This study aims to discuss the implications that the New Public Management agenda in education have had in the construction of the school/community relationship in rural areas. Studies about education in rural contexts have pointed to the centrality of the school/community relationship to understanding the role of education in this contexts (Boix, 2014; Corbett, 2020; Hargreaves et al. 2009), especially in the light of a characterization of these contexts as deficient in the dominant discourse (Hargreaves, 2017; Morales-Romo, 2017). By rethinking the school-community relationship from a territorial perspective it is possible to question the rhetoric of deficiency of rural schools, in particular through research of practices that strengthen the bond of schools with their territories from the perspective of the participants’ agency. From a perspective of potential, the school-community can be fundamental factor for the strengthening of education inclusion, understood as a means to access a more equitable education oriented towards social justice (Ainscow, 2020; Burns and Flynn, 2020).

The New Public Management (NPM) paradigm in education has been attractive for educational systems all over the world because of its promise to face bureaucracy by taking management ideas from the private sector into the public sector, seeking to improve efficiency (Verger & Curran, 2014). Among the consequences of this, it is possible to see changes in financing and management of schools, from centralized to local governments, which leaves these local governments to fend for themselves in the face of changing cultures and economies; however, curriculum remains being under centralized control under the premise of efficiency (Santarrone & Vittor, 2004). In the context of NPM, rural education becomes a special type of challenge for local governments: the small size of these schools means greater associated costs, rural areas may not have access to all necessary resources, and standardized testing may yield lower scores for these students because of their school size. Because of these factors, from the NPM perspective rural schools tend to be thought as deficient (Abarzua Silva, Guerrero Morales & Ramos Roa, unpublished manuscript).

Community participation in schools is generally considered to be fundamental for the improvement of educational processes in students, especially where families are concerned (Garcia et al., 2016; Garreta Bochaca & Llevot Calvet, 2007). This is also the case in rural contexts (Sanahuja Ribes et al., 2019; Nunez et al., 2021). However, the study of community participation in schools remains largely unexplored, becoming an emergent research opportunity. It is recognized that rural schools have a strong relationship with their communities (Boix, 2014), fulfilling a role of local development (Hargreaves et al., 2019), and local cohesion of the community (Nunez et al., 2014). Given this tight relationship, rural schools have different inclusion/exclusion processes than those reported in urban areas (Ortiz, 2016), which have been affected by the changes brought by globalization to rurality. These are the changes that the NPM fails to take into consideration in the management of rural schools.

The research question that motivated this study is: what are the social representations regarding the relationship between rural schools, their educational community and their territory held by relevant stakeholders in rural schools? The research design, conceived as an ethnography, intends to understand these representations from the perspective of the rural communities. We intend to contribute to the literature on rural schools, rethinking the notion of rurality from the perspectives of local actors and building theory from their subjectivities. This evidence that might help inform adequate policies oriented specifically for the realities of rural schools o strengthen community participation and educational inclusion in these contexts, attempting to avoid the deficient view established by NPM.

This study has been conceived as a school ethnography in two rural schools in central Chile. For this ethnographic exercise, participant observation and in-depth interviews were carried out in the schools during a six-month period. We engaged in participant observation every week during this period in each school, where information was produced from participating in lessons, students’ breaks, staff meetings, holiday celebrations, parents’ meetings and overall everyday activities. In-depth interviews were carried out with some participants from each school in order to have a deeper understanding of the communities’ experiences. For this, a photolanguage interview was designed to encourage the discussion with the participants. In this interview, we showed them pictures related to work and leisure activities to help us find the core concepts about their schools and the way they relate to their territories according to the participants’ views. People who participated in these interviews included the school principals, teachers, administrative staff, janitors, students, parents, and other members of the community, such as local leaders, and police officers and firefighters. School policies in relation to rural schools in Chile have been characterized as an “absent policy” (Oyarzun, 2020), particularly because of the lack of official information about the existence and management of rural schools. Due to this, we decided to also carry out photolanguage interviews with two officers in the Rural Education Program of the Chilean Ministry of Education, as a way of understanding the official position and discourse from authorities in relation to he experiences of rural schools. These interviews were carried out at the same time of the ethnographic exercise in the schools. They provided additional information in relation to the way in which the Ministry of Education engages with rural schools, especially in the context of the New Public Management approach to education that has been staple of the educational policies in Chile. The final stage of the ethnographic process was characterized by a meeting with participants from each school community, according to the schools’ own design, in order to present preliminary information from the participant observations and interviews. In these meetings, participants were able to contribute with additional information to complete a cultural profile of each school, as well as endorsing the information produced by the research team as faithful to their local cultures. Ethical approvals for this study were obtained from the IRB from the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile.

