Arquivos escolares: desafios na organização e preservação dos documentos na Escola Estadual Alpha

Abstract

This research, developed within the Professional Master's Program in Public Education Management and Evaluation (PPGP/CAEd/UFJF), focuses on optimizing the archival management of Escola Estadual Alpha, located in Minas Gerais. The research question guiding the study was: how to optimize the school's archival management to ensure organization, preservation, and efficient access to school records? The general objective is to propose ways of archival organization and preservation; the specific objectives include describing the current organization of the archives, analyzing the management of the documentary collection, and proposing an action plan for its preservation. The research, with a qualitative approach, combined document analysis, systematic observation, and semi-structured interviews with the school principal and the inspector from the Regional Education Superintendence. The theoretical framework was based on archival science (Belloto, 2004; Brazil, 2019), document management (Oliveira, 2024), information management (Valentim, 2002), and process management (Gonçalves, 2000). The results, obtained through data triangulation, revealed a critical diagnosis structured around four axes: structural (inadequate spaces and deterioration of historical documents); people management (lack of formal training and non-standardized procedures); technological (predominance of physical archives and lack of digitization); and legal and memorial (difficulty in applying the Records Retention Schedule and risk to the preservation of institutional memory, including the collection of extinct schools). Based on this diagnosis, an Educational Action Plan (EAP) is presented, composed of eight interconnected proposals: feedback of results to the school community, inventory of the collection, team training, reorganization of physical spaces, classification and application of the records retention schedule, gradual digitization of the permanent collection, implementation of a digital protocol for document tracking, and elaboration of an archival procedures manual. The EAP aims not only to solve immediate problems but also to establish an archival culture in the school, ensuring administrative efficiency, transparency, and the preservation of institutional history.