Dilemas en torno da mudança educacional

Dilemma number one: commercialisation

With devolution of management to individual school site, school leaders in all our countries found themselves having to be much more astute financial managers. They had not only to balance the books but in doing so to generate income and, however much against the grain of their values and political affiliation, seek sponsorship from private sector companies. In the United Kingdom and Australia such sponsorship is increasingly common.

From the company viewpoint the company gains wider exposure for their products in an increasingly competitive marketplace, and schools, with their ready-made captive youth market, are an obvious target. An Australian headteacher describes his dilemma:

I have been approached by a large national company which wishes to
place screen saver messages about its products on all of our computers.
We are a large secondary school and we have over a hundred computers
available for student use. The company markets itself directly to
adolescents and its screen saver message advertises its products directly
to computer users whenever they are not actively working on tasks of
their own. There is a considerable license fee payable to the school if I
agree. We are always in need of extra funds, yet I am uncomfortable
with the idea that students would be exposed to single product
advertising in a manner which tacitly seems to endorse those products.
(Dempster and Mahony 1998, 130)

Dilemma number two: school performance
During the late 1980s and early 1990s there was a shift in policy focus from measuring inputs to measuring outcomes: an approach which drew on methodology and indicators from school effectiveness research. ‘Outcomes’ equated with attainment on test and examinations and aggregated measures of student achievement became critical yardsticks by which government, parents and the wider public were encouraged to make judgements about the performance, quality and standards of schools. This public focus on school performance has created dilemmas for headteachers. One English headteacher expressed his dilemma in these terms:

We know that we lose quite a number of good local students to other
schools in the city because their parents see our results in the League
Table—results which, because of our student base, place us in the
bottom third of the list. The Council wants to set aside some money
from this year’s budget to offer ten students from our local primary
schools a substantial bursary to attend this school. The money would
be taken from the little we have at our discretion and I am troubled by
the ‘gung-ho’ manner in which Council members are discussing a
decision which they say will lift our standards.

Edited by Kathryn A.Rileyand Karen Seashore Louis (2000). Leadership for Change
and School Reform - International perspectives. London