The rankings as a portrait of an education at various speeds - Público.pt

As a starting point, I would like to reiterate that I am adept at drafting and dissemination of rankings with school outcomes. I am not of those who think that its publication is harmful, unless we consider that those who prepare or reads the causes prejudices and not in search of information. Of course I prefer rankings done carefully, not restricted to serialize results and contextualizing the tables with other information.

The rankings that are being published in recent years, especially since some media could have access to any more information than the results of such pure and hard, have a quality well above the first Attempts to a decade ago. As much as critics of this type of tables argue against the injustice of a ranking, in my opinion is much more useful to know them than not to know them.

Because, in his way, if we know how to properly interpret and apply in their particular time and not as propaganda pieces particular, the rankings help us understand the project that a society or its ruling elite was building for Education. Not only must face as a throwing weapon against these ones or as a manifestation of a possible superiority of one sector over another, but as a portrait of a journey.

And this journey, Portugal in 2013, is the construction of an education at various speeds, much more than dual and far beyond the classic opposition public / private. The surface readings say that the last ten years there has been a progressive domination of the top of the table by private schools. Their instrumental exploitations are obvious: private schools are better, we should follow their model and we support the freedom of choice of families who want to abandon public education, as well as the ideological rejections also are natural … The rankings are a tool that helps to tarnish the image of the public schools and to promote private education.

Not wanting to go again in this debate more than repisado and bored by its predictability, I would first point out that the findings of this year’s rankings are reasonably faithful a picture of the results of policies in the area of ??Education that for beyond the polemics of choreographic main actors, maintain a remarkable consistency in the last decade.

And that consistency goes by accentuating the differences in operating conditions between the private schools and public schools and among the latter, in turn covered by a different evolution or dual.

In the first case we have a limited set of private schools that work truly independent of the Ministry of Education, facing the excellence with rules restricting access not only in economic terms, where families and involve investing heavily in education of their children. Schools of small or medium size, in which teaching is personalized, where management is proximity, in which educational projects are not a formality to be completed and who meet the prerequisites for success is the rule.

opposition have a public and universal access en masse, where management has become increasingly distant and concentrationary with organic units dimension very compatible with an educational project truly mobilizing their “educational community” and the undifferentiated becomes the rule of established relationships, even for schools. Are schools for all, where we try to provide the best service, even those who have the greatest handicaps , the first of which the increasing alienation of many families in relation to the daily school life of their children – for disability or necessity because of the urgency of survival is the first priority.

But within the public also found a two-tier education because the state decided to import the logic of some private educational investments and bet heavily on a limited number of schools, generally secondary and urban areas, leaving the rest of the network school (80%, 90%?) to itself and to the successive cuts which were being imposed. Were created potential niches of excellence, it seems to compete on equal means with the best private projects, leaving the rest back there, waiting for better days. Ie the public school in theoretical matrix inclusive and promotes a desirable equal opportunities has been transformed into an additional source of inequality.

rankings only reflect this situation, an Education walking at various speeds, as a result of policies that actively promote inequality and the widening gap between best and worst. Be among the top private schools and public schools, is among the top public schools and others. Those left to themselves and penalize rather than help. A model that rewards success, leading to their proliferation but not for breeding in closed circuit and wherein the branding iron seems to failure of the failure embarrassing to be even more penalized.

Note that this description left out the private sector dependent on state resources, it does not stand out in a special way by the positive (rarely are at the level of the best public schools) or negative (also not usually appear in the worst places Tables). Although there is currently a strong interest in promoting it, allegedly with the justification for their position in the rankings.

In all

seriações there is a top and a base. There will always be the first and the last. It is a fallacy to say that the “worst” should be eliminated by competition, because there will always last. The alternative would be to get everyone together in the first place, which seems to be a huge utopia in any social phenomenon. Although it is not desired that the Utopia top and bottom do not deviate increasingly emphasizing phenomena of segregation and reproduction of inequality, to recover terminology should now be crude, but it is back.

The problem is that the last decade has been in the field of Education, fairly consistent policies that actively promoted inequality, even if some players now appear to claim that no, there were notable differences between various rulings. Not true. The active promotion of a competitive system in the wrong direction – not to overcome existing problems, but widening rifts – has been a constant, as was the constant degradation of working conditions with students in most public schools.

The rankings are not so perverse, nor distort both reality as some would have you believe. The reality is that they portray is evil and was being distorted, stretched in the direction of its ends. Unfortunately. For me, I’m glad we have these pictures to show.

The author is professor of elementary and author of the blog education my navel.

Read more in the supplement of 48 pages about the rankings with the print edition of Saturday.

Special Rankings in http://www.publico.pt/ranking-das-escolas

– Ranking 4.
th year – Ranking 6.
th year – Ranking 9.
th year – Ranking the secondary