Think tank workshop Braga – report
With one of our RIA projects we held a think tank event at the University of Minho in Braga. A lot of useful exchanges took place. For example, there were discussions on Portuguese: statistics, segregation, the school system, the situation of Roma and segregated groups, teaching methods.
Some examples:
Family factors influencing school advantage and disadvantage are assessed in
some countries as part of the administrative data provision: how complete and
how adequate the tools and scales are in Portugal:
- When measuring the status of the children’s family in terms of the educational situation of the children’s family?
- When measuring the status of the children’s family in relation to the labour market situation of the children’s family?
- When measuring the status of the children’s family in terms of income and wealth of the children’s family?
- When measuring the status of the children’s family in terms of illness, disability, addiction in the children’s family?
- When measuring the status of the children’s’ family in terms of the sociodemographic situation of the children’s family (child mortality, number of children, widowhood, divorce, broken family, mosaic family, multigenerational family)?
NON-family factors influencing school advantage and disadvantage are assessed
in some countries as part of the administrative data provision: how thorough, how
complete and how adequate the tools and scales are in Portugal:
- When measuring whether the student belongs to an ethnic minority, linguistic minority, immigrant group?
- When measuring the disadvantaged situation of the municipality?
- When measuring the disadvantaged position of neighbourhoods within the municipality?
- When measuring school facilities, infrastructures?
- When measuring the situation of class within the school?
- When measuring the qualification of teachers?
- When measuring how much the school is supported by its environment?
Discussion on Portugal:
- In many places, some schools are taking advantage of legal opportunities not to admit/enrol disadvantaged children, while in others disadvantaged children are concentrated. Please assess whether the data reporting system has adequate information on this?
- In many places, some schools are circumventing legal prohibitions and find ways to avoid admission of disadvantaged children, so they are concentrated in other schools. Assess whether the data reporting system has adequate information on this?
- In many places, some schools publicly use the legal possibilities to divide children into different groups, e.g. by creating groups according to the children’s performance or by setting up special education groups. This leads to a concentration of disadvantaged children in certain groups. Please assess whether the data reporting system has adequate information on this?
- In many places, schools are circumventing legal prohibitions and still segregate disadvantaged children within the school. Assess whether the data reporting
- system has adequate information on this?
Researchers’ access to the following types of data in Portugal:
- Census data on school enrolment, school attendance by person
- School statistics by school
- Administrative data on disadvantaged persons by municipality
- Regular, publicly funded, very large-scale surveys (covering at least 10% of pupils or parents), data collection
Many thanks to the Portuguese team for this great opportunity.