

a (I

nfor

mat

ion

and

Stat

istic

s Div

isio

n) o

f the

Pro

vinc

e

of B

ueno

s Aire

s.

D. PINKASZ

108

Tabl

e 2.

Inst

itutio

ns b

y ty

pe o

f org

aniz

atio

nal c

ultu

re so

rted

acc

ordi

ng to

the

soci

al v

ulne

rabi

lity

inde

x (S

oVI)

Inst

itutio

nC

ycle

Proc

esse

s/O

utco

mes

Pers

on/

Task

Paro

chia

l/ Pr

ofes

sion

alD

ivis

ion

of

func

tions

Prag

mat

ic/

Nor

mat

ive

Effe

ctiv

e pr

omot

ion

SoVI

11S

AA

AA

A77

,67

0,12

3I

AA

AA

A91

,33

0,17

7S

AA

AA

A71

,18

0,17

10S

AA

AB

B86

,76

0,17

8S

BB

BB

B82

,72

0,2

1I

BB

BB

B57

,53

0,23

5I

AB

AB

A51

,06

0,23

4I

AB

BB

B77

,27

0,28

6S

BB

BB

B77

,67

0,33

2I

BB

BB

B63

,37

0,41

9S

BB

BB

B74

,47

0,46

Sour

ce: O

wn

prod

uctio

n ba

sed

on in

terv

iew

s with

pri

ncip

als a

nd te

ache

rs (P

inka

sz, 2

010)

and

on

indi

cato

rs

deve

lope

d by

the

Dire

cció

n de

Inf

orm

ació

n y

Esta

díst

ica

(Inf

orm

atio

n an

d St

atis

tics

Div

isio

n) o

f th

e Pr

ovin

ce o

f Bue

nos A

ires.

RE-SYSTEMATIZATION OF SECONDARY EDUCATION

109

Tabl

e 3.

Inst

itutio

ns o

f the

sam

ple

acco

rdin

g to

org

aniz

atio

nal c

ultu

re so

rted

by

effe

ctiv

e pr

omot

ion

rate

Inst

itutio

nC

ycle

Proc

esse

s/O

utco

mes

Pers

on/

Task

Paro

chia

l/ Pr

ofes

sion

alD

ivis

ion

of

func

tions

Prag

mat

ic/

Nor

mat

ive

Effe

ctiv

e pr

omot

ion

SoVI

5I

AB

AB

A51

,06

0,23

1I

BB

BB

B57

,53

0,23

2I

BB

BB

B63

,37

0,41

7S

AA

AA

A71

,18

0,17

9S

BB

BB

B74

,47

0,46

4I

AB

BB

B77

,27

0,28

11S

AA

AA

A77

,67

0,12

6S

BB

BB

B77

,67

0,33

8S

BB

BB

B82

,72

0,2

10S

AA

AB

B86

,76

0,17

3I

AA

AA

A91

,33

0,17

Sour

ce: O

rigi

nal t

able

bas

ed o

n in

terv

iew

s with

pri

ncip

als a

nd te

ache

rs (P

inka

sz, 2

010)

and

on

indi

cato

rs

deve

lope

d by

the

Dire

cció

n de

Inf

orm

ació

n y

Esta

díst

ica

(Inf

orm

atio

n an

d St

atis

tics

Div

isio

n) o

f th

e Pr

ovin

ce o

f Bue

nos A

ires

D. PINKASZ

110

Table 1 also shows that lower secondary school institutions concentrate a highest number of establishments that are oriented to the performance of segmented practices, although in the sample there are more institutions of upper secondary school.

Table 2 shows that lower secondary school institutions are located in areas where the attending population has high or medium vulnerability. Upper secondary school Institutions deploying segmented practices also coincide with high levels of vulnerability. Meanwhile, establishments that correspond to the model of learning opportunities are concentrated in institutions of upper secondary school. Institutions with integrated practices in lower secondary school correspond to a low vulnerability.

Table 3 shows a link, not entirely conclusive either, but that indicates a tendency towards an association between the index of “Effective promotion” (see Appendix II) and the characteristics of the organizational culture.

