The mirage of curricular autonomy

ECER 2014 "The Past, the Present and Future of Educational Research in Europe" will take place at the University of Porto from 1 - 5 September 2014.

The Portuguese curriculum policy is rooted in a centralist tradition, which started to be challenged in the context of the educational reform of the late 1980s. The policy-makers' discourse has been, for the past quarter-century, loaded with calls for decentralization and a number of measures with some decentralizing potential have been taken. A careful analysis of the main official documents, combined with a review of research reports, reveals that curriculum policy-making in Portugal is still very centralized and dependent on the prescription of detailed study plans and syllabi. These tend to be followed very strictly. Therefore, Portuguese schools are still far from becoming strong curriculum agencies.