Socioeconomic Inequalities and Education: assessment and intervention

Code:

E530

Acronym:

DSEAI

Keywords
Classification	Keyword
OFICIAL	Educational Sciences

Instance: 2025/2026 - 1S

Active?	Yes
Responsible unit:	Education Sciences
Course/CS Responsible:	First degree in Educational Sciences

Cycles of Study/Courses

Acronym	No. of Students	Study Plan	Curricular Years	Credits UCN	Credits ECTS	Contact hours	Total Time
LCED	13	Official Curricular Structure	3	-	3	28	81

Teaching language

Portuguese
Obs.: Desigualdades socioeconómicas e educação: avaliação e intervenção.

Objectives

This course aims to provide students with theoretical and methodological knowledge to enable them to analyse discourses and studies in the area of socio-educational inequalities. To this end, it identifies socio-economic inequalities and the way they impact on educational processes and outcomes, as well as how the organisation of educational systems reinforces or counteracts such inequalities. This is done on both a micro (students) and macro (countries and education systems) scale. Additionally, the UC identifies, assesses and discusses ways of correcting and compensating for such inequalities. Overall, then, this UC aims to concretise, densify and problematise the knowledge produced on the relationship between socio-economic inequalities, organisation of educational systems and educational inequalities.

Thus, the UC has the following objectives

- problematise the concepts of socio-economic inequalities and educational inequalities, as well as the relationship between them;

- identify processes and cases that illustrate the relationship between socio-economic inequalities, the organisation of educational systems and educational inequalities

- to identify programmes and policies aimed at compensating educational inequalities of socio-economic origin, the methodologies involved in the evaluation of their impact and their results

- contribute to the assumption of positions empirically grounded and theoretically supported about the central theme of the UC.

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Learning outcomes and competences

- recognition of the complexity of the relationships between socio-economic inequalities, the organization of educational systems and educational inequalities;

- knowledge of the main programmes and policies to mitigate socio-economic-educational inequalities, namely the compensatory education programmes, evaluation methodologies and their results

- identification of appropriate strategies and methodologies to explore and analyse the relations between socio-economic inequalities, the organisation of educational systems and educational inequalities

- analysis of concrete situations of articulation between socio-economic inequalities, the organisation of the educational systems and educational inequalities, assessing their impacts and proposing possible solutions (or compensation strategies).

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Working method

Presencial

Pre-requirements (prior knowledge) and co-requirements (common knowledge)

N/A

Program

1. Fundamental concepts

Equality and equity

Socio-economic inequalities

Organisation of educational systems

Opportunities for access and success

Compensatory education

The measurement of equity in education systems


2. Inequalities rooted in the organization of educational systems

School rankings and Simpson's paradox

Grade inflation and university access

Tracking, vocational tracks and alternative tracks



3. Compensatory Education

Emergence and development of the Compensatory Education Programmes (CEP)

The Evaluation of the CSPs: methodologies and results

The Portuguese SGP (TEIP): implementation and evaluation

Criticism of the CSP



4. The International Large-scale Assessments (ILSAs), focusing on PISA

Emergence and development of the International Large-scale Assessments

Discourses on the relationship between PISA and economic-educational inequalities

PISA and the measurement of equity in education systems: indicators and results

Criticism of the International Large-scale Assessments


5. Epistemic-methodological issues in the evaluation of policies aimed at equity in education
Potentialities and limitations of methodological designs in the evaluation of policies for equity.

Relationship between the limitations of methodological designs and politicization of studies and their results.

