Educational policies and school management in Portugal : processes of conservative modernisation (1998-2002)

ABSTRACT The educational agenda of recent decades has been characterised by ongoing attempts to "restructure" and "deregulate" state schooling. This process has, however, been highly controversial, with major divergences of interpretation in almost all the aspects pertaining to the reform in school governance: its goals, principles, foundations, outcomes and "effective" level of internationalisation. The current research aims to contribute towards a clarification of certain aspects of this debate and, in particular, of issues relating to: - The impact of reform on organisational structures and practices. - The influence of neo-managerial perspectives in societies, which differ considerably from the more developed countries. Indeed, Portugal has been defined as a semi -peripheral country, with very specific approaches to the development of the Welfare State and mass schooling. The investigation describes and analyses the organisational, professional, social, cultural and political transformations taking place in Portuguese primary schools during the period 1998-2002. This period corresponds to that of the defining and implementing of a new system of "school autonomy, administration and management" (Law n°115-A/1998), which establishes extremely diverse areas of potential autonomy for schools (in the strategic, curricular, organisational, pedagogic, financial and cultural domains) and extends the possibility of participation of parents in school governance. The study, which draws on ethnographic methods , took place in six primary schools in the Lisbon area. The fieldwork was conducted in two main phases: the period prior (1998-1999) and subsequent to the implementation of the new model of school management (1999-2002). The analysis took into consideration the main issues and controversies to which the reform in school governance has given raise in contemporary literature: emergence of new models for social regulation (market, neomanagerialism, performativity); changes in professional and organisational patterns (collegiality, school culture, leadership); new relations between the school and the community (consumer power, "privatisation"