Abstract
Within the framework of the cognitive analysis of policies, based on archival research of official texts, this research is about how knowledge and policy are interrelated in the processes of problematization and preconization. The starting point are two central scenes: the ‘Government’ as a public authority whose decision resulted in the Law 31/2002, of 20 December, which approves the non-higher education evaluation system, and the ‘Working Group’ mandated by the Education Inspectorate, in 2011, to reconfigure the initial school evaluation model. The law and the evaluative model are receptacles of the knowledge that instituted the policy in public action, revealing the nature of the knowledge that allowed to conceive the evaluation, fabricate the problems, and collectivize the solutions. The comparative and cartographic knowledge stand out, streamlining the emergence of inferences of governmental value and the effectiveness of regulation, based on the international example, and the evidence-based policy and best practices, reinforcing the desirability of the evaluation policy, legitimizing it. The analysis also resulted in a reflection on the concomitance of bureaucratic and post-bureaucratic forms in the government of education.
School Evaluation; External Evaluation; Education Policy; Knowledge; Inspection