Therefore, we can say that schools serving poor population display educational practices that tend to segmentation. The question is how these features get to be concentrated in those institutions. Our explanation is that a number of factors that coincide are explained, in turn, by the recent history of re-systematization of the provincial education system, which created lower secondary school facilities in areas of great poverty and in primary schools and guided the professionals in education with a professional culture less oriented towards educational outcomes and more concerned about socialization practices. These processes were, in turn, reinforced by selection practices, concentration and referral of students. The existence of these organizational cultures also explains ways to assimilate education policies, which seem to tend to favor the inclusion while reinforcing existing trends towards segmentation.

FINAL CONCLUSIONS AND QUESTIONS

We have argued about the fertility of using the “re-systematization” category to analyze the changes in education systems in the last decades in a province of Argentina, with the purpose of situating the category as useful for the study of education policies. This category, as well as “systematization”, provides us with a framework to visualize the education systems “in motion” as a combined result of public policies and accessions/resistances/pressures of the social system to acquire new educational positions or to preserve the positions acquired in their demand for education. With the same purpose we take the argument of segmentation as an endogenous process to the dynamic of expansion of the education systems (Acosta, 2011) and try to describe, from previous qualitative research, some aspects of institutional differentiation arguing that in different institutional types, also different organizational cultures are configured.

A scheme of this kind to address the educational policies draws attention to our use of the notion of “education system”. While acknowledging the fragmented nature of the current education systems (Tiramonti, 2004, 2009) the problem is not, from our point of view, its dissolution, but rather that of the categories that compose the overall or systemic vision. There seems to be a systemic “behavior,” from the

RE-SYSTEMATIZATION OF SECONDARY EDUCATION

111

time that schools address the mandatory policy changes and simultaneously they do so with a relatively autonomous logic and in coordination with the social system. This dynamic suggests the importance of looking at the system “from below”, while considering the existence of a shift “downwards” of the political action: that is of the purpose of an agenda of public policies geared from above to the existence of local operations that, maintaining a relatively autonomous logic can be read as strategic movements when related to movements of other educational units, teachers, changes in administrative systems and authority, etc.

Furthermore, this paper proposes the extension of the studies on segmentation that originally were focused on the study of the assembly of the academic offerings and curricula with social groups, the study of the assembly – “from below” – of institutional models, professional profiles, curriculum offerings and social groups; the role of public bureaucracies as mediators between the education system and the social system and the study of informal mechanisms of functioning of education systems.

We have argued about the fertility of using the “re-systematization” category to analyze the changes in education systems in the last decades in a province of Argentina, with the purpose of situating the category as useful for the study of education policies. This category, as well as “systematization”, provides us with a framework to visualize the education systems “in motion” as a combined result of public policies and accessions/resistances/pressures of the social system to acquire new educational positions or to preserve the positions acquired in their demand for education. With the same purpose we take the argument of segmentation as an endogenous process to the dynamic of expansion of the education systems (Acosta, 2011) and try to describe, from previous qualitative research (Feijoo & Corbetta, 2004; Gallart, 2006; Veleda, 2012), some aspects of institutional differentiation arguing that in different institutional types, also different organizational cultures are configured, as we try to show in Tables 2 and 3 of this work.

NOTES

1 “When the various school forms or educational institutions are interconnected and the parts of the system are interrelated, as well as their functions defined, you can resort to the concept of system” (Muller, p. 39; Muller, Ringer, & Simon, 1992).

2 Consists in the subdivision of the education systems in schools or parallel programs that differ in the curriculum and the social origins of students (Muller, 1992).

3 Even though in the early twentieth century the province of Buenos Aires had primary schools of four years in non-urban areas and of six years in urban centers (Pinkasz, 1992).

4 The regulation was basically concentrated in the issuing of titles.5 Transfer of educational services Act No. 24,049 and Federal Education Law, 25,195.6 “Polimodal”, that is, having multiple modes, since it allowed the student to choose his/her orientation

for further studies. Polimodal was not obligatory but its completion was a requirement to enter colleges across the nation.

7 And “downwards” since it was also established a compulsory preschool year (class of 5 years old) in line with the new national standards, although this measure is beyond our topic of study.

8 In 1999, 40% of primary schools were in rural areas, although these concentrated 20% of enrollment (Gorostiaga et al., 2004).

D. PINKASZ

112

9 These are historical and usually prestigious institutions for the training of teachers, offering all levels of education from primary to tertiary.

10 With “virtual” we mean that although in these institutions the authority structure was modified and the endowments of teachers were partially altered, schools managed to enter “cosmetic” changes.

