What Kind of School Organizational Decisions Serve to Enhance Sustainable Personal and Social Growth?

Abstract

Sustainable decisions in education are those which pursue long-term achievements for students. In many cases, the principals of the schools are those who must make these decisions. In this paper we explore some of the factors that influence the students’ long-term development by means of an analysis of the correlation between certain organizational aspects of the schools which directly depend on the principals and the scores that their students have obtained in the International Assessment PISA 2018 in mathematics, reading and science. The results point to a better long-term student achievement when the organizational decisions are designed to enhance interpersonal relationships (teacher-teacher, teacher-student and student-student), responding to the specific needs of each person and based on trust. Conversely, it seems that when the organizational decisions are merely made to control academic life, they either bear upon academic achievement in a negative way or do not significantly affect it. The results suggest that carefully attending to interpersonal relationships is the key factor behind all the educational decisions which generate sustainable socio-personal development.