El Modelo CAF Educaciónanálisis de su implantación y desarrollo en los centros educativos de la Comunidad Autónoma de la Región de Murcia

Abstract

In an increasingly globalized world, organizations have to generate actions that allow them to be competitive. One of these actions supposes the satisfaction of the expectations or needs of the clients. In order to achieve this task, the institutions have an ally: quality. This complex, ambiguous, subjective and value-laden term has accompanied the human being since the dawn of time and had an exponential development during the past 20th century in the business field. It is from this scope where it makes the leak to the service sector and, therefore, to education, in which he also shows a great journey. Specifically, in the educational field, people began to talk about quality from the second half of the 20th century, after the publication of the Coleman Report and its dire conclusions for schools. This fact causes the emergence of a series of movements associated with efficiency and school improvement. The rise of these movements and the proliferation of Quality Management Systems have an impact on education since they are used in the self-evaluation of educational centers. In Spain, great efforts have been made to implement these Models, both at the state and regional levels. After the application of the LOGSE, the Ministry of Education proposed the use of the EFQM Model. Likewise, in some autonomies it is very common for the educational administrations to establish some of these SGCs to help in the evaluation of centers and to comply with what is promulgated from the educational laws, especially from article 145 of the LOE. Thus, since the 2012/2013 academic year, the Region of Murcia has applied the CAF Education Model for the self-evaluation of educational centers through the creation of a Network of Educational Centers of Excellence. In this context, the present research had the objectives of designing and validating an instrument that allows collecting information on the application of the CAF Education Model in non-university educational centers of the Autonomous Community of the Region of Murcia, analyze the process of implementation of the CAF Education, know the changes that it produces in the centers, analyze the knowledge that is had of this model and the use that is made of it, know the evaluations made of the CAF Model by those responsible for implementing it, analyze its contribution to the definition of the Mission, Vision and Values of the educational centers and analyze the educational conception of the centers that make up the Network of Centers of Educational Excellence in the Region of Murcia. From a mixed research approach, and through the use of quantitative and qualitative instruments, the results obtained showed that the implementation of the CAF Education Model is perceived as a complex procedure, which entails a workload that is not recognized by the educational Administration. The reasons that lead the centers to start working with the model are the search for improvement in the management and organization of the center, actions that also represent one of the main improvements together with the protocolization of documents. The difficulties mentioned focus on those of the model, such as vocabulary; those of the center, such as resistance from the teaching staff; and outside the center, such as the lack of support from the Administration. Those involved are satisfied with the application of the model, although knowledge of it is limited to the quality committees, which bear the burden of implementation. They value the model positively and point out as advantages of its use how useful it is for management and for starting an improvement process. As drawbacks, it is noted that it requires a lot of time and work since it is a long process. Those involved consider that the model is suitable for the educational field, although they point out as necessary that some criteria and sub-criteria should continue to be adapted to enjoy better cohesion with the educational process. The model contributes to the definition of the Mission, Vision and Values and allows connecting them with various documents of the center. The conception of educational quality that is held by the centers that are part of the Network of Centers of Excellence of the Region of Murcia has as its main axis the students and is marked by the use of the model.