Abstract:

The perspective that School needs the support of professionals, besides teachers, to reduce and repair pupils’ inequalities and vulnerabilities is on the base of a significant part of educational policies of the last decades.

If it is true that the majority of these initiatives are lead by public agents, it also true that the civil society is growingly «called» to give it’s contribute. An example of this movement of growing importance awarded by companies to social and civic responsibilities is EPIS (Entrepreneurs for Social Inclusion, created in 2006). Sometime later a “National Network of Mediators for School Success” is launched by this Association as an effective alternative to other school failure combat models. The " Network..." presents itself as a highly innovative methodology with high(er) efficiency rates and good results: its goal is to create “new good students”, which means students who were at risk of failing the school year and that at the end of the year are in conditions to pass.

It is made up of field professionals (social workers, teachers, and psychologists), and organized in local teams. They are placed at schools where the project is being implemented, sometimes with concurring initiatives, as the «Network» is sometimes offered to the school, as a result of the partnership with the Ministry of Education, and in other cases, as the sole project, as it’s the result of a request, in partnership with local authorities and other Local Development Associations.

It aims to 'reach' the families of students at risk of failure and, together with them, perform continuous guidance work in order to develop personal and social skills that enables them to tackle their difficulties in school autonomously, in terms of study method, motivation and expectations towards the future (Vieira and Dionísio 2012; Melo 2012). This methodology has two main components: a signaling system of young people under risk of academic underachievement and school withdrawal, focused on four categories: individual, family, school and territory; and a portfolio of specific intervention methodologies available to the field professionals. All the work is supervised and supported by a platform where all the information is gathered and that sorts out the range of techniques the professionals should use in each individual case.

In this paper we aim to discuss, presenting results drawn from an exploratory study, on the one hand, the «innovative» role of the private sector in promoting social responsibility actions in Portuguese public schools with high levels of failure by contrast with the ones carried out by public educational agents (Garriga and Melé 2013). We will do so by analyzing the official rhetoric of the «Network…», contrasting it with the perspective of the actors who actually implement the «Network…» methodology. On the other hand, We will also address the perspectives involved agents have Integrated in a wider research project "Local Strategies for the Improvement of schools in disadvantaged areas: public and private programs of intervention" several qualitative techniques were employed: document analysis, 18 semi-structured interviews in three distinct regions to directors of schools where the "Network ..." is implemented, to mediators and stakeholders. Informational materials available on the project website were also analyzed.
Keywords: Student Support; new philanthropies; social intervention

Keywords:

Student Support, new philanthropies, social intervention.