Marketing Accountability And Excellence In The Portuguese State School: The Return Of The Meritocratic Ideology And The Social Image Through The Academic Performance

Author(s):

Leonor Torres(submitting)José Palhares(presenting)Almerindo Janela Afonso

Conference:

ECER 2017

Network:

23. Policy Studies and Politics of Education

Format:

Paper

Session Information

23 SES 01 B, Policies and Practices of Performativity and Assessment (Part 1)

Paper Session to be continued in 23 SES 02 B

Time:

2017-08-22

13:15-14:45

Room:

K4.15

Chair:

Anna Tsatsaroni

Contribution

Having failed to achieve many of the democratic challenges of education, which were posed with urgency to the Portuguese society after the revolution of April 1974, the educational system began to move, in the last two decades, towards more (re)meritocratic and performative logics. The more recent pressure for the introduction of new mechanisms of accountability in the education system is in line with the introduction of partial forms of accountability (Afonso, 2014), resulting mainly from the implementation of national exams and standardised tests, and the correlative scrutiny that stems from the publication of rankings based on the results obtained in these tests.

If the impact of the rankings in itself contained publicity elements of the performance of schools in the external plan (national, regional and local), it was, however, also necessary to highlight the academic performance of students at the internal and local level. The ritualisation of the school excellence of students is now an institutional marketing strategy, considered an important part in attracting the best students, against a backdrop of sharp demographic decline of the Portuguese school age population. The place of the school in the rankings, the boards and the rituals of academic distinction of the best students, and the placement of these students in socially more prestigious higher education courses emerge as the most consistent indicators for the promotion of the social image of the school institution, all this having school results as a common denominator.

From the 1980s, academic excellence has become a recurring theme in political discourses on education, assuming an increasing importance when associated with the concerns relating to the quality, competitiveness, merit and effectiveness of the educational system. At the European level, the priority tended to focus on the development of competitive educational systems, regulated by the economic interests and needs of the market and by forms of effective governance and consistent performance (Ball, 2000; Ward, 2012). In the political orientations mainly supported by certain sectors of the ruling classes and the middle classes, the political emphasis placed on the production of educational outcomes was accompanied by the pressure for the reconfiguration of the mission of state schools, progressively more hostage of individual performance and accountability based on the publication of evaluation results and standardised tests (meritocratic mandate) and less involved in the consolidation of the democratisation of school processes (democratic mandate).

As some countries have embarked on the combat to school failure and dropout, the demands placed on the production of academic excellence were intensified, in a clear adherence to the cult of a particular meritocracy (McNamee & Miller, 2004; Dench, Ed., 2006). Studies on the meaning of merit and the role of schools in its construction multiplied, arriving at different positions regarding the centrality of the meritocratic ideology in the processes of education regulation (Daverne & Ducterq, 2008; Duru-Bellat, 2009; Michaud, 2009; Dutercq & Daverne, 2009; Tenret, 2011; Daverne & Dutercq, 2013). On the other hand, the debate expands internationally in order to assess the effects of this agenda in the elitisation processes of education (Van Zanten, Ball & Darchy-Koechlin, eds., 2015; Maxwell & Aggleton, 2016; Blackmore, 2016). Inserted in this broader framework, the Portuguese teaching system presents some difficulties in reconciling the mandates that are now required to it.

The development of institutional marketing strategies from the perspective of school principals, the reasons inherent to the choice of school by the students and its framing in the policies conducive to the valuation of merit, are reflective dimensions that guided this text on the issue of accountability in education.

Method

Anchored in a multi-scale methodology, the research project developed included two additional guidelines. The first, of an extensive and macro-analytical nature, focused on the mapping of the policies and practices of academic distinction of the best students in the Portuguese state school system. The mapping of the rituals of academic distinction involved an extensive collection of documentary information, which proved to be essential to understanding the real impact of the meritocratic ideology in the regulation of school life. We proceeded to the analyses of webpages of schools (2013/2014), collecting in a first stage around 1500 structuring documents of the school life, which were later the object of content analysis and statistical summary. In addition to these documents, we also analysed the news published in the local media, the external evaluation reports and the rankings of the schools, available and advertised in leading newspapers of national reference. The second guideline, of an intensive and meso-micro analytical nature, was supported on four case studies developed in schools in the north and centre of Portugal. The study of secondary education schools with similar characteristics, the collection of educational outcomes and corresponding rankings, and the analysis of the practices of academic distinction (honours boards of excellence), allowed the construction of a profile of excellence and the identification of some key factors associated with school performance. We elected as target population the universe of students with excellent performances (average classifications equal and/or higher than 18 valores/points, on a scale of 0 to 20), in contrast with a representative sample of non-excellent students (with average performances below 18 valores/points). The empirical focus on students considered excellent, in systematic confrontation with non-excellent (or less excellent) who exist on the same school environment, allowed to clarify the impact of the organisational and cultural factors (Torres, 2015; Palhares & Torres, 2015), as well as the non-school factors (non-formal and informal learning) in the construction of academic experience (Palhares, 2014) and the definition of the pathways of excellence of this group of young people. We also performed two surveys by questionnaire to these two types of students (1022 students from 4 schools: 200 excellent and 822 non-excellent), as well as several dozens of individual interviews and focus group to different groups of students, to a sample of model teachers identified by the students, to Form Tutors and to Principals of schools/school clusters.