11 These changes are synchronized with changes in the rest of the country promoted by national policies. In 2005 the National Congress passed a law on Technical-professional Education which laid the groundwork for returning unity to that modality that had been dissolved by being incorporated into the Polimodal level by law in 1993 and in 2006 it passed a National Education Law which established among other factors, the compulsory schooling for the upper secondary school for the whole country. The changes we have described in the province of Buenos Aires are framed in those changes that reviewed key aspects of educational reform policies of the nineties.

12 In one of the interviews, the principal of a prestigious school in the center of a populous town in the suburbs of Buenos Aires (Conurbano) recounted the use of special resources to carry out activities with schools in the area that finish in a public exhibition in the neighborhood. The functions of activities such as that recounted are numerous, one of which is to show the community the benefits of the school.

13 The upper part of secondary school differentiates horizontally in “orientations” that are: Natural Science, Social Science, Economics and Management, Communication Arts (Visual, Dance, Literature, Music, Theatre); Physical education; Foreign Languages.

14 In an interview the principal of a school in the suburbs of Buenos Aires (Conurbano) in the same locality as above (see note 12) noted that the choice of orientation “Communication” instead of “Economy and Management”, favoured increasing the number of students in the lower secondary school because the built modality is “easier” for students than the one that existed before.

15 One of the first studies on educational segmentation in Argentina, though referred to primary level (Braslavsky, 1984), repaired in what he called the “organizational model” between whose dimensions he analysed the criteria that were used at schools for assignment of teachers to tasks in which most professional suitability was considered important. The models distinguish between “professional” criteria or working convenience criteria, were it a timetable convenience or functional for teachers and administrators. Our understanding of this dimension of Dimmock’s model is based on this precedent.

16 Translator’s note: “Segmenter” neologism, corresponds to segmentation.

REFERENCES

Acosta, F. (2011). Escuela secundaria y sistemas educativos modernos: análisis histórico comparado de la dinámica de configuración y expansión en países centrales y en la Argentina. Revista Histedbr, 42, 3–13.

Braslavsky, C. (1980). La educación argentina 1955–1980. Colección: El País de los Argentinos, 191. Primera Historia Integral. Buenos Aires: Centro Editor de América Latina.

Braslavsky, C. (1984). Un Estudio acerca del pasaje del nivel primario al nivel medio. Buenos Aires: FLACSO, mimeo

Braslavsky, C. (1985). La discriminación educativa en Argentina. Buenos Aires: GEL. Dimmock, C. (2010). La comparación entre instituciones educativas. In M. Bray, B. Adamnson, &

M. Manson (Eds.), Educación comparada. Enfoques y métodos. Buenos Aires: Granica.Feijoó, M. del C., & Corbetta, S. (2004). Escuela y pobreza: desafíos educativos en dos escenarios del

Gran Buenos Aires. Buenos Aires: IIPE/UNESCO-Buenos Aires.Freytes Frey, A. (2007). Implementando el tercer ciclo de la Educación General Básica: Tensiones en

la provincia de Buenos Aires. In Cuadernos del IIPE. Buenos Aires: IIPE/UNESCO-Buenos AiresGallart, M. A. (2006). La construcción social de la escuela media. Buenos Aires: Editorial Stella y

Ediciones La Crujía.Gorostiaga, J., Acedo, C., & Senen González, S. (2004). ¿Equidad y calidad en el Tercer Ciclo de

la Educación General Básica? El caso de la provincia de Buenos Aires. Revista electrónica iberoamericana sobre Calidad, Eficacia y Cambio en Educación (REICE), 2(1).

RE-SYSTEMATIZATION OF SECONDARY EDUCATION

113

LLECE (2002). Estudio cualitativo de escuelas con resultados destacables en siete países latinoamericanos, Santiago de Chile: UNESCO/Laboratorio Latinoamericano de Evaluación de la Calidad de la Educación.

Müller, D., Ringer, F., & Simon, B. (Eds.). (1992). El desarrollo del sistema educativo moderno. Madrid: Ministerio de Trabajo y Seguridad Social.

Murillo Torrecilla, J. (2003). El movimiento de investigación de Eficacia Escolar. In J. Murillo Torrecilla (Ed.), La investigación sobre Eficacia Escolar en Iberoamérica. Revisión internacional del Estado del Arte. Bogotá: Convenio Andrés Bello.

