School Organization and Planning in Education

Posted on Oct 17, 2024 in Physical Education

1. Concept, Purposes, Functions, and Centers

The school is the primary organizational center created to carry out the teaching and educational processes that lead to the comprehensive training and education of individuals.

Functions of the School:

  • Custody
  • Instructional and training competencies
  • Socialization
  • Integration
  • Humanization
  • Preparation for social/work life
  • Management of organization and knowledge/information

2. General and Specific Typology of Centers

  • Temporal: permanent, itinerant, temporary, preferentially during the day.
  • Orientation and purposes: regulated training, non-regulated training, specialized, denominational, non-denominational, secular, pluralistic.
  • Areas: rural, urban, suburban.
  • Students: ages, teachings, gender, buffering.
  • Internal organization: graded, grouped rural, non-graded, unitary.
  • Administrative ownership: state, private.
  • Location: face-to-face, distance, cyber schools, correspondence.
  • Homepage More: versatile, traditional, etc.

3. The Regulation of Educational Centers (Title IV)

General Principles (Legal): Educational centers are governed by specific legislation.

  • Centers are classified as:
  • Public: those in which all or part of the capital is in the hands of the public administration that manages it.
  • Private: those in which the capital ownership is in the hands of one or several individuals or legal entities with administrative rights.
  • There is programming of centers to guarantee the right to education.
  • Accessibility according to Law 51/2003 of December 2 on equal opportunities, non-discrimination, and universal accessibility (Art. 110).

4. Denomination

  • Preschools
  • Primary Education Schools
  • Nursery and Primary Education Schools
  • Secondary Education
  • Baccalaureate
  • Vocational Training
  • Secondary Education Institutes
  • Special Education Schools
  • Conservatories

5. Organization of Centers

Constituent dimensions of school organization:

Structural, Formal Organization:

This refers to how the center is organized and how its formal elements are articulated. Structures can be different depending on the nature of the center. It covers various aspects, which are:

  • The roles of the people in the school and their corresponding responsibilities.
  • Organizational units that are grouped (functions and responsibilities).
  • Formal mechanisms that exist in the organization, which are intended for individuals or organizational units to relate, coordinate, and function with others.
  • Formally established structure (schedule, teacher/student ratio…).
  • Physical and infrastructural structure of the center (spaces, materials, facilities, regulation of use…).

Relational:

It has to do with the relationships or interactions of the people that constitute the center. We can say that it is the personal relationships that are established in a center to shape its operation.

  • Internal regulations (RRI) (normal operation + regulation and internal control).
  • Organizational document of the center (DOC) (guidelines, operation of the center).

Processes:

These are those that have to do with the development of the curriculum, the development of teaching-learning, and the correct performance of each center, thus generating a series of processes such as collaboration, performance, innovation, and improvement…

  • Educational Project (PE)
  • Center Curriculum Project (CCP)
  • General Annual Programming of Centers
  • Action Plan for Tutoring
  • Annual Report (MA): its evaluation covers all the previously mentioned programming projects.

Culture and Values:

It has to do with the values, beliefs, culture, ideology about how a school should work… by the staff that makes up the center. How the staff thinks about the center influences the organization itself. Some values and principles are not explicitly formalized in organizational documents, although they are reflected in the center’s orientation.

As for the context, I will refer to the fact that schools are organizations that interact with the environment. There are many elements that influence a center directly or indirectly (bureaucracy, political, economic, social, and cultural forces…).

1. Planning

  • Planning is to anticipate, to get ahead in the organization of events, to establish purposeful actions to achieve a certain purpose.
  • In education, it is planned by degree of responsibility and specificity (MEC/CCAA and school community).
  • Planning in the organization (at the level of educational policy and center):
  • It is understood as an element of quality and as the first stage of rationalization of educational work.
  • It is endorsed in several phases: Context (contextual analysis), planning (more specific. Vision of what we need, what there is, what improvements there are and what disadvantages there are to change them), implementation, and evaluation.
  • The planning of the center is stated in institutional documents. These are intended to bring coherence and meaning to the activities that take place in the center (any document must be related to the above).

2. Institutional Documents

  • Institutional proposals are translated into projects.
  • It allows members of the school community to express their interests, values, beliefs, ideas, educational principles, teaching models…, (collection of information from the educational community through techniques such as interviews, questionnaires… instruments, such as debates… This part has to do with the context phase) to convert them through negotiation and consensus into specific models of each center (this part has to do with the planning phase).
  • It acts as a reference framework for all members of the educational community.
  • According to legal regulations: Constitution-LODE-logs-LOPEGCE-LOCE-LOE are:
  • Educational Project of the Center (PEC)
  • Center Curriculum Project (CCP)
  • Stage Curriculum Project (PCE)
  • Annual Programming by Area (PAA)
  • General Annual Programming (PGA, but it can also be called CAP, Annual Center Plan)
  • Organizational Document of the Center (DOC)
  • Internal Regulations of the Center (RRI)
  • Proposed Economic Budget
  • Annual Report of the Center (MAC)
  • Homepage More plans: tutoring, coexistence…

1. Educational Project

A comprehensive and collective long-term performance proposal that allows the educational process in the center to be guided consistently and determines the stance of the values, knowledge, and skills that are intended to be prioritized, the relationship with parents and the environment…, the organization itself, whose collaboration should involve all members of the school community.

  • It explicitly states the ideological conceptions and educational consensus with which a center aims to train and educate students.
  • The basic components are:
  • Institutional definition
  • Training style
  • Relationship style
  • Organizational model
  • Participation model
  • Management model
  • (PCC refers here, between the PE and PGA)

2. General Annual Programming (PGA)

  • It is an institutional document that is based on the context and selects, sequences, and prioritizes content and activities taken from the PCC to be worked on for one year for all students (more specific).
  • The aim is to achieve greater flexibility in content, activities, methodology, and evaluation within the overall parameters set out in other documents.
  • The management team develops it taking into account the deliberations of the faculty and the school board.
  • The real preparation is done by teachers, together in teaching teams.
  • The content is:
  • The general school timetable
  • Educational criteria for the preparation of schedules
  • The existing PEC or modifications
  • Existing PCE or modifications
  • The annual program of complementary and extracurricular activities
  • An administrative report that includes the central organizational document (DOC), the statistical principle of the course, the status of facilities and equipment
  • The faculty must be informed of the PGA and evaluated for approval by the school council, which will respect the technical-teachers who are part of the faculty.
  • Once approved, one copy is kept in the center’s secretariat (available) and another is sent to the education authority.
  • After completing the course, the school board and the management team evaluate the degree of compliance with the PGA, which is included in the MOU.