Presentation issue 5º

The Organic Law of Education, like the laws that preceded it, considers education as a public service, "an essential service of the community, which must make school education accessible to all, without distinction of any kind, in conditions of equal opportunities, with a guarantee of regularity and continuity and progressively adapted to social changes".

If from the seventies, school education is consolidated in quantity (more school places for a greater school age band), it is at the beginning of the 90s when educational quality is configured as the main goal, articulated through the permanent improvement of education and teaching.

As part of the European Union, Spain participates in the so-called European convergence process, which consists of establishing common objectives for all the countries that comprise it. However, the results of our students in the last international evaluations are clearly improvable, which leads us to reflect that it is necessary to change and adapt our educational reality to lead it to achievement and confluence with some countries that obtain better results. We must understand it as a matter of survival since it will influence the competitive level of the students when they are adult citizens.

When we look at the countries that obtain the best results, we see as a frequent hallmark the greater autonomy of each center and the use of it to motivate students and guide them towards effort and learning. The autonomy of the centers can only be achieved if the Administration commits to cede it really, if the directors and the professors know how to exercise it (and for that they must be trained in the foundations on which it is based) and effective and reliable evaluation procedures and procedures are established. accountability.

The LOE notes that the importance of the challenges faced by the education system demands as a counterpart public and transparent information about the use that is made of the resources and resources put at their disposal, as well as an evaluation of the results that are with them. reach The evaluation of centers, programs, services and teachers has become a valuable instrument for monitoring and evaluating the results obtained and improving the processes that allow them to be obtained.

Therefore, it is essential to establish evaluation procedures for the different areas and agents of the educational activity. Not only referred to the students or the curriculum. Administrations must also undertake to submit all their initiatives and actions to evaluation and to account for the existing situation and the development experienced.

The evaluation of the results of the students was, for a long time, the only object of the evaluation. Parallel and next to it - since it remains over time with few modifications - an evaluation is developed that centers on educational centers, in their different dimensions.

Today (collecting contributions contained in articles that we publish) we conceive the evaluation as a culture of the center, as a guarantee of quality and in all its dimensions:

In relation to the students, the "competence level" should be evaluated, so that each student has success experience in the achievement of significant increasing learning, in a curricular sequencing scheme based on their abilities. The relevant organizational goals are precisely those that specifically affect the personal quality and skill level of each student.

Regarding the teaching staff, the teaching leadership, the teacher's ability to create learning, the preparation of the classes (goals, materials, resources), the synergies of the teaching team, research and innovation can be evaluated. Its capacity to respond to the educational commitments it assumes, measured through indicators that facilitate the monitoring and evaluation of the actions; It is what we call responsible autonomy today.

Referred to the center, it tries to achieve a culture in which quality and evaluation are closely related, as a result of the active participation of teachers through teamwork and critical analysis of processes and results. The evaluation thus understood should lead to improvements designed by a committed faculty. Likewise, the necessary complementarity of internal and external evaluation should be considered, since the self-evaluation process can be enriched with suggestions from external experts that can help the center achieve a broader vision of its own reality.

Referred to educational administrations, these will only succeed if the assessment of the dimensions mentioned above is positive.

The editorial board.