Overall, during the course of compulsory education, few students fall behind, failing to complete their studies in the expected timeframe. However, data indicates that challenges are predominantly faced by students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds.
Nevertheless, some schools manage to mitigate the impact of socioeconomic conditions on academic performance, where students benefiting from Social School Action (ASE) successfully defy expectations for their own academic success.
This is one of the conclusions drawn from the analysis conducted on equity indicators, which track ASE students and compare their academic success with the national average for students with a similar profile at the start of each educational cycle.
In the 2022/2023 academic year, the latest period for which data is available from the Ministry of Education, Science, and Innovation, 1,228 educational institutions achieved positive equity levels. This represents 56.48% of more than two thousand public schools analyzed.
From the 1st cycle up to secondary education, it is between the 5th and 6th grades where most schools have been able to minimize the socioeconomic impact on the results of disadvantaged students.
In that 2022/2023 academic year, 96% of students completed the 2nd cycle within the expected time. Specifically looking at ASE students, the completion rate drops to 92%, yet six out of ten schools enabled their underprivileged students to perform better than the national average.
Conversely, the task seems more challenging when students reach secondary education. At this level, economically disadvantaged students tend to fall further behind their peers: only 70% managed to complete secondary education in three years, below the national average of 77%.
Throughout compulsory education, secondary education is where the fewest schools achieved positive equity levels (50.33%), but some institutions stand out positively. In particular, secondary schools are where ASE students excelled compared to the national average.
At Monção Secondary School, only one out of 19 ASE students who entered the 10th grade in 2020/2021 did not finish secondary education within three years.
For students with a similar entry profile, the expected completion rate of 95% places the school in that border town 25 percentage points above the national average of 70%. Following this trend, six students might have been left behind.
On a less positive note, Eça de Queirós Secondary School in Lisbon saw only six out of 20 ASE beneficiaries complete secondary education in three years, a mere 30%, well below the national average of 70%. It was anticipated that 14 students would have succeeded at this school.
By districts, trends from previous years persist, showing that while schools in Lisbon and Setúbal struggle more to counteract the connection between poverty and academic failure, schools in Viana do Castelo and Braga exceed initial disadvantages.
