8.1 Introduction

In Portugal, the population was suddenly surprised by the coronavirus in spring 2020. This planetary health crisis was to become a headache for public health authorities, and especially for policymakers, who had to quickly take the necessary political measures to mitigate the effects of the pandemic in various sectors.

In education, these policy responses have been associated with issues of social justice and equity. In fact, the complexity of the reality associated with the pandemic in the education sector has highlighted the urgent need to find answers for the full realization of the Sustainable Development Goals (UNESCO, 2015) and the 2030 Agenda (idem), whereas equity is placed at the center of international development. In these high-level policy documents, it is strongly recommended that all member states ensure inclusive and equitable education for all, including children and young people in vulnerable situations and at risk of exclusion from education.

In Portugal, as in many other countries, children who face the greatest educational inequalities live in families most exposed to conditions of greatest risk of social exclusion (CNE, 2019), and these are also those most exposed to the social and economic consequences of the pandemic. When most countries decided to temporarily close schools, and switch to distance education, as a way of reducing the impact of the pandemic, equity in education has become a major concern. The proliferation of distance learning is a worrying situation for students from disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds, who are forced to stay at home in vulnerable contexts unconducive to learning without the appropriate support.

This chapter is in line with empirical research (e.g., Ahmed et al., 2020; Álvarez et al., 2020; Holguín & Sandoval, 2020) that aimed to identify the actions implemented by governments all over the world, and to analyze the implications for ensuring the equity of student learning.

This prompts the following research question: How equitable was student learning in the Portuguese context during the COVID-19 pandemic from March to July 2020? To answer the question, two main objectives were defined: (i) to analyze the policy measures adopted by the Portuguese government to face COVID-19; (ii) to examine how the policy measures have been enacted and interpreted by teachers to ensure equity in learning.

This qualitative and interpretative study was based on the analysis of official and public documents prepared and made available during the confinement period (March to July 2020) on the Ministry of Education website, and on the analysis of interviews conducted with teachers from various Portuguese schools.

This study has been developed within the scope of a cognitive and normative approach that emphasizes the importance of values and ideas in policy making (Surel, 2019), and is based on an understanding of public policies as courses of action directed at a specific area of society/territory on the part of an authority invested with public power and government legitimacy (Thoenig, 2019).

Public policy influences various sectors (education, justice, etc.) by adapting and/or transforming them. According to the cognitive approach of policies, this action on society by the government is based on ideas and values that those actors involved in the fabrication and reception of policies carry with them (Muller, 2018). In this sense, cognition and norms are very relevant to the study of policies. First, because actors only can intervene when they have an ‘idea’ about what to expect when they act (cause-effect relationship); second, because “norms and values are what motivate actors, telling them what they should and what they should not do” to solve the problems (Braun & Capano, 2010, p. 3).

To investigate the educational policies adopted during the pandemic and enacted by the school actors, within the scope of the cognitive approach of policies, we used the notion of référentiel (referential) as defined by Bruno Jobert and Pierre Muller (Jobert & Muller, 1987). When a policy is produced, it involves creating a representation that we build of the reality on which we want to intervene. We call this representation a “policy referential”, which once received and interpreted by the social actors, should consider the problems of the policy, and look for solutions to define how to act (Muller, 2018). As can be seen in Fig. 8.1, the referential is based on four levels of perception: values, norms, algorithms, and the images (Muller, 2018).

Fig. 8.1
A diagram illustrates that referential depends on four levels of perception. It includes values, norms, algorithms, and images.

A visual representation of a version Muller’s référentiel prepared by the authors

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Values are representations about what is good and bad, what should be desirable or disadvantageous (e.g., the debate between equity vs. equality); norms express the gaps between what is observed and what is desirable. Above all, they define principles of action: ‘this must be done like this’ (e.g., “agriculture must be modernized”); algorithms define causal relationships that indicate the principles of action, i.e., they reveal a theory of action and can be expressed in the form of “if …, then” statements (e.g. “If I transfer the policies to combat social exclusion from the State to local entities, then public policies will be more effective because they are closer to the stakeholders”); finally, images can be presented in the form of slogans that have the previous three levels implicit. They are short phrases with strong cognitive appeal that give meaning immediately, without the need for a long speech (e.g., “the dynamic and modern young farmer”) (Muller, 2018).

Therefore, the notion of referential is a matrix that we have used to analyze the policy measures that were designed by public authorities to solve a specific problem in education: the constraints imposed in education by COVID-19. Thus, it helped us to understand how issues of equity and combating inequalities were considered in policy measures and how teachers have interpreted those measures. In this work, the deductive method was used to define the categories of data analysis, adopting the first three levels of perception proposed by the author.

