These facts were revealed by national studies and lend weight to the idea that schools in the country are another of the contexts influenced by “institutional racism”, the researchers from the Sociology Studies Research centre at ISCTE - Instituto Universitário de Lisboa said.
The researchers highlighted that the persistent inequalities “are an indicator, among many, that racism is part of the obstacles to school democratisation”.
“Although there has been some progress, Portugal is one of the OECD countries with the highest inequality in terms of school performance, which is related with socio-economic disadvantages”.
On top of that, the study stresses that despite some educational measures being taken to facilitate the integration of immigrant pupils, such as the implementation of Portuguese not as a mother tongue, there is a gap between what was planned and what exists on the ground at present.