A successful school improvement intervention at the micro level: is this enough to achieve sustainable changes in the Argentine education system?

The purpose of this article is to analyze the impact of an intervention at the 'micro' level of the Argentine education system. After several years of intervening directly with schools serving at-risk students, we have concluded that for achieving sustainable results in addressing inequality problems and leading to profound changes in the country's education system, further action must be implemented at the 'meso' level (i.e. school districts), generating a system that (among other issues) encourages schools to collaborate with each other through networks. Since year 2000, the School of Education at University of San Andrés in Buenos Aires has sponsored and implemented a successful school improvement programme for disadvantaged schools, P.E.F.: Proyecto Escuelas del Futuro