The municipal educative charter as a strategic instrument for the reorganization of the educative network: changing tendencies

Abstract

Since 2005, in Portugal, people have been looking at the Educative Letter, sometimes in an abusive way, as legitimate instrument for the strategic planning and the reordering of the municipal educational nets. In the case of the basic Schooling, the most visible effects are the requalification and the increase of the number of Institutions and in the quantitative retraction and distribution in the territory. These situations are a result from the closing of thousands of schools and the construction of hundreds of School Centres. This analysis is based on the investigation on 14 municipals of the Centre of Portugal, and is presented as a brief but not definitive analysis of the land reorder tendencies of the Educative Letters: (i) “decree type” reorder; (ii) “conciliation type” reorder; (iii) “community type” reorder”. There is also the “municipal view” and the “technical teams view” on the whole process of the Educative Letter elaboration, and it is possible to define the importance of the technical support on the political mediation and decision.