Estatuto do aluno: entre um código penal e um código educativo?: estudo de caso

This paper is based on work in progress towards a Master’s dissertation. It will attempt to describe and understand the way in which the Students’ Regulation [Estatuto do aluno] has integrated legislative developments in the past 10 years and take stock of how the disciplinary procedures at the Ethos School Cluster since 2005 have been implemented by analysing the most frequently imposed forms of disciplinary action and the rules most commonly breached. The aim is to analyse and evaluate the impact of the punishments inflicted on pupils in terms of their personality now. The paper includes a list of those teachers who most frequently write disciplinary reports with the idea of reconciling the facts of the behaviours recorded with the interpretation given in the reports and the appropriateness of the sanctions imposed. The study is based on case studies evaluated qualitatively. The analysis is achieved by the creation of five focus groups: groups of current and former pupils who have been the subject of disciplinary proceedings and their parents and the teachers whose disciplinary reports gave rise to the disciplinary procedures. Opinions were divided. Some interviewees maintained that suspension and spending some days at home did little or nothing to promote learning, whereas others noted that the punishments received were in line with what they had expected and that they had learned something as a consequence of the punishments received. This representation responds in a general way to the question posed in the dissertation, the Estatuto do aluno thus assumimg the garb of a code primarily educative in nature.