The Portuguese education system is still highly centralised, however, since the 1990s some changes are occurring, mostly, at school level. This decentralisation process began by intensifying school autonomy and also, at local level, with the delegation of competencies to the municipalities, traditionally centred in the schools, mainly in the realm of the social services and family support (Barroso, 2004). This ongoing, complex decentralisation process is a challenge both to local authorities with scarce resources to fulfil the needs of the populations, and to schools. Following the global trend (Castells, 1996), partnerships with public and private organisations were identified as a way to support and sustain improvements in the schools and the well-being of children and families. As in other countries, networks and partnerships are critical factors bridging the educational and the community sectors (Hadfield & Chapman, 2009; Chapman & Hadfield, 2010; Jungermann, 2014). However, this growing interest in networking needs to be consistent with a persistent awareness of possible cultural differences between the partners (Lima, 2010).

So far, educational matters such as pedagogy, curriculum and assessment are still central teaching fields, but the governance of education is becoming an arena to be shared by actors external to school communities and local education authorities.  However, the efficacy of networks and partnerships depend on common goals and negotiated consensus, though the natural tensions between stakeholders. As it was pointed out by Moos (2008:203) “decentralization of the educational system, irrespective of motives, puts in focus the balance between political and professional power over education. In moving from central governing to local governing, it seems that the question of who has the responsibility is sharpened”.

Assuming education as a social right for all children (Bernstein, 1996), the research project Building Local Networking in Education? Decision-Makers Discourses on School Achievement and Drop out in Portugal (FCT) focused mainly on the involvement of local authorities in networking regarding school improvement and achievement, in a conceptual framework around extended forms of citizenship and social justice (Araújo, Sousa, Costa, Loureiro & Portela, 2013). School disengagement has been one of the targets of wide concerns and studies (Ferguson et al, 2005; Araújo, Magalhães, Rocha, & Macedo, 2014). Some results showed that, notwithstanding a great variety of definitions and related concepts for network (Sousa, Doroftei, & Araújo, 2014), the stakeholders – local education authorities (education councilors and officers) and school agents (teachers/ school General Council’ presidents, principals and parents’ representatives) – displayed a general acceptance of the new governance, and recognised some advantages in networks (Costa, Loureiro, Silva, & Araújo, 2013; Silva et al, 2014).

It is now time to focus on the teachers who are called, now, to work with entities not usually part of the school organization, especially municipalities, establishing some sort of networks and certainly becoming engaged in a changing process. We should stress here the exploratory dimension involved in studying this "new" role for the teachers, as school General Council’ presidents, who are called to interact and intervene in, and with the community, which brings new questions on how networks are built and how are leaderships developed. In spite of general consensus about the advantages of networks, as observed by Harris, Day & Hadfield (2003), our study intended to track the problematic impact on teachers’ perspectives when complying with this participatory, collective educational provision. In this context, our aim was to understand the impact of the partnerships in the school organisation as a result of this change in teachers' role, aware that this is a transition time for education, especially for schools and for the municipalities.

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