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Mandatory literature

Luís Miguel Carvalho; O^espelho do perito. ISBN: 978-989-8151-24-7
• Conselho Nacional de Educação ; Desempenho e Equidade: uma análise comparada a partir dos estudos internacionais TIMSS e PIRLS, 2020
• Crato, Nuno (coord.) ; Improving a Country’s Education: PISA 2018 results in 10 countries. Cham: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-59031-4, 2021
• Espinoza, Oscar ; Solving the equity–equality conceptual dilemma: a new model for analysis of the educational process. Educational Research, 49(4), 343-363. DOI: 10.1080/00131880701717198, 2007
• Ferraz, Hélder; Nata, Gil e Neves, Tiago ; Has the Portuguese compensatory education program been successful in reducing disadvantaged schools’ performance gaps? A 15-year quantitative analysis of national exams. Education Sciences, 9(4), 270. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci9040270, 2019
• Ferraz, Hélder; Neves, Tiago e Nata, Gil ; A eficácia dos programas de educação compensatória nos resultados escolares: análise do programa nacional português de educação compensatória ao longo de 13 anos. Ensaio: Avaliação e Políticas Públicas em Educação, 26(100), 1058-1083. http://dx.doi.org/10.1590, 2018
Nata, Gil, Pereira, Maria João, e Neves, Tiago ; Unfairness in access to higher education: a 11 year comparison of grade inflation by private and public secondary schools in Portugal. Higher Education, 68, 851-874. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-014-9748-7, 2014
• Neves, Tiago; Ferraz, Hélder e Nata, Gil ; Social inequality in access to higher education: grade inflation in private schools and the ineffectiveness of compensatory education. International Studies in Sociology of Education, 26(2), pp. 190-210. https://doi.org/10.1080/09620214.2016.1191966, 2017
• Neves, Tiago; Pereira, Maria João e Nata, Gil ; One-dimensional school rankings: a non-neutral device that conceals and naturalises inequalities. The International Journal on School Disaffection, 9(1), 7-22., 2012
• Neves, Tiago; Pereira, Maria João e Nata, Gil ; Head teachers' perceptions of secondary school rankings: Their nature, media coverage and impact on schools and the educational arena. Education as Change, 18(2), 211-225. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/16823206.2014.926829, 2014
OCDE; Equity in Education: Breaking Down Barriers to Social Mobility. OECD Publishing: Paris. https://doi.org/10.1787/9789264073234-en, 2018
OCDE; "How PISA examines equity in education: Inclusion and fairness", in PISA 2018 Results (Volume II): Where All Students Can Succeed, OECD Publishing: Paris. https://doi.org/10.1787/2c1b1289-en., 2020
• Steiner-Khamsi, G., Appleton, M., & Vellani, S; Understanding business interests in international large-scale student assessments: a media analysis of The Economist, Financial Times, and Wall Street Journal. Oxford Review of Education, 44(2), 190-203. https://doi.org/10.1080/03054985.2017.1379383, 2018
UNESCO; Handbook on Measuring Equity in Education. , 2018

Teaching methods and learning activities

Presentation, group work, debate and tutorial guidance.

Evaluation Type

Distributed evaluation without final exam

Assessment Components

designation	Weight (%)
Teste	50,00
Trabalho escrito	50,00
Total:	100,00

Amount of time allocated to each course unit

designation	Time (hours)
Apresentação/discussão de um trabalho científico	15,00
Estudo autónomo	30,00
Frequência das aulas	30,00
Trabalho de investigação	12,00
Trabalho escrito	3,00
Total:	90,00

Eligibility for exams

Classes are subject to attendance verification.
Except in the cases provided by law, students who miss more than 25% of the scheduled classes will not obtain attendance to the course.

Calculation formula of final grade

The final score corresponds to the average classification of the individual work (50%) and the multiple choice test (50%) and is expressed on a scale of 0 to 20 points.

Special assessment (TE, DA, ...)

Special Evaluation (TE, DA, ...) Students that by law are excused from class attendance should take a test to demonstrate that they have the knowledge and skills required and defined in the curricular unit sheet. The students in this situation should contact the teachers of the curricular unit during the first 2 weeks of the semester to define the way of accomplishment of this exam and its calendar.

Classification improvement

The improvement of a grade can be done, once only, in the period or periods foreseen, through the reformulation of the individual work and/or the multiple choice test.