Regulação e autonomia: medidas e legitimação de uma política híbrida

The education regulation policy has an underlying perspective of school autonomy. This article analyses the evolution of school autonomy in Portugal without neglecting its status as an organizational unit of the central public administration. Contextualizes the germination phase of the idea of an “autonomous school” based on constitutional rights and general principles of organization of the educational system and, focusing on the longest period of its legislative materialization, it distinguishes competencies and powers recognized for schools in important areas of organizational action, as well as the instruments created to control the process of implementing autonomy. The analyses of this Portuguese legislative corpus on the organization and management of the educational system and schools identify a standardized process of intervention by the centralized administration, the orientation of successive measures, sometimes more towards autonomy, sometimes more towards heteronomy, the combination of concepts characteristic of different disciplinary areas for their legitimization and the introduction of new and more effective means of control, value participation following the legally established more than the genuine institution.