Governance models evolved dynamically, complex, global, and interactive. The aim of this study was to analyze non-superior public education institutions in Portugal, with the new model of governance, in which the school opened for society. The work of the multiple case study presented followed a qualitative methodology and the principles of the founded theory analyzing the elements of the General Council: their participation and shame. The authors consider four school groups, with different academic and socioeconomic profiles. The data collected in interviews, document analysis and unmarked observation were subject to content analysis. Obstacles to the execution of the GC's competences and the effective participation of its members highlight pressures exercised by the director in decision making, monopolizing the information provided to the GC, aggravating during the pandemic. The authors ended up with recommendations for the operation of the most effective and democratic GC.
TopIntroduction
At the end of the last century, in a parallel way to the whole process of globalization, governance evolved significantly, as with interest in its study at the academic level.
The attention given to governance follows globalization, assimilating in the first phase the principles of new public management and, later, those of the new public governance that legitimizes the representation of external stakeholders in the strategic management bodies of public and complex institutions are the ones non Higher Public Education Institutions. This opening of non higher public education institutions with society integrates vertical and horizontal and multilevel network systems.
In our work, governance is considered global and interactive, translating itself in a complex set of institutional norms and processes at a given territorial level, reconciling interrelationships (of internal and external stakeholders), adapted to the challenges placed at its various levels and in Network, which enforces individual participation, operation and decision making of an organ.
If governance studies in Higher Public Education institutions have multiplied, the same does not happen in the non Higher Public Education Institutions, where few authors include the theme in some texts where they address this theme.
The objective of this work is to analyze how the governance model is being implemented in the non higher public education institutions instituted in Portugal - Drecreto-Lei nº75/2008, de 22 de abril. Given the appreciation that the law gives to the role of external stakeholders, in which for the first time they are included in the participation of the strategic management of non Higher Public Education Institutions, we intend to analyze how the various elements of the general council in decision -making of Non Higher Public Education Institutions.
This chapter is divided into five points beyond the introduction: the management of non-higher education from a multilevel perspective; The general council as a management body in the democratic model of the non Higher Public Education Institutions; Case study, analyzed results and final considerations.