Institutional assessment: Between political pressing needs and school improvement needs

Abstract

This article presents, through a critical analysis, a reflection on a noticeable change that focuses on some aspects related to the assessment of different parts of the educational system. In particular, it concentrates on the assessment of teaching institutions which has been considered by authorities that are distant from the school life and from what takes place in the classrooms; an assessment that affects both the teaching institutions and the social organisations, and that has the teachers as its main objective. This is a new approach whose origin can be found in the political demands of a neo-liberal ideology.