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4
School functioning


Introduction

The general objective of Committee number III was to analyze where and under what circumstances students learn, among those presently in schooling at Obligatory Secondary Education (ESO) level.


INITIAL DECISIONS

The first task the Committee had consisted of setting the scope of the research, due to it being called "Educational administration and school management". The Committee based its activities on the request by the INCE to attend to "urgent needs" and decided that the principle of realism should preside its actions and work. From the first meetings, all the members of the Committee, whether representatives of the Autonomous Regions that are educationally devolved, or those within the management scope of the Ministry of Education and Culture, noted that full evaluation of the educational administration and school management would be almost an impossible task to carry out, as in order to proceed and collect information one would have to obtain from each territorial member of the educational system, and one could fall into a dynamic of continual initial asking or uncertainty.

The diversity and heterogeneousness of the situations to be considered in the description and evaluation of the different Administrations responsible for education, as well as the complexity provided by the organisation of the educational system, due to their relation and dependence on educational policy, administration, planning and legislation, showed that study of the Educational Administration in itself is a unique field for research, far from approaching it as just another aspect of what is intended. It is from schools, that is to say, from the microsystems, that one may approach the matter of "where and in what circumstances do students learn".

Having made all the preceding considerations, and also taking into account the scopes that the press specialised in educational matters and the rest of the media take as major topics, Committee III took the decision to analyze the following three categories: Management, participation and life at schools, so it emphasised the proposal made as to this in the name of the Committee, which changed "School administration and management" to School functioning.



Methodological lines

The Report issued by Committee III under the name of School functioning contains abundant preliminary information on the methodology used (preparation of the questionnaire, selection of the sample, application, analysis, drafting the report, etc.). We refer readers who are interested in further details to the actual report.

For the purposes of this global report, it will be sufficient to provide some brief particulars to give an idea of the main lines agreed by the Committee.

As to the diagnosis instrument, a questionnaire was drawn up with 51 items, chosen from the more than 200 that initially comprised it. It consists of three parts: the management function, participation and life at schools, plus the complementary sheet of questions for the principal. It contains two introductory parts to identify the groups surveyed and the school, respectively. As to the specific persons involved, the questionnaire was anonymous, although it requested some personal particulars required for research purposes, such as the post held, age, sex and seniority at the school.

The population studied was comprised of all the state and endorsed private schools in the State of Spain where at least one year of Obligatory Secondary Education is taught. The state and private schools have a homogeneous organisation and functioning that allows joint study at these of the chosen theme cores. The data was provided by the Ministry of Education and Culture and by each one of the Autonomous Regions with full competencies in educational matters. To set the sample service, the consideration was for the number of schools to be sufficiently large to guarantee a representative sample nationwide, although, in turn, to keep it within reasonable limits to make the process of administration of the diagnosis instrument, data collection and later processing feasible. The Committee expressly excluded the sample representing each of the Autonomous Regions, because it preferred to deal with the study in general terms, without breakdown to Regional results or comparisons between the Regions.

With these criteria it agreed that the sample would consist of six hundred centres where Obligatory Secondary Education is taught, which is equivalent to 7.4% of the population of schools. To achieve adequate representation of the different types of schools included in the population studied, it decided to stratify the sample, considering the three variables relevant: territorial scope, juridical regime of the school (state/private) and educational level (primary/secondary).

As to the territorial scope, the strata were formed by area of management by the Ministry of Education and the Autonomous Regions with competencies in educational matters, except for Andalusia, which decided not to participate in the study. Within each territorial scope, it was agreed to perform a proportional distribution of the sample in each one of the provinces, according to the respective numbers of centres.

Once the questionnaires and the administration instructions were prepared, the Autonomous Region of the Canaries decided to withdraw from the study, so 35 schools were removed from the original sample.

The resulting sample of 565 schools was considered sufficient from the technical point of view to represent the scope of the study: the set of the territory managed directly by the Ministry of Education and Culture and the Autonomous Regions of Catalonia, Galicia, Navarra, the Basque Country and Valencia. For intervals with a reliability level of 95% considering each school as a sample unit, the new size of the sample gave rise to sampling errors of ± 4.0% in the percentages.

Also after designing the sample and preparing the questionnaires, the Autonomous Region of Catalonia decided to participate only in the aspects related to the management function and participation, but it withdrew from the studies related to life at schools alleging it could interfere with the studies on academic atmosphere being carried out by the Higher Council of Evaluation of Catalonia. Thus, the sample was limited to 495 schools for the study on school life.

Due to this, the sample of schools to which the questionnaires were finally applied was the following table:



Table 1. Sample of schools foreseen
Territorial Scope Management function
and participation
Life together
at the schools
Andalusia
Canaries
Catalonia
Galicia
Navarra
Basque Country
R. of Valencia
MEC
0
0
70
59
6
25
89
316
0
0
0
59
6
25
89
316
TOTAL 565 495


After determining the number of schools in each stratus in the different territorial scopes, the selection was performed by a random procedure among the schools fulfilling the specific categories for each stratus.

It was decided that each school would administer the questionnaire to ten persons from each of the sectors of the educational community. This number would provide knowledge of the opinion of all the sectors represented on the School Council, and also that of teachers who are not members of the Council , in order to compare the different points of view as to the matters studied. Specifically, the ten people selected in each case were the following:

  • State schools: the principal, head of studies, a representative of the teachers on the School Council (SC), a representative of the Local Government on the SC, two representatives of the parents on the SC, two representatives of the students on the SC, the representative of the Administration and Services Personnel on the SC and a teacher who is not a member of the SC.
  • Private schools: the principal, a representative of the holder of the school on the SC, the head of studies or person who holds the equivalent post, a representative of the teachers on the SC, two representatives of the parents on the SC, two representatives of the students on the SC, the representative of the Administration and Services Personnel on the SC and a teacher who is not a member of the SC.

As to the procedure to administer the surveys, this was assigned to the Inspectorate Service in the scope of MEC management, and also in the Autonomous Regions, except in Catalonia, where it was performed by mail.

The Committee prepared the instructions to administer the questionnaires, which were sent to all the persons in charge of administering them. Versions of the questionnaire were prepared in the relevant regional languages by the Autonomous Regions of Galicia, the Basque Country, Navarra, Catalonia and Valencia. The deadline to administer the questionnaires was 20th June 1997 and 30th June to return them to the INCE.



Table 2. Response rate
  Sample
foreseen
Definitive
sample
Schools
who responded
MEC
Andalusia
Canaries
Catalonia
Galicia
Navarra
Basque Country
R. of Valencia
316
0
35
70
59
25
6
89
316
0
0
70
59
25
6
89
300
0
0
56
58
25
6
89
95%


80%
98%
100%
100%
100%
TOTAL 600 565 534 95%


There were 4,661 responses to the 5,650 questionnaires administered, which is a global response rate of 80%.

The generalisation of the results may not be extended further than the population studied. The data analysis is aimed mainly at describing a situation and performing certain inferences within the inherent scientific framework of research of a descriptive and descriptive-correlational type.

On analyzing the data, one must bear in mind that no scientific hypotheses have been made as to identification of specific research problems and, thus, the aim is not to use the data to verify or confirm hypotheses within the framework of the hypothetical deductive method. The data from the questionnaire does not allow any kind of generalisation and even less provides a channel for generalisations that determine a cause-effect type relation. The aim is to obtain real descriptions of the management operation, participation and life at the schools. Far from reductionist, analytic approaches, the results of the questionnaire have been analyzed from the global perspective given by the territorial scope on which the research has been based, and considering that the sample used represents the population.


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