The public consultation for the National Strategy for Citizenship Education (ENEC) and Essential Learning of Citizenship and Development, held from July 21 to August 5, received 10,120 contributions, the Ministry of Education, Science, and Innovation (MECI) disclosed today.
Seven out of ten suggestions were focused on the National Strategy for Citizenship Education (7,073 contributions), with the rest pertaining to the Essential Learnings of the discipline.
In a response, the MECI assures that the Directorate-General for Education (DGE) is now “analyzing the contributions received, from which changes to the documents put under public consultation will be considered.”
On Thursday evening, in an interview on SIC, Education Minister Fernando Alexandre had already assured that the suggestions would be taken into account in the process.
“By the end of the month, a Resolution will be submitted for approval by the Council of Ministers to approve the National Strategy for Citizenship Education,” and the Essential Learnings of Citizenship and Development will also be approved: “Both documents will take effect from September, for the 2025/2026 academic year,” the MECI adds today.
The decision to review the discipline was announced last year by the Prime Minister, who argued that it was necessary to free the discipline from “ideological constraints.”
A few days later, Minister Fernando Alexandre explained that the review was part of a broader process that included all subjects.
From the next academic year, Citizenship and Development will be regulated by Essential Learnings, in line with a new National Strategy for Citizenship Education, which replaces the current guiding documents of the subject.
Launched in 2017 by the socialist minister Tiago Brandão Rodrigues, Citizenship and Development operates as a transversal work area in the 1st cycle, a discipline in the 2nd and 3rd cycles, and as a training component in secondary school, allowing schools to decide whether it is taught as an autonomous discipline or in a multidisciplinary manner.
This organization will remain unchanged, but the hitherto 17 domains, some mandatory and others optional, will be integrated into eight mandatory dimensions: Human Rights, Democracy and Political Institutions, Sustainable Development, Financial Literacy and Entrepreneurship, Health, Media, Risk and Road Safety, and Pluralism and Cultural Diversity.
The new guideline for the subject seems to pay less attention to controversial topics like sexuality, which is addressed only in the context of health and the violation of human rights, and places greater emphasis on financial literacy or entrepreneurship.
With no references to the words “sexual” or “sexuality,” the apparent absence of Sexual Education in the new essential learnings immediately concerned associations and experts.
During the public consultation, positions were multiplied in defense of sexual education, with the National Association of Medical Students, the Portuguese Society of Clinical Sexology, and the Portuguese Fertility Association highlighting its proven impact on the prevention of risky behaviors and gender violence.
Also, the Union of Women Alternative and Response and various other associations linked to the defense of human and women’s rights, such as the Portuguese Association of Women Lawyers, criticized the changes.
The Portuguese Psychologists’ Association recommended the explicit inclusion of sexual education and mental health in the school curriculum, with progressive learning from the first cycle and content and actions adapted to different ages, considering that in the executive’s proposal, “the reference to sexuality in the curricula is restricted, limited, and technically inaccurate.”
The Education Minister assured that the contents related to sexual education will not disappear from the curricula, and on Thursday, in an interview with SIC, stated, “if sexual education training in Portugal depended on the discipline of Citizenship, it would be a disaster.”
