New public management and education

Although with different formats, NGP has been consolidating itself in several countries as an efficient alternative in the search for quality education. In Brazil it has not been different from what happens in other countries. Several experiences have been implemented in different education networks.

According to Verger (2015), in the last years, NGP has been strongly penetrating the global educational agenda in both industrialized and developing countries. NGP’s first records in education are from the 1980s in the British education reform, which had direct repercussions on school management. Its international dissemination took place from the 1990s on.

NGP principles transposed to education crystallize into a wide range of policies, systematized by ^{Verger (2015)} in the following table.

NPG has changed the way in which the management of educational institutions is conceived, since principles such as school autonomy, accountability and results-based management have guided the way in which public education is regulated, provided and financed. However, NGP is not monolithic educational reform model, nor adopt the same format in all countries, and well-differentiated management approaches and educational policy designs are observed. Nevertheless, according to ^{Oliveira (2015, p. 631)},

[...] Some of its principles can be observed in the reforms that have taken place over the last decades in different national contexts, namely: dissociation of executing and control functions; fragmentation of bureaucracies and their openness to the demands and requirements of users; competition among public actors and the private sector and outsourcing of services; reinforcement of responsibilities and autonomy of public action execution levels; results-based management and hiring (so-called management contracts) based on achievement of objectives and performance appraisal; normalization, via standardization, of evidence-based professional practices and exemplary experiments.

New Public Management has been constituted as a new policy paradigm that endows policy makers with categories and models of interpretative frameworks in educational policy decisions, aiming at the quality of education. Some of its policies may still be considered a fluctuating significant⁴ (LACLAU; MOUFFE, 1985). According to Verger (2015), NPG solutions are not adopted because they work, but because there is a widespread perception that they are policies which could solve the most important problems of contemporary education systems. The author still highlights that NPG has been adopted by both conservative and progressive governments⁵. To Dardot and Laval (2016, p. 311),

The new government model has conquered many countries. Themes and terms of “good governance” and “good practice” became the mantra of government action [...] the World Bank in the 1997 World Development Report proposed replacing the term “minimum state” by “better state”. [...] This state generic reform, according to the principles of the private sector, is presented as ideologically neutral: it aims only at efficiency.

As an effort to synthesize the different possible configurations of NPG in education, Verger helps us with the table below (Table 2), highlighting that NGP is traduced in multiple policy options and interventions, with widely varying designs and even antagonistic. It makes difficult to draw generalizable conclusions from the impact of NGP on education, especially in terms of educational justice, commodification of public services, teacher professionalization and school democracy.

In Brazil, NGP oriented reforms began to be implemented in the 1990s, based on the pursuit of efficient public services. Then, in 1995, Ministry of State Reform published the State Apparatus Reform Master Plan, which demonstrated its intention to make the Brazilian state more regulator and administrator than provider of services and goods. However, it was a period of great political effervescence due to the end of the military dictatorship. Contradictorily, these reforms were justified as a result of the social movements demands, which were fighting for the broadening of the right to public education and criticizing the rigid, bureaucratic and centralized structure of reforms. Then,

expansion of rights was accompanied by change in the forms of organization and management of education, justified by governments at different levels (local, state and federal) by the need for modernization of public administration in response to demands for greater transparency, more democratic and flexible structures and higher efficiency (OLIVEIRA, 2015, p. 632).

This public management model has become hegemonic and from then on, its preponderance is observed even in governments that place themselves in the popular progressive field (at different levels). With assessment as key element, NGP implantation in education policies is justified by the pursuit of quality in education.

Assessment became a central regulatory mechanism. It provided indicators that are used in management goal setting, influencing school unit funding and in some cases even teacher payment. Further, of course, ultimately determining the curricula (OLIVEIRA, 2015, p. 640).

The central argument used has been the need to provide society with an indicator of the quality of education, in order to enable the mobilization of school agents to adjust their practices to improve their results. We must not lose sight, however, that this quest for efficiency through good results in large-scale assessments neglects the historical process of building education as a public good, a social right that cannot be regulated as a commodity, failing to consider, also, the deep internal inequalities of the Brazilian educational system, besides depoliticizing the relations between the State and the citizens.