This chapter comprises four parts. The first part of the paper includes a brief account of the Portuguese educational context, the policy measures implemented to face the pandemic, and the research strategy. The second and third parts present the results of the study, comprising the policy measures adopted by the State authorities to face COVID-19 and the perceptions that teachers have regarding the policies. The chapter closes with a summary of the key findings.

8.2 The Portuguese Education Context

In recent years, Portuguese schools have acquired more decision-making autonomy over the curriculum, and in the administration of schools, through policies of curricular flexibility and the signing of autonomy agreements. However, despite the recent increase in involvement of local partners, the educational system still is highly centralized: “The Ministry of Education is responsible for defining the curriculum, guidelines for national examinations (…), teacher recruitment and deployment, and the budget at pre-primary, compulsory, and higher education levels” (OECD, 2014, p. 15).

In particular, the Portuguese education system is organized in three sequential levels: early childhood education and care, basic, and secondary education. As other OECD countries, children enter in school through kindergarten and pre-school education is offered for children between the ages of 3 and 5. Compulsory education typically starts at the age of 6, when children enroll in basic schools. Basic compulsory education is organized in three study cycles of varying lengths: 1st cycle (1st–4th grades), 2nd cycle (5th–6th grades), 3rd cycle (7th–9th grades) and secondary education, which is organized in both general and vocational education pathways. In the general track, students select one of four curricular areas: science and technologies, social and economic sciences, languages and humanities, or visual arts. Formal schooling in Portugal is compulsory for students until 18 years old or until the completion of upper secondary if students complete their studies before the age of 18 (Liebowitz et al., 2018).

8.3 Policy Measures to Face the COVID-19 Pandemic

In Portugal, during the third school term in spring 2020, the coronavirus pandemic came about and caught public authorities off guard, forcing civil society and policymakers to join efforts to address the crisis. In addition to legislation, different policy measures and instruments were taken, which emanated from public authorities to help schools to cope with the effects of the pandemic (Table 8.1).

Table 8.1 Description of the policy measures and instruments
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The measures to be taken in education increased gradually until the pandemic reached its peak alongside the decision to confine the entire population, through a Communiqué of the Council of Ministers of March 19, 2020.Footnote 3 The confinement started on March 22, shortly after school attendance has been suspended, on March 16, and just before the end of the 2nd term. Schools remained closed until the end of the school year, in what appeared as a peaceful and unanimous decision in Portugal.Footnote 4

In fact, an online questionnaire sent to 1,754 parents showed that 92.5% of the Portuguese agreed with the government’s decision (Benavente et al., 2020). Moreover, the rate of student participation has always been regular right from the beginning of school closures (between 76 and 100%), with secondary education showing higher values, certainly due to a greater autonomy of secondary students and because there is a greater availability of digital media at this level of education (ME/DGEEC, 2020).

8.4 Methodological Approach

Research strategy

In this study, we followed a qualitative research methodology, based on an interpretive approach (Cohen et al., 2007), to examine how the equity of students’ learning was ensured in the Portuguese context during the pandemic from March to July 2020. The data collection instruments used were written documents and interviews.

Written documents available online have made it possible to respond to the first research objective: to analyze the policy measures adopted by the Portuguese government to face COVID-19. Through the institutional websites, the internet has been a government instrument, and a way to communicate with students and families.

The collection totaled 17 documents, considering the following criteria: all documents referred to the period between March and July 2020, were integrated in the pages of official websites, were written by public authorities during the pandemic period, and were available on institutional portals (government, educational administration). The collection also consisted of official reports, legislation, communications.

The interviews aimed to examine the second research objective, about the perceptions of teachers on how they interpreted the policy pronouncements to ensure equity in learning. The interviews have been prepared based on Mainardes (2006) interpretation of Stephan Ball’s work, to capture how school actors have interpreted the policies enacted by state authorities and perceived their effects on students learning. Therefore, the interviews have been constructed to discern school actors’ perceptions about policy measures and especially their effects on vulnerable students. Fifteen teachers aged between 38 and 61 were interviewed. They were selected taking into account the following criteria: (1) they are part of the RedeEscola (SchoolNetworkFootnote 5) of I E-ULisbon and therefore were working on projects coordinated by the first or second authors of this chapter; (2) they teach in diverse schools from different regions of the country (North, Center, Lisbon and Tagus Valley and Alentejo); (3) they teach various disciplines and teaching cycles (from primary and secondary education).

