This paper reports on the results of an action research to understand the benefits, obstacles and challenges of implementing the BSC in a School District. To complete the action research cycle (see Figure 1) it is pertinent to discuss the learning made in relation to strategic management, the BSC and the area of research.
As far as the first is concerned, the analysis of results suggests that the BSC can overcome some weaknesses of Portuguese schools, in the area of strategic management (see section 2.1.), and that were already described in the literature (e.g. Estêvão et al., 1996; Costa, 2004) and the IGE (2009, 2011a, b). The evidence collected in the AEX School District corroborates the benefits of the BSC in first, promoting the articulation between the objectives included in the educative project and the activities included in the annual plan of activities; second, persuading the educational community of the need to define indicators and targets; third, providing a framework to continually assess the performance of the school district; and fourth, promoting the participation of the educational community in elaborating strategic documents of the school district, as well as a better knowledge of these documents. It should be noted that the strategic vision is the starting point in building the BSC and, therefore, schools must necessarily define their vision to be able to take advantage of this.