Good management improves school performance, but what do we know about the effect of management complexity in this relationship?

Abstract

This article evaluates the relationship between school management and performance in the Prova Brasil-2015 of Mathematics of the 9th grade and the moderating role of the complexity of school management in this relation. The modeling of structural equations-technique Partial Least Squares Path Modeling (PLS-PM) was used for developing an exploratory hierarchical model. The sample consisted of 182 schools of the public education network of Espirito Santo. Data were collected from the database of Saeb. The results showed a direct positive impact of school management on students' performance; previous studies pointed to an indirect relationship. The complexity of management acts as a moderator of this relationship, with a negative impact. Then, the higher the level of complexity of school management, the more impactful the school management in performance. Thus, this study reinforces the importance of the school director and inquiries into how to reduce the complexity of school management and/or improve the director's performance.