A participação da comunidade escolar na gestão dos espaços educativos: caso escola secundária da Machava-sede, Matola, Maputo/Moçambique

Abstract

This dissertation was developed in the Postgraduate Program in Education of the Federal University of Amazonas, is linked to the “Education, Public Policies and Regional Development” research line, was sponsored by the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel, in cooperation with the International and Interinstitutional Relations Advisory and the Coimbra Group of Brazilian Universities, through the African Higher Education Teacher Training Program. The research aimed to analyze the forms of participation of the school community in the management of the educational spaces of the Machava-Sede secondary school. The analytical path went through the exercise of identifying the socio-historical features of the relationship between the State, civil society and schools in Mozambique within the scope of accountability for education; apprehend the principles that have been legitimized around the management of educational spaces in the Mozambican context; and understand the forms and levels of participation of the school community in the management of educational spaces. We had as guiding questions: In what ways does the school community participate in the management of educational spaces? And what should be the role / function of the State in creating learning conditions? The context of emergence of our research object resided in the transformations resulting from the transition to the capitalist system in Mozambique, in which the State tends to adopt mechanisms to minimize its effective participation in the guarantee of social rights, a framework that has been implemented since the conception of the Constitution of the Republic of Mozambique in 1990 and the law that ratifies the National Education System, in 1992. The method that underpinned this investigation was dialectical materialism, whereas we use a quantitative and qualitative approach to the design of a case study. Data collection was carried out at the Machava-Sede Secondary School, Matola district, Maputo province in Mozambique, strictly observing the measures to prevent coronavirus. Empirical data were collected through the combination of four techniques: semi-structured interview with the principal and the school's administrative assistant; questionnaire with school counselors; systematic observation of the conservation status of educational spaces using field notebooks; and documentary analysis of the legislation and the corpus of documents of the researched institution. Theoretical basis was approaches on participatory management at school with a focus on studies on the State and education, with special attention to the following Mozambican authors: Ngoenha (2000), Gómez (1999) and Goliath (1993). In the friction between the specialized literature and the information and data from our empirical case, we confirm the following hypotheses: first, there is a historical dis-responsibility of the Mozambican State in relation to national education, which has exerted force on the legal and practical designs of the forms of civil society participation in the school institution; second, there is no integration of the different segments of school subjects in the sense of managing school spaces, so parents / guardians participate only in monetary values and are not involved in school organization activities; and we refute the third, in terms of school activities, there are no maintenance and conservation activities for school infrastructures, an expression of little or no emphasis given to the participatory practice of the school community in the management of educational spaces. From the analysis made, we found that the spaces of the Machava-Sede Secondary School are maintained on the basis of internal revenues, which have parents / guardians as source, a situation that is controversial because this is a responsibility ratified in the 1995 National Education Policy to be assumed by the Mozambican State, the school community must participate in preserving the quality of the spaces provided by the State, adopting mechanisms that allow better organization and conservation of the school by all and not only by the support staff as currently occurs in the school. Aware of the neoliberal / neocolonial hegemony over nations and in a more in-depth and correlational look, we understand that it is an expression of struggles between the State and civil society in Mozambique to guarantee the conditions for the full functioning of schools in the country.