For the analysis of documents and interview transcripts, the deductive method was employed, using three categories of Muller’s referential: values, norms, and algorithms (Muller, 2018). More specifically, the documents and transcripts were read and then the targeted text was segmented to represent an idea related with the three categories. Each segment was assigned a code and assigned a pre-defined category, according to its features. The first two researchers independently analyzed data, considering the categories of Muller’s model, comparing their analyses with each other to achieve inter-rater reliability. Each difference in text coding decisions were discussed until a consensus was reached. After this, based on the defined categories, interpretive codes and two subcategories have emerged for each category (Table 8.2).

Table 8.2 Categories and subcategories of analysis
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Policy measures adopted by public authorities to face COVID-19

In this section the text is organized around the pre-defined categories and the subcategories that resulted from the text analysis.

Values

Right to education

The right to education as a principle of social justice underlies the measures taken by the government with regards to education in the context of the pandemic. In the various official texts, we found a conception of school as an entity that should guarantee rights and equity. Therefore, in April 2020, the presidency of the Council of Ministers launched exceptional and temporary measures under the imperative of “the continuity of the 2019/2020 academic year, in a fair, equitable and as a normalized manner as possible” (Portugal, 2020—Decree-Law n. º 14-G/2020, 13 April),Footnote 6 which were related to aspects of continued learning, including the assessment of students’ learning and the school calendar.

Likewise, #EstudoEmCasa has been launched with the associated message of the Assistant Secretary of State and Education (ASSE) reinforcing that: “Now the isolation is much stronger for the most vulnerable and it is again the time to put ourselves in the other’s place and ask ourselves the question ‘What if it were me?’”.

Furthemore, #EstudoEmCasa has been presented as an intervention “for students who do not have the facility or possibility to access the internet and the resources available there. Therefore, although available through cable, RTP Play, and the application #EstudoEmCasa, transmission via the RTP Memory channel ensures that everyone with a television can access these resources”.Footnote 7

Students in this vulnerable situation have been identified in more than a third of schools (38% of schools with 1st cycle and 2nd cycle; 36% of schools with 3rd cycle). Most schools that reported students receiving educational content solely through #EstudoEmCasa had complemented it with other strategies to involve students in the teaching, learning, and assessment processes. These strategies were primarily based on the proposal of activities to be carried out by the students while maintaining a regular contact with the teacher-mentor and supported by monitoring by the Multidisciplinary Support Team for Inclusive Education. A smaller number of schools opted for other strategies, including regular contact with the students’ classes.

Simultaneously, the Portugal Post Office and the National Scouts sent work documents and proposals from schools to students and facilitated the return of these materials to teachers. Similarly, other initiatives have been set in motion locally.

After students were identified by schools, their families were directly contacted. Moreover, when students still did not have access to the internet, postal service workers, volunteers, teachers, and school staff, in an articulated collaboration between municipalities, schools, and parents’ associations, took the teaching materials to families (transporting materials between students and teachers). Municipalities and various stakeholders have also been highly committed to providing families with tablets and computers (targeting, for example, families with many children, so that more children could simultaneously access the internet).

For disadvantaged students who had not received tablets or laptops from municipalities, donations from individuals and local partners helped fill this digital access gap. Moreover, several school partners (e.g., local institutions, social support institutions, foundations, global non-governmental organizations, etc.) and schools’ libraries were utilized by students on a rotating basis.

School autonomy

As we have seen above, the responsibility of coping with the pandemic has not been entirely state centered. It has been shared with schools, which have been responsible for taking decisions and adapting policy action to their local realities. Accordingly, as they faced the suspension of face-to-face teaching, the government, through a Decree-Law,Footnote 8 encouraged the use of methodologies that schools considered the most appropriate, according to the guidelines of the Ministry of Education (ME). There was a concerted effort by schools to adapt to the new constraints: the most used resources were the physical and virtual manuals, followed by the proposals of online publishers, the resources shared on the internet, and those built individually. These resources were built collectively by schools, started in the order of 50% (in March) and increased to 70% in June (ME/DGEEC, 2020). Therefore, decision-making about pedagogical strategies to face COVID-19 have increasingly been centered on schools that developed different strategies based on their contextual idiosyncrasies.

