The External Evaluation of Schools in Portugal. From Sustainability in the Present to the Challenges for the Future

• Main Author: Helder Lopo Guerreiro
• Format: Article
• Language: Spanish
• Published: Universidad Autónoma de Madrid 2015-12-01
• Series: Revista Iberoamericana sobre Calidad, Eficacia y Cambio en Educación
• Subjects: avaliação externa; inspeção; sustentabilidade; autoavaliação; modelo de avaliação.
• Online Access: https://revistas.uam.es/index.php/reice/article/view/2722

<p>Sustainability is a concept that entered the educational language as a status that is desired for the system, policies or simple projects. Sustainability is reached by means of a complexity of factors that differ across the situations. The external evaluation of schools is acknowledged as a sustainable activity, because it has been implemented for approximately nine years now in two different cycles and it survived to political changes in the meantime. By means of the analysis of the legal framework and official publications we looked inside each of its cycles, in order to understand which factors most contributed to its sustainability. The timing to launch the 3rd cycle is now close. We drew a possible scenario, based on the existing conditions that favour the continuity of this activity, apart from the uncertain outcomes from political changes. Thus, we realized that the will to change and improve the external evaluation of schools may bring about risks and conflict against its own sustainability. </p><p> </p>