As a result of their growing autonomy, and of concurrence in the educational offer, educational organisations implement systems of management and continuous improvement, such as the EFQM (European Foundation for Quality Management) Excellence Model.

This paper is concerned with identifying the strategies of innovation and knowledge management developed in the educational centres of the Basque Country. It analyses the formulation of this subcriterion, with its markedly transversal character, which provides information on the way in which these organisations conceive, define, plan, act on and evaluate improvement in their educational task.

The research sets out from the hypothesis that the way in which this process is conceived and developed puts into practice the principles of an authentic “research in action”, since it places at the service of the educational collective the information and tools necessary for undertaking the educational project from a perspective of continuous improvement, of both the educational processes themselves and the development of the competence of the educational professionals.

In this respect, the research work has explored the way in which, through innovation and learning, educational organisations are developing the Curricular Project of the Centre, its vision, mission and pedagogical aims, adapting the strategies and available resources to the demand of the social setting and the students’ needs of integral training.

Through textual analysis of EFQM reports, the construction of that social, economic and cultural reality within which the educational organisations inscribe their educational project has been identified. Special attention has been paid to the way in which the public Educational Centres identify and respond to socio-educational needs and demands that are subject to dynamics which often elude foresight and educational planning (immigration, linguistic setting, pockets of poverty, risk of social exclusion, students with special educational needs). The treatment of this socio-educational problematic transcends a mere market-orientated vision, and its response requires, besides a broad social consensus, alliances and the coordinated action of different bodies, institutions and persons committed to improving the conditions of life and culture, which are not merely educational.

Consequently, the meaning and pertinence of innovation in Educational Centres acquires a social dimension that must be projected in all of the strategies that the Educational Centres undertake in response to the changing social and cultural setting and to the deep transformations that the new technologies and the new forms of access to knowledge are introducing in the teaching-learning processes.

In this respect, educational innovation is a question that is closely related to a strategy of knowledge management, a management that is not reduced to the density of information exchange within an organisation, but that must be considered in its fully communicative dimension. That is to say, in terms of the real possibilities that the members of the educational community (teaching staff, pupils, parents and society) have for acceding to the relevant knowledge that makes it possible to think, plan and act facing the educational problems, and to adapt this response to the curricular project of the centre, since this represents the educational organisation’s agreement with and commitment to society.