The installation of NPM policies in rural schools have impacted the way in which these schools relate to their communities. The centralized control over what is considered to be efficient in school management has led to rural schools being disconnected from the local processes of the communities. For example, in the touristic rural community that participated in this study, it is customary to go on holidays after the peak tourist season, which coincides with the start of the school year. The local school cannot delay the start of the school year, which means that during the first two weeks of the year student attendance is low. At the same time, necessary connectivity improvements in both local communities, such as internet access and road pavement, has led to the questioning of their condition of rurality. Higher authorities tend to consider rurality from a stereotyped perspective, associating it to poverty, difficult access, and low connectivity, among other ideas. These considerations have been difficult to navigate for people living in these spaces, who struggle to understand their rural identity outside of the rural stereotype. As a consequence, schools are held to standards they cannot meet in terms of resources, and workers struggle with the recognition of their work. Finally, one of the most important consequences of NPM in rural schools is the gap created between the school and the community. The implementation of standardized tests and other quality-related measures has created in parents the feeling that their local schools do not provide quality education, preferring to take their children to schools further away in larger urban centers. The distrust has evolved into a two-way conflict, where parents blame the school for lower achievement of their children, and schools blame parents for their lack of involvement.

Ainscow, M. (2020). Promoting inclusion and equity in education: lessons from international experiences. Nordic Journal of Studies in Educational Policy, 6(1), 7–16. Boix, R. (2014). La escuela rural en la dimensión territorial. Innovación Educativa, 24, 89–97. Burns, L. D., & Flynn, J. (2020). Social justice education and the pitfalls of community and inclusion. Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy, 18(1), 4–20. Corbett, M. (2020). Place-Based Education: A Critical Appraisal from a Rural Perspective. In M. Corbett & D. Gereluk (Eds.), Rural Teacher Education: Connecting Land and People (pp. 279–230). Springer. García, O. M., Martí, J. A. T., Bernardo, M. P. R., & Arnau, T. S. (2016). Estrategias que inciden en los procesos de democratización de la escuela. Una aproximación teórica. Revista Electronica de Investigacion Educativa, 18(2), 116–129. Garreta Bochaca, J., & Llevot Calvet, N. (2007). La relación familia-escuela: ¿una cuestión pendiente? In J. Garreta Bochaca (Ed.), La relación familia-escuela (p. 138). Edicions de la Universitat de Lleida. Hargreaves, L., Kvalsund, R., & Galton, M. (2009). Reviews of research on rural schools and their communities in British and Nordic countries: Analytical perspectives and cultural meaning. International Journal of Educational Research, 48(2), 80–88. Hargreaves, L. (2017). Primary Education in Small Rural Schools: Past, Present and Future. In R. Maclean (Ed.), Life in Schools and Classrooms. Past, Present and Future (pp. 223–243). Springer. Morales-Romo, N. (2017). The Spanish rural school from the New Rural paradigm. Evolution and challenges for the future. Revista Colombiana de Ciencias Sociales, 8(2), 412–438. Núñez, C. G., Solís, C., & Soto, R. (2014). ¿Que sucede en las comunidades cuando se cierra la escuela rural? Un análisis psicosocial de la política de cierre de las escuelas rurales en Chile. Universitas Psychologica, 13(2), 615–625 Nuñez, C. G., Peña, M., González, B., Ascorra, P., & Hain, A. (2021). Rural schools have always been inclusive: the meanings rural teachers construct about inclusion in Chile. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 1–15. Ortiz, C. (2016). A Contingent Embrace: Divergent Realities of Inclusion at a Rural School. Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 47(3), 264–278. Santarrone, F., & Vittor, A. (2004). La neo educación liberal: Una visión general acerca de las ideas neoliberales sobre la educación. Aula Abierta. Verger, A., & Curran, M. (2014). New public management as a global education policy: Its adoption and re-contextualization in a Southern European setting. Critical Studies in Education, 55(3), 253–271.