Expected Outcomes

We can consider that in the Portuguese educational system, some models of accountability coexist today, at different stages of consolidation and development, as is the case of the model that structures the work of A3ES (Agency for Assessment and Accreditation of Higher Education), and which, in our view, could be considered an example of hard accountability, or in the case of the model that corresponds to the (inappropriately) designated System of External School Evaluation, and that could be understood as an example of soft accountability. On the other hand, and with some indirect connections with this latter model, there are also partial forms of accountability. With regard specifically to the object of this text, we can say that “standardised exams and tests (national or international), although they are often valued as being (or having the potential to be) at the basis of a model or system of accountability, have not actually been more than a dimension of answerability, that is, an act or a partial form of accountability. Likewise we can consider school rankings, which follow from the national exams, as also being a partial form of accountability (in this case driven by civil society and the market), propelled, in a decisive way in the Portuguese case, by some important (private) media bodies and politically conservative sectors. In the construction of school excellence based on measurable academic results, and given the centre role of the school or school cluster Principal, we are also before a partial form of accountability (managerial accountability) which does not cease to have a relationship with other partial forms, as it is required by civil society (social accountability) or, more consistent with the empirical data presented in this article, the one that induces school choice by publicising the performance of their best students (marketing accountability).

References

Afonso, A. J. (2014). The emergence of accountability in the Portuguese education system. European Journal of Curriculum Studies, 1(2), 125-132. Ball, S. (2000). Performativities and fabrications in the education economy: Towards the performative society? Australian Educational Researcher, 27(2), 1-23. Blackmore, P. (2016). Prestige in academic life. Excellence and exclusion. London and New York: Routledge. Daverne, C. & Dutercq, Y. (2008). L'implication des responsables d'établissement dans la formation scolaire des élites. Education et Sociétés, 1(21), 33-47. DOI 10.3917/es.021.0033 Daverne, C. & Dutercq, Y. (2013). Les bons élèves. Expériences et cadres de formation. Paris: PUF. Dench, G. (Ed.) (2006). The rise and rise of meritocracy. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Duru-Bellat, M. (2009). Le mérite contre la justice. Paris: Presses de Sciences Po. Dutercq, Y. & Daverne, C. (2009). Les parcours composites de l'élite lycéenne. Comment se préparer pour un monde incertain? Les Sciences de l'Éducation - Pour l'Ère nouvelle, 4(42), 17-37. DOI 10.3917/lsdle.424.0017 McNamee, S. & Miller Jr., R. (2004). The meritocracy myth. Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. Maxwell, C. & Aggleton, P. (Eds.) (2016). Elite education. International perspectives. London & New York: Routledge. Michaud, Y.s (2009). Qu’est-ce que le mérite? Paris: Bourin Éditeur. Palhares, J. A. (2014). A excelência académica na escola pública. Quotidianos escolares e não escolares de jovens enquanto alunos. In L. L. Torres & J. A. Palhares (2014) (Orgs.), Entre mais e melhor escola em democracia. A inclusão e a excelência no sistema educativo português (pp. 5-26). Lisboa: Mundos Sociais. Palhares, J. A. & Torres, L. L. (2015). School governance and academic excellence: The representations of distinguished students in an annual award of excellence. Journal of Educational, Cultural and Psychological Studies (ECPS), 11, pp. 277-292. Doi: 10.7358/ecps-2015-011-palh Tenret, É. (2011). L’école et la méritocratie. Représentations sociales et socialisation scolaire. Paris: PUF. Torres, L. L. (2015). Culturas de escola e celebração da excelência: Cartografia das distinções em Portugal. Educação e Pesquisa (São Paulo, FE/USP), 41, Número especial, 1419-1438. Ward, S. C. (2012). Neoliberalism and the global restructuring of knowledge and education. New York and London: Routledge. Van Zanten, A., Ball, S. & Darchy-Koechlin, B. (Eds.) (2015), Elites, privilege and excellence. The national and global redefinition of educational advantage. New York and London: Routledge.

Author Information

Leonor Torres (submitting)

University of Minho, Portugal

José Palhares (presenting)

University of Minho, Portugal

Almerindo Janela Afonso

University of Minho

Department of Socila Sciences of Education

Braga

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