Curriculum and Educational Reforms in Portugal: An Analysis on Why and How Students’ Knowledge and Skills Improved

Abstract

By the turn of the century, following the dismal first results in TIMSS and PISA, the Portuguese educational system was at a crossroads. It was clear that students were not attaining minimal levels of proficiency in reading, math, science, and other basic subjects. The system needed a deep reshaping, and so changes were made. By the time the last PISA and TIMSS international large-scale surveys' results were released in 2015, Portugal registered a quantum leap: in PISA, student achievement was above the OECD average and in TIMSS, 4th graders had higher scores in Mathematics than several usually high-performing countries, including Finland. How was this possible? To understand what happened, we need to look at what Portugal has done in the last 10-15 years. Although many different ministers from different ideological standpoints made different reforms, there is a common thread to most changes: they paid increased attention to results. This proved to be a powerful thrust for improvement, backed up by experienced teachers. However, this general thrust assumed many concrete different aspects and promoted different reforms. During the 2011-2015 period, these reforms went further and were very clear, intentional, and explicit: a clear curriculum, increased school autonomy, students' regular assessment, vocational paths, flexibility. All this helped to prepare youngsters for an active, productive, and responsible life in the twenty-first century. 8.1 Introduction Portugal arrived late at the twentieth century and took a long time to recover from illiteracy, poverty, isolation, and a very limited school system. Only in 1956 was compulsory schooling extended from 3 to 4 years, and only for boys. The same extension included girls in 1960. In 1964, compulsory schooling was extended to 6 years and in 1967 the so-called preparatory unified cycle ("ciclo

Portugal: The PISA Effects on Education

“…The Mediterranean project found a country largely deprived of education. In 1970, 18% of the Portuguese population was illiterate, 66% of 15-year olds had not completed any level of formal education, and only 0.9% of the total population had a higher education degree (Crato 2020). A large set of reforms were therefore proposed, in the early 1970s, to all levels of basic, secondary and university studies.…”

“…Despite the TIMSS 1995 insights being unfavorably received, the 1995 large scale assessment set the seed to assessment policy changes and mathematics and science curricular reforms. It was also a turning point in the acknowledgement of the need to not only further assess Portugal's educational system according to international standards but also to pay more attention to results in basic subjects (Crato 2020;Marôco 2020).…”

“…He took the early reforms and the apparent stagnation of the PISA results from 2009 to 2012 to reinforce curricular "targets" and learning outcomes on the basic and secondary education, curricular structure revisions (more teaching hours) for Portuguese, Mathematics, and Sciences (2013-2014), school autonomy, and to push for better teachers' initial training. He paid particular attention to vocational high-school tracks and made them part of the compulsory schooling diversifying the schools' offers to cover different students' interests (Crato 2020). He also implemented the end of cycle high-stakes exams for mathematics and Portuguese in grade 6 (2012) and grade 4 (2013) as well as the assessment of teachers' qualifications and certification required for teaching, proposed by Lurdes Rodrigues, in 2014-2015.…”

Greek and Portuguese Mathematics Education and Performance, Through the Prism of Pisa

“…A clear curriculum, students' regular assessment, teachers' training and the Action Plan for Mathematics. But despite that fact, the Mathematics performance of Greek 15-year-olds students in PISA in all cycles of PISA remains below the respective OECD average, in contrast with Portugal, that has registered a quantum leap (Crato, 2020). The main aim of this research is, through a recording of the Greek and Portuguese students' mathematics achievements in PISA and at the same time of the Mathematics Education in both countries, through available policy documents and research reports, to comment on the current outcomes of the two educational systems and their students' performance in Mathematics.…”

España vs. Portugal en educación. Una aproximación sistémica

“…Un análisis del caso portugués, apoyado en distintas fuentes (Crato, 2020;OECD, 2018), permite concluir que los sucesivos gobiernos, de signos políticos diferentes, han prestado a la educación un interés especial, y han introducido reformas bien alineadas con objetivos de mejora situados en el medio y largo plazo; mejoras que se han puesto de manifiesto, con bastante claridad, en el anterior análisis empírico de las series cronológicas.…”