Based on the idea that NGP is configured in different formats, we seek to understand its repercussions on the educational and school management of Goiás. To Verger (2015, apud TOLOFARI, 2005), wherever NGP has been applied, the way in which the management of educational institutions is conceived has been significantly changed, as principles such as school autonomy, accountability, results-based management or school election have penetrated deeply into the form of regulation, provision and financing of educational services. It should not be overlooked, however, that global educational policies, such as those that conform to NPG doctrine, are actively reinterpreted and modified by both local policy makers and those who ultimately materialize politics, teachers, managers and school staff. Thereunto, understanding the hegemony of solutions proposed by the NGP from a discursive point of view is important.

Discourse theory as a way of apprehending reality

Seeking to understand how the rationality of NGP has been incorporated by educational actors, we chose to use Lauclanian discourse theory.

In this research, speech was taken while a social practice, in other words, as a way of social construction, whose ontological condition is politics, which implies considering it as a form of action of people in the world and upon others, expressing the social relations in the society. Therefore, actions, selections, choices, languages are constituted, in short, in all the social productions of which it is an expression and may be a way to understand the meanings produced in the “daily life”.

The focus of the work was discursive practices (a particular form of social practice that manifests itself linguistically - spoken or written) that correspond to the active moments in the use of language, moments of re-signification, ruptures, meaning production and, therefore, language in action.

According to Fairclough (2001, p. 66), in his analysis of Foucault’s work,

What is most significant here for discourse analysis is the view of discourse as constitutive – contributing for production, changing and reproduction of objects of social life. This implies that discourse has an active relationship with reality, that language means reality in the sense of meaning making for it.

The analysis of a discursive practice focuses on the processes of production, consumption and textual change, which requires reference to the specific economic, political and institutional environments in which the discourse is generated. Thereupon,

[...] There is no way to dissociate the process of grasping the real from processes of meaning, which in turn imply both argumentative networks and concrete practices and the institutions through which such representations can become meaningful, shared, or imposed (as do so democratically or autocratically). Finally, it means admitting a meaning of the term that indicates its dynamicity, the game of differences in a system that alters the limits of its own configuration: discourse (BURITY, 1994, p. 149; highlighted by author).

In this perspective, discourse includes both linguistic and extralinguistic insights, as all social configurations are meaningful, and thus the meanings of words and practices depend on the discursive space in which they are placed on, constructed by articulatory practices. From the Laclaulian perspective, therefore, politics is the dispute for meaning.

According to Fairclough (2001, p. 91),

discourse contributes to the constitution of all dimensions of the social structure that directly or indirectly shape and constrain: its own norms and conventions as well as its underlying relationships, identities and institutions. Discourse is a practice, not only of world representation, but of world significance, constituting and constructing the world in meaning.

The author identifies three language functions and dimensions of meaning that coexist in all discourses. The first one is the identity function, which relates to the ways in which social identities are established in discourse. The second function, relational one, refers to the way social relations between participants in discursive processes are represented and negotiated. And finally, the ideational function refers to the ways in which texts mean the world and its processes, entities, and relationships.

As a social practice, discourse is taken as political practice, which transforms, maintains and establishes the power relations and the collective entities in which such relations are placed, therefore there is a competition to fix senses⁶ to particular meaningful configurations. Thereunto, hegemony is contingently fixed.

According to Laclau and Mouffe (1989, p. 113),

discourses are decentralized structures where the senses are constantly negotiated and constructed. This decentralized structure, or structured ‘totality’ or discourse, is the result of articulatory practices establishing relationships among elements with discursively unarticulated differences.