Likewise, #EstudoEmCasa has been portrayed as “a complement and as a support resource intended primarily for students without connectivity and/or equipment, regardless of other uses that might be made by teachers, through their inclusion in the E@D plans of each education establishment” (site #EstudoEmCasa).Footnote 9 It was then conceived as a complement and a resource that has been made available to teachers and students, as stressed in the document “9 Guiding Principles for Follow-up of Students using #EstudoEmCasa”.Footnote 10 One important concern has been to maintain the link between students and teachers to reduce any pernicious effects caused by physical distance:

#EstudoEmCasa it is not the replacement of the school. This is a school that is close by, always in articulation with the one that currently has their doors closed, but whose professionals are “in line” to bridge the distances.Footnote 11

Accordingly, schools always received, in advance, the schedule grid, the contents of each educational block, and support materials and proposals for activities to be developed.

Norms

Social support

The communicationFootnote 12 that has been sent to schools to inform that face-to-face classes would be suspended, instructed schools to support students educationally and socially. Although closed, schools have had a duty to provide school meals to students supported by social services: “each school, together with the municipalities and other providers, should find the most effective and safest way to ensure the meals”.

This indication has been reinforced with the publication of the Decree-Law n. º 10-A/2020Footnote 13 that stipulated that schools should adopt “the necessary measures for the provision of food support to students benefiting from (…) school social action”, as well as, whenever necessary, “to students from specialized units that have been integrated into learning support centers and whose permanence in school is considered indispensable.” (artº 9º).

In these official texts there is a conception of schools and their professionals as those who have been assigned social and economic responsibilities, such as ensuring ‘essential services in combating the pandemic’, and creating in the network of public schools childcare services for essential service workers (Ordinance No. 82/2020, of March 19)Footnote 14 (e.g. health professionals, security and rescue forces and services, firefighters, armed forces, professionals in the management and maintenance of essential infrastructures, municipalities) (artº 10º, nº 1, 2). Thus, it can be read in the ordinance:

It is important that the professionals of the services identified in the present ordinance, mobilized for the face-to-face service in this phase of exceptionality and emergency triggered by the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic, can have a welcoming place for their children or other dependents, in the absence of alternative solutions

Therefore, in each municipality, at least one educational establishment has been identified to welcome children of essential service workers.Footnote 15 Based on the need for society to keep on working and to “guarantee the readiness of all essential services to the fulfilment of citizens’ rights, freedoms and guarantees” (Ordinance No. 82/2020, of March 19),Footnote 16 school actors have been called upon to help to provide access to services in schools for extrinsic purposes of a labor and socio-economic nature.

Teaching at distance

Decree-Law no. 14-G/2020, of 13 April, stipulated the need for each school to “define and implement a distance learning plan, with the appropriate methodologies for the available resources and evaluation criteria, which take into account the contexts of students” (art. 2, point 2).Footnote 17 The plan has turned out to be the main strategic instrument of schools to organize their educational work during the period of suspension of classroom activities. To this end, the ministry’s website “Apoio às escolas” has been created to offer “a set of resources to support schools in the use of distance learning methodologies that allow them to continue the teaching and learning processes”.Footnote 18

Likewise, schools have been provided access to Microsoft Teams and Zoom platforms, which were free to use through institutional emails. Microsoft Teams was offered free to students as part of Office 365, providing a space for tasks, videos, and proposals, and more recently for the students’ assessment (feedback space). The Zoom platform was also widely used to provide remote meetings and classes while allowing the sharing of documents and involving many students in a synchronous interaction.

To support schools in the context of inclusive education, public authorities also have produced the document ‘Guidelines for the work of Multidisciplinary Support Teams for Inclusive Education in the form of E@D’.Footnote 19 Additionally, the ‘Guidelines for the Bilingual Teaching of Deaf Students in the E@D modality’Footnote 20 were written to promote the production of materials that could be made available on a school support website.

Throughout this period, the preference for distance support prevailed. All schools have a ‘Learning Support Center’ (LSC), which is an organizational structure to support inclusion. During this period, in addition to on-site support for students for whom this need was expressed, in most schools LSC supported students at a distance, using adapted methodologies to meet the goals of inclusive education (ME/DGEEC, 2020). A different structure is the ‘Resource Centers for Inclusion’ (CRI), which are specialized services existing in the community, accredited by the ME, which supports and enhances a school’s ability to promote the educational success of all students. In June, the tendency to coordinate with the CRIs was reinforced, which reveals a greater awareness of the impact of the interruption of support and therapies on student learning (idem).

Moreover, regarding #EstudoEmCasa, an electronic siteFootnote 21 associated with the TV program was created by the ME. This site provided content for each grade level, and each subject under analysis on TV were permanently made available, in addition to working proposals to complement teachers work. An e-mail address (estudemcasa@dge.mec.pt) was also created to clarify pedagogical issues related to the TV program #EstudoEmCasa.

