Professor Carolina Ugarte was the first speaker of the online second cycle of 'Educate Today: The current challenges of the teacher'. The professor of Organization and management of educational centers and Professional Competences at the School of Education and Psychology, spoke about the influence of report PISA on the management of educational centers.

He began his session by explaining the report PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment assessment ), a study promoted by the OECD, which is cyclical, triennial and evaluates 15-year-old students in their skill reading, mathematics and science.

The professor wanted to emphasize that PISA focuses exclusively on these three competencies, but the Education encompasses the whole person, "financial aid to human development" and, therefore, "its data cannot be absolutized" - emphasized the professor.

The results obtained by the students can be explained by different factors, among them the index partner-economic and cultural (ISEC) of the families. Without forgetting that there are other aspects (structural, of the organization of the center, of the families and of the context) that influence the performance of student body. Regarding the structural ones, Ugarte explained that there is only a positive correlation between the increase of expense in salaries of staff professor and the improvement of students' results. He also mentioned as another influential factor the continuity of educational policies, giving as an example that countries with stable policies based on consensus obtain better results.

PISA, moreover, sample that the more autonomy schools have, the better their results. "As long as - he adds - there is accountability". In line with the PISA program's data , he explains that a school director has to look beyond extrinsic motivation (salary), and move towards intrinsic motivation (investment in training permanent, horizontal promotion, etc.) and transcendent motivation; in other words, promoting the participation - within limits - of academic staff in the school's decision-making process.

Ugarte concluded his session by pointing to the role of families as another factor that influences the results of student body, since their involvement in their children's Education improves their results. He said that it is desirable that there is "coherence between what is said at home and at high school" and that "we must not take authority away from academic staff".