This perspective of discourse analysis opens possibility for reactivation of the contingent political origin of what is fixed and objectively presented, making room for new antagonisms and the fixation of new contents and forms that were not placed before, thus making possible the articulation of a multiplicity of competing discourses and, consequently, of the transformation of social agents and practices. Then, the practice of articulation, such as dislocation/fixation of a system of differences, penetrates the entire material density of the multiplicity of institutions, rituals and practices, through which a discursive structure is structured (LACLAU; MOUFFE, 1985). Therefore, discursive practice can contribute to the reproduction of society, as well as to its transformation.

NGP and education management in the state of Goiás

In order to understand NPG repercussions on the Goiás state system, we conducted interviews with the superintendent of educational management of the SEC, the president of the Union of Workers in Education (SINTEGO) and the managers of the school of higher and lower IDEB of the state⁷. In addition, research was conducted on the programs of the State Department of Education, which were analyzed considering the assumptions of the Discourse Theory, based on Laclau. Due to the limits of this text, we focus on the analysis of the interviews, using SEC data for contextual purposes only.

Education is inserted in Goiás More Competitive and Innovative Program (Programa Goiás Mais Competitivo e Inovador) which “is a program of competitiveness development and improvement of public management in the state of Goiás, which covers all areas of government activity and focuses on improving social indicators that positively impact citizens’ quality of life” (GOIÁS, 2018). The program presents three (03) axes: economic competitiveness, quality of life, and efficient public management. We point out “the challenges”⁸; “the challenges” linked to education are on the economic competitiveness axis. They are raising the quality of public network learning; promote access to early childhood education and promote the expansion and qualification of the provision of technical-level education. To achieve these challenges there are projects, such school management by results; learning more; ITEGO – OS network; ITEGO innovative; Goiás partnership of childhood education, among others.

When we questioned the Pedagogical Management Superintendent about this relationship, the answer was: “we fully believe that”. He justifies that training is linked to the economic development of the state. “A state that invests in education creates opportunities”. He still highlights that a consultant was hired, who explained that

territories have these characteristics, that you see territories that you have very large economic development, economic strength, but it does not train professionals. What will happen? As it does not train, it will be a state always attracting, bringing people there, because he has more difficulty doing this development, because there are no professionals.

Assessment, education policy that express the NGP principle that emphasizes results control, is central to all speeches, whether from the secretariat, managers and even the teachers’ union. Let us see:

“Professors like it, they are happy to know that Goiás is champion in the IDEB result” (Teacher’s Union).

“Parents today choose the school for good references. [In] 2017 we worked like crazy to improve results” (Lower IDEB school).

“We have developed a formative assessment” (Secretary of Education).

The Secretary of Education’s speech on formative assessment draws attention. According to the testimony, the assessment, performed every two months, has the purpose of identifying difficulties and working on them. “Bimonthly the secretary applies a test, we analyze this test, we feedback the network about the result, in 7 days”. Such discourse is corroborated by the director of the smaller IDEB school, who says she uses the assessment to reinforce individual students’ learning gaps.

However, the Union says there is a scam in these results, given that there is a ban on failing students in the state network and registering dropout, which is treated as transfer. Despite this Reading, the union does not speak out denouncing.

There is a silence from us. Why a silence from us? Because we know the truth. And then why don’t you report it? Because I would hurt my professionals, education professionals. I was going to buy an unnecessary fight, so to speak. What would I get from it? Who is interested in my report? The teachers like it, they are happy to know that the state of Goiás is the champion in this IDEB result.

The union’s leader speech shows how introjected the evaluation process is in public networks. The union verifies distortions but does not report them under penalty of losing support from the category. This stance demonstrates teachers’ support for large-scale assessment processes, whether national or local. In Goiás it is so strong that each school has a plaque at the entrance where the IDEB results are placed, each edition, showing the evolution of the school in the evaluation process. This publication, in our view, encourages competition and comparison among schools. The surprise reaction of the principal caught our attention when we clarified that “her” school had the lowest IDEB score in the last assessment. There was a negative reaction and a constant attempt to justify the note, often in comparative tone: “we do it this way, we know that other schools don’t do it that way, but it’s the correct one”. The director did not even authorize the recording of her interview.

