Política de formação para direção escolar particularidades do gerencialismo e da privatização na educação soteropolitana entre 2016 e 2023

Abstract

This work focuses on Salvador’s municipal policy for school management training programmes, following the approval of the 2016 Municipal Education Plan (PME); the goal is to analyze this policy’s development from 2026 up to 2023, considering the historical incidence of New Public Management (NGP) on the formulation of neoliberal public policies for educational management. As such, we present and discuss some repercussions of NGP, its insertion in public basic education and its effects therein – especially surrounding the labor of school principals at the municipal level –, current trends in the school management training programmes within Brazil’s municipal public education systems following the 2014 National Education Plan, as well as the constitutive elements and the concept of school management present in Salvador’s policy for school management training during this period, comprised of: legislation, mandatory training to run for the position of principal, and continuing education. This study is of mixed nature, including a literature review followed by a document analysis, whose findings are discussed under the framework of Historical-Dialectical Materialism. As a result, these three trends were identified in the policies for school management training: 1) decrease in both duration and frequency of the training programmes; 2) managerialism as prime standard in the training programmes; and 3) privatization. It is also worth noting the incidence of these trends in the context of the municipal education system, given that: the precepts of managerialism can be found in both the legislation and the training programmes; not only did the minimum duration legally required for the mandatory training programmes needed to run for the position of school principal take a decrease, but also the format of its courses and meetings became preferably online. These results indicate that the elaboration of Salvador’s municipal policy for school management training programmes is based on managerialist ideals. The concept of school management present in the legislation and proposed courses appears to conceive the principals as mere operators of public (and private) policies within school grounds, whereas the fundamental goal of school management should be the fulfillment of education as a political and emancipatory act.