Policies, dynamics and profiles of school clusters in Portugal

Abstract

The rationalization of the Portuguese school system, which has taken place over the last twenty years, has led to a profound reconfiguration of the network, the typology of the schools and their management. We studied the process of building school clusters and the resulting organizational configurations, problematizing their contributions to the democratization of school education. The analysis was based on statistical data requested from the Ministry of Education and, on a complementary basis, on External Evaluation Reports from the Inspector General of Education and Science. It was possible to identify the organizational diversity of the “cluster” configuration, as well as to observe its limited impact on democratization and improvement of schooling processes.