Alberto Picón Martínez
Administración Nacional de Educación Pública
Rufino González Fernández
Universidad de Santiago de Compostela
Abstract
This is part of a research accomplished in Secondary School Institutes from Galicia in order to compare to Public Education System in Uruguay. The outcomes may anticipate similar situations in other different contexts which are following their footsteps. During the research we have got evidence that faculty meetings as decision making authority of the institute have not succeed in solving the problem of student failure in compulsory secondary school. Educational process centered on the student, and his right to appropriate the resources necessary for adult life, seem to be opposed to selective pedagogic practices inherited from pre-college high school. Time has come to develop a new approach to evaluate student performance: an inclusive assessment. Criteria and instruments call for a teacher‟s commitment which should be defined and agreed according to the necessities of the students in each and every school. But, this might collide with centralized bureaucratic decisions of public system. It occurs both, in Spain and in Uruguay. Teacher training seems to be the cornerstone for school strategic planning; and principal leadership, the component which brings cohesion to the whole effort.
