Abstract:

In an increasingly global and rapidly changing world, Education is an emerging issue at a social, economic, and political level. The social responsibility of educational organizations about academic, scientific, ethical, professional, and political training of citizens is always present and should contribute to the production of knowledge, to the advancement of science and culture. In this sense, schools should look for the best path to the development of a quality system, to provide young people with the appropriate skills and to enable the social, cultural, and economic development of the country. Educational assessment is increasingly essential to describe, understand and act on a variety and complexity of situations that affect schools. School self-assessment should lead schools to reflect, to identify their strengths and weaknesses, to look at themselves, their processes, and results, to seek the best path for the organization to monetize resources and provide support for decision-making in building their educational project and improving the quality of the educational system. In the Autonomous Region of Madeira (RAM) the mandatory self-assessment was established in 2014, twelve years after the publication of Law No. 31/2002, with the designation of Quality Assessment of the Regional Education System. This qualitative study aims to understand whether the result of implementing self-assessment contributes to the development of the educational project from a perspective of improving the quality of teaching. To this end, semi-structured interviews were carried out with 3 presidents of the executive council and the respective coordinators of the self-assessment teams of 3 basic and secondary schools in Madeira Island. To consider ethical issues and maintain the confidentiality of the context studied as well as the anonymity of the participants, the interviews were identified by E1 to E6. It was requested in writing and giving the information about the purpose of the study, the consent of the respondents to record the interviews, which was carried out by the investigators and authors of the study. Data triangulation was performed using the respondents' data with the literature. Results: From this case study, after analyzing the content of the interviews, the following categories were identified: internal evaluation; effects of self-assessment; positive consequences; effectiveness in action; success of the educational project; and measurement in the educational process and system. We can conclude that self-assessment is relevant for the development of educational organizations in the construction of the main guiding document of the school's educational policy (educational project) in a perspective of improving and promoting the quality of the educational service provided. Self-assessment contributes to measuring the quality of the regional education system, which should be based on the interaction and complementarity between self-assessment and external assessment. It also had positive effects in schools, with changes in organizational dynamics with improvements in quality.

Keywords:

Self-assessment, Organizational development, Quality of the regional education system, Educational policy.