O ensino profissional em Portugal (1989-2015): uma análise das suas dificuldades de afirmação

Despite the existence of a seeming consensual recognition of the advantages of vocational education in Portugal, this education path faced – and still does – difficulties in emerging as a dignified and quality alternative, within the general context of the education system. In Portugal, the first arrangements of vocational education date back to the 18th century. Since then, successive regimes and governments used this education path to train qualified workers for various economic sectors, thus recognizing the impact of this kind of education in national economic development and in increasing international competitiveness of Portuguese labour force. There was only a brief exception to this generalized understanding: during the first ten years after the 1974 Revolution, vocational education was completely removed from the Portuguese educative system. Within this context, this research aims at finding explanations for this persistent difficulty, taking as a reference the German dual system of vocational education. To achieve that, a mixed methodology is applied to analyse the strategies and the policies of vocational education between 1989 and 2015, in order to understand how the nature of the decisions made, the intervention of different institutional actors and the ideological cleavages have contributed to the position that vocational education occupies in Portugal.