Municipio y Educación: Reflexiones, experiencias y desafíos

This contribution collects reflections and experiences related to educational work in the territory of Coyhaique and other municipalities. Beyond the contributions it presents, it represents the defense and vindication of the participation of municipalities in the organization and management of the public education service. Although it is true that centralized education has long served the processes of generalization of schooling, its ability to influence the improvement of educational quality is increasingly questioned. And it is not possible to give adequate responses to the varied contexts and situations that often occur within a country. The extension of social democratization processes and the need for education that is respectful of different contexts and more attentive to people’s needs, have promoted decentralization processes and, with them, debates on municipal participation in education and need for institutional autonomy. As successive PISA reports reiterate, schools function more efficiently when the level of autonomy is high and is accompanied by accountability processes. This is not a change in model but, we believe, a necessary evolution of the existing one. If we want education to also be at the service of people, we must facilitate organizational models that allow the participation of people and their immediate environments. The important thing is to understand that effective changes are complex and the result of internal and external synergies, that rather than excluding someone, they rely on everyone’s resources. This text understands that, through its proposals, examples and evaluations, it can help the established debate. On the one hand, it presents three general contributions that reflect on the processes of change, the role of municipalities and the role of teachers, addressing three levels of educational reality. On the other hand, blocks of contributions and experiences are organized that refer to both organizational policies and practices at the municipal level and experiences related to the participation of representatives, quality improvement or connections with the social environment. We are aware that the contributions are a small island within the possibilities and realities of education at the municipal level, but it seems to us that systematizing them and disseminating them through a text can be an appropriate way to promote the debate. Hopefully the example will be limited in the future.