Pinkasz, D. (1992). Escuelas y Desiertos. Hacia una historia de la escolarización de la provincia de Buenos Aires. In A. Puiggros (Ed.), Historia de la Educación. En las provincias y Territorios Nacionales, 1884 – 1945. Buenos Aires: Galerna.

Pinkasz, D. (2010). Universalización de la Educación Secundaria (Proyecto de investigación). Buenos Aires: FLACSO, Inédito.

Ruiz, C. y Feldman, D. (Dirs) (2011). Parámetros, regulaciones, mecanismos y estrategias para la mejora del trabajo escolar: entre la tarea institucional y la integración del sistema. Informe de Investigación. Provincia de Buenos Aires: Universidad Pedagógica Provincial (UNIPE).

Steedman, H. (1982). Las endowed grammar schools como instituciones determinantes. In D. Muller, F. Ringer, & B. Simon (Eds.), El desarrollo del sistema educativo moderno. Cambio estructural y reproducción social 1870–1920 (pp. 161–194). Madrid: Ministerio de Trabajo y Seguridad.

Tedesco, J. C. (2003). Educación y sociedad en la Argentina, 1880–1945 (4th ed.). Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI.

Tiramonti, G. (Ed.). (2004). La trama de la desigualdad educativa. Buenos Aires: Manantial.Tiramonti, G. (2009). Una aproximación a la dinámica de la fragmentación del sistema educativo

argentino. Especificaciones teóricas y empíricas. In G. Tiramonti & N. Montes (Eds.), La escuela media en debate. Buenos Aires: Manantial / FLACSO.

UNESCO. (1998). Estudio de seguimiento y evaluación de la Transformación Educativa en la Provincia de Buenos Aires. Buenos Aires: OREALC / UNESCO- Argentina

Van Zanten, A. (2008). ¿El fin de la meritocracia? Cambios recientes en las relaciones de la escuela con el sistema económico, político y social. In E. Tenti Fanfani (Ed.), Nuevos temas en la agenda de política educativa. Buenos Aires: UNESCO / IIPE- Buenos Aires, Siglo XXI.

Veleda, C. (2012). La segregación educativa. Buenos Aires: Editorial Stella y Ediciones La Crujía.Wiñar, D. (1970). Poder político y educación, el peronismo y la Comisión Nacional de Aprendizaje y

Orientación Profesional. Buenos Aires: Instituto Torcuato Di Tella, Centro de Investigaciones en Ciencias de la Educación.

Wiñar, D. (1974). Aspectos sociales del desarrollo educativo argentino, 1900–1970. Revista del Centro de Estudios Educativos, 4–4.

Daniel PinkaszPrograma Educación, Conocimiento y SociedadFacultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO, Argentina)

D. PINKASZ

114

APPENDIX I

Description of field work carried out to date (May 2012 – November 2012)

Scope

• District (“A”)• District (“B”) • Eleven schools (five schools District “A” and six District “B”)

Selection of schools

Vulnerability index school area Range enrollment School type Low Medium High Very High

251 to 100

ESB A EEM

3101 to 200

ESB A B EEM

4201 to 300

ESB BEEM B

5301 to 400

ESB EEM A A B

6401 to 500

ESB B EEM A

7501 to 600

ESB EEM

8601 and more

ESB EEM B

Interviews at schools (N: 57)

District A B

Principals 5 6Heads of Department 3 2Teachers (subject teachers – hall monitors) 18 20Counseling teams 1 2Total 27 30

RE-SYSTEMATIZATION OF SECONDARY EDUCATION

115

APPENDIX II

Social Vulnerability Index: it is an index built with information from the 2001 census that seeks to explain life conditions and vulnerability of the population and households. Weighs socioeconomic and educational aspects and includes five dimensions:

• Moderate to critical overcrowding of households• deficient conditions in the quality of housing materials• Dependency ratio of household members according to employed members, retired

or out of work nor retired • Households with public health system as single coverage • Low educational climate (less than 11 years of formal schooling)

Each of the dimensions has in turn a situation defined as moderate or critical and, according to this conditions a different weighting so that each household is assigned a differential weight based on its situation with respect to these dimensions. The lower the index value, lower vulnerability conditions have the homes belonging to a particular area; the higher the value, higher vulnerability conditions, that is, worst living conditions.

Rate of Effective Promotion: is the percentage of students enrolled in a year of study of a particular level of education, who enroll as new students in the year of the next higher level of education in the following academic year.