Alexandre Man Christ. The state of education in Portugal: progress and what remains to be done | 45 Degree Podcast
not this week podcast 45 Degrees, the guest is Alexandre Homem Cristo, former member of the National Education Council (2013-2015) and doctoral candidate at the Institute of Social Sciences (ICS) of the University of Lisbon. Between 2012 and 2015, he served as a parliamentary advisor to the Parliamentary Committee on Education, Science and Culture, and is currently president of QIPP, a non-profit organization linked to public policy.
Education is perhaps the best candidate for number one public policy priority of any developed country. The population’s education level has a positive correlation with almost everything we think about when we think of a developed country: economic growth, equal opportunities, a thriving civil society and even the quality of the population’s mental health.
In the case of Portugal, despite criticisms of the education system, the truth is that in the last two decades a kind of silent revolution has taken place in education. From the results of the PISA exams (International Student Assessment Program), from the OECD – the most reliable indicator for international comparisons -, the picture that emerges is of a country that, in the words of the OECD director for education, is “Europe’s biggest success story”, with a remarkable progression since the turn of the century. These progresses are a good example of how relatively stable public policies are essential for the country’s development.
Despite this evolution, however, there are still important gaps in the Portuguese education system. From the outset, it continues to have a high level of failures and students who leave school before their time. On the other hand, these improvements in the education of the new generations are not equivalent to the schooling of older people. Here, the previous legacy continues to weigh and in Portugal the percentage of adults without secondary education is still almost half of the population, more than double the European average.
Furthermore, there are precedent aspects of the system itself that continue to restrict the quality of education in Portugal. For example, the ability of schools to improve their provision and adapt it to local needs remains constrained by a low degree of autonomy (compared to other countries), particularly in hiring and evaluating teachers. Likewise, teachers today are an aging population – less than 1% is under 30 -, with a low level of autonomy and few incentives for performance.
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