National Ministry of Culture and Education

The force-ideas

a. Equity and quality

An education system that increases the opportunities of a high-quality learning for all.

Equity in the distribution of educational opportunities for the whole of the population means designing school programmes and ways of working in the classroom which could guarantee all the students, without distinction, the insertion, permanence and acquisition of basic abilities as well as the success in established levels of achievement.

Quality not only implies the updating of the contents, the equipment, the methods and the techniques, it is also to work focusing on results and to increase the opportunities of learning for all with the permanent determination of bridging the gap little by little and improving the perspectives of the "know how to think" "know how to do" and "know how to be'.
The school will take over a fundamental role in the democratization of education since it should ensure equal opportunities for all the students in the insertion, permanence, graduation and in the results obtained within the education system.

The instrument used for the construction of equity will be the personalized attention of the students; which will be carried out trough different strategies to teach, to assess, to follow up individuals and groups, to detect difficulties in time, to devise and to apply deficit and approach compensation mechanisms and to deal with critical situations.

b. Decentralization and participation

A federal education system defined from the point of view of an autonomous school unit.

As a result of the process of decentralization in Argentine education, the provinces take over all the rights and duties in force concerning education, with the support of the President, through the National Ministry of Culture and Education. This ministry commits itself to guarantee services in all the jurisdictions with maximum student attendance, high methodological quality and equity.

A national education system based in unity in diversity and in the philosophy and powered articulating the provincial identities which establish it, is, thus, re-created.

The re-foundation of the education system in centred on the re-definition of the school unit. This option is not naive. It tries to overcome the logics of previous educational reforms centred in the macro aspects (such as the reorganization of educational levels) as well as in the micro aspects (like methodological and contents changes at classroom level).

The unit of change of the education system is the school. In order to take over this task, it is necessary to open up spaces for an increasing pedagogical and administrative autonomy. This will only be possible with the growth of an authentic capacity of decision-making at every school, in the frame of federally agreed policies.

The Common Basic Contents agreed at national level, the strengthening of educational management in provincial systems and the full performance of the National System of Assessment, are the frame in which the growing autonomy of the school unit is postered.

c. Academic excellence for all

A "wide" concept for educational contents.

Knowledge is the new name for development. The society of the future outlines itself with a high level of demands for all this population. A new education system is committed to guarantee suitable levels of academic quality at all instances.

It is necessary to go from the "know hows" to the "competences". To know, to know how to reason, to know to do and to know how to the make up the proposal of conceptual, procedural and attitudinal contents, for the development of personal and social capabilities that the school must promote to allow young people to participate as full members of society.

Today it is not possible to reach academic quality without a curricular proposal centred in the student's training of competences

Starting out from these definitions, the school created by the Law 24.195 is committed to allow students to acquire competences, that is to say, "knowledge in action". It is not enough for a student "to know"; he has "to know how to do". Competence is to be able to project oneself on a specific action. A competence includes the know hows, but it redefines them in terms of commitment to action.

An education system committed to quality meant as equity and academic excellence for all, will assume its responsibility to achieve the potential of its teachers' and students' capacities, whether they are children, youths of adults. The question is to widen the capacity to learn the elements of culture, meant as a plural form, through the greatest quantity and variety of possible experiences.

d. Transformation in Organization

An alternative model of organization and management

The internal dynamics of institutions influences the quality and equity of education. Carrying out deep changes in curricular and pedagogical proposals means that, a re-definition of the bases of its performance should be stated at all instances of the organization. They must become "intelligent" institutions. It is the state's responsibility to offer a high quality education service for all.

First of all, ministries (national and provincial), thought to manage transformational tasks and not only to administrate the system, must be active and flexible organizations, capable of responding to changing and permanently modifying demands. Furthermore, these demands, very complex indeed, are produced in an uncertain context, typical of postmodernity.

These ministries must do away with their classical, bureaucratic, vertical conceptions and must be organized by projects. This change requires a high professional density, which can be defined as a responsible and autonomous commitment not reached by a simple statement but through theoretical and technical control, effectively superior and demonstrable.

At school unit level, the proposal of Argentine educational transformation pretends school to become non-traditional organizations, "intelligent organizations", which allow institutional learning and adopt a management which fosters transformations processes.

The Federal Law of Education suggests the school as a whole to be the axis of educational change. The school's main objective will be the strengthen and raise the quality of education so as to make it more equitable and efficient, that it, to increase its capacity to fairly distribute the opportunities of a better training for all the population.