All respondents’ speeches, as well as the educational policy documents, point towards the improvement of IDEB and SAEGO⁹ and the achievement of predefined goals. There would be several passages from the interviews to be highlighted that go beyond the limits of this text. There is a clear hegemony in the discourse of the importance of large-scale assessment and pride in the results achieved in the state. Even with critical positioning, as is the case with the union, the discourse of assessment and the good results achieved in the network stands as hegemonic. Thereunto, we can state that there is a clear alignment with the NGP assumptions in the speech about evaluation in Goiás state network.

However, the achievement of these results involves practices in tune with a progressive education project, especially regarding democratic management, with emphasis on the election of principals and the performance of school councils. There is a consensus among respondents that there is a democratic management implemented in the network and that this contributes decisively to the results obtained.

It’s a positive thing within schools, right. Because then everyone is choosing, there are discussions. Even with problems, with the election has reduced the problems too [...] One of the things, one of the very important premises in this program that we observed here in Goiás, is the matter of co-responsibility. So, this is one, to tell you the truth, is one of the main premises (Higher IDEB school).

So, it is a very active Council, it participates a lot in school decisions. In decisions and everything, especially financial, administrative-financial (Lower IDEB school).

Democratically elected directors are “professionalized” in a training offered by the Unibanco Institute, whose goal is to return managers to the pedagogical front in order to achieve the expected results. “Because if we wanted to improve our performance, we need to improve our managers, qualify those managers” (Secretary of Education). Thereunto, there is an understanding of the pedagogical front as good results in the assessments.

Managers professionalization, as well as the emphasis on controlling the results of large-scale evaluations are NPG principles in education, as Verger (2015) points out. In Goiás state network, these principles are based on the discourse of respondents, allied, however, with a perspective of democratic management, with broad participation of the school community and sharing of decisions.

A policy pointed by por Verger (2015) to achieve the principle of more explicit norms and performance measures is curriculum standardization. Goiás has a network-wide reference curriculum since 2011.

This curriculum, for example, allowed us to develop an evaluation system, not only the external evaluation system, which is with CAED, along the lines of IDEB, but it is annual. But building, which in my assessment has a very strong impact, is a formative diagnostic assessment. Bimonthly the secretary applies a test, we analyze this test, we feedback the network about the result, in 7 days. This was only possible because of this curriculum. The construction of complete structured material itself was something that we saw there in Pernambuco and brought here, in 2012 we started working with structured material, we work with it until today. Today, of course, we have been adjusting. We have a monitoring structure of schools and this follow-up is through a specific methodology, which is tutoring (Secretary of Education).

As we can unveil from the secretariat’s speech, the unique curriculum is closely related to the assessment and it was an important element for the successful results that the network has been achieving. The manager of the smaller IDEB school also points out that the curriculum is the same throughout the network, which facilitated pedagogical development, especially in cases of transference, since all schools work on the same content. However, students coming from another network find it difficult to keep up with the content. Finally, the adoption of private sector parameters in school management is clear, as are the partnerships that are developed with various institutes in this sector. Almost all programs adopted in the network are developed in partnership with the private sector: Itaú Social, Unibanco Institute, All for Education, ICE, Ayrton Senna Institute, CAED.

School management by results is the partnership we have with Unibanco Institute, including this management point. We have a perception that successful schools, as a rule, they have a successful management. The manager of a company, this person ... you come to a school you realize that it is well managed, it gives good results. We, here in Goiás we have a model of democratic management, so the teacher applies from a course, and such. But he/she applies for, and he/she is elected to run that school for a period, and that professional does not always have a management background. So, the idea of the project was to train this manager (Secretary of Education).

Look, this is the style of a private school! The student will always take a test, there is a test 2, 3 times a week. The student has to have a moment of study, otherwise he/she can’t keep up! (Higher IDEB school).

As the speech extracts point out, the success model is the one from the private school, both in terms of school management and daily activities, which suggests the alignment of the Goiás education network with the NGP. As stated at the beginning of this text, NGP basis is the adoption of business management practices in the public sector, which seems to be happening in the state education of Goiás.