Algorithms

Technological educational responses

The need to physically keep people distant from one another has led to a policy response facilitated through technologies. It is assumed that if remote education was adopted, the infection would be mitigated, as referred to in the Decree-Law n. º 10-A/2020, March 13th (artº 9º)Footnote 22 emanated from the presidency of the Council of Ministers. This causal relationship expresses the norms (principles of action) of this measure and favors technological responses to fulfil what has been “declared by the World Health Organization, on January 30, 2020, as well as the classification of the virus as a pandemic, on March 11, 2020, it is important to strategically protect contingency rules for the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic” (Decree-Law n. º 10-A/2020, March 13th). Therefore, the rationale behind the policy was that if those measures were implemented and face-to-face classes suspended it would become a strong contribution to safeguard people’s health. As a result, forms of remote education were implemented, using diversified means of digital communication, as well as the public television.

Therefore, public authorities made an effort to provide teachers with technological responses that made it possible to work with students remotely. Digital solutions have offered resources and strategies, new infrastructures for schools to use, and means of accessing useful information through the Facebook page, where schools could consult information and share documents and work strategies with studentsFootnote 23 in addition to a YouTube channelFootnote 24 for sharing classes and educational initiatives.

Protective social responses

Some of the policy measures did respond more sharply to this causal association between the actions and the expected result. In the case of #EstudoemCasa, there has been an appeal of the Assistant Secretary of State and Education (ASSE) to fulfil the goal of combating inequalities:

Broadcasting on television is not enough, because these contents do not guarantee learning by themselves. They can be used by everyone, but they are not enough. They are themes and work proposals, which only guarantee learning if students are accompanied and guided by the possible ways, with the necessary partnerships.Footnote 25

In this regard, the ASSE added it would encourage the mobilization of all school actors to combat inequalities, “to be able to be close to those who are further away during confinement.” In his speech, ASSE establishes a causal relationship, and links #EstudoemCasa to ways of working that call for alignment and cooperation between teachers.

This is a time for collaboration and cooperation. And it is a moment of praise for all teachers who, in all our schools, feel themselves to reinvent themselves so as not to leave any students behind.Footnote 26

As noted above, it was possible to examine the values, norms and algorithms that made up the referential of the policy adopted to face COVID-19. In legislation, political documents, and in policymakers’ discourse, the substance of the policy was the right to education for all associated with the autonomy of school actors to take decisions locally with a diverse set of stakeholders. The norms to rule the action of schools has consisted of implementing remote learning and a need to support students, especially, the more vulnerable.

8.5 Enactment of Policies and Teachers’ Perceptions

In this section, the text is organized around the pre-defined categories and the subcategories that emerged from the analysis. The interviewees valued the right of all students to access education and, despite differences between schools in how they manage their autonomy in decision-making processes, this was also a matter appreciated by the teachers interviewed. Therefore, in addition to values, it was possible to know their perceptions regarding the norms and algorithms that make up the policies referential. Regarding the norms—the way things should be arranged in schools—during the pandemic, teachers recognized the great value of focusing on the most vulnerable students and the modality of teaching at distance; this was especially true for the DLP, due to its guiding and regulatory nature, which allowed teachers to have a direction and follow it, and gave them more confidence in their individual practices.

Values

Right to education

The right to equal access to learning by students was mentioned by teachers during the interviews as integral, and in their view, the use of digital platforms (e.g., Microsoft Teams) and other resources (such as mail, Skype, WhatsApp, Moodle, mobile phones, videos) has helped minimize inequalities in access to learning. In fact, most of the teachers (87%) used digital platforms, recognized the importance of this resource to monitor their students’ learning (87%), and ensure that students accessed their classes (80%). These results are in line with national results that reveal that e-mail and WhatsApp were the digital mediums most cited by 80% of respondents (ME/DGEEC, 2020). In this regard, referring to synchronous classes through platforms, a teacher mentioned:

If there is an issue, a difficulty, we can resolve it immediately. The platform has the advantage of being in real time, at that moment.

The importance given to technological tools that allows to give immediate feedback to students is also valued. Teachers stressed that this remote proximity and the access to the students in real time is part of the success in combating inequalities:

There are things that are difficult to achieve without an interaction with the student... and the use of the platform was good for giving feedback instantly, and seeing the difficulties, accompanying the student (…) in synchronous classes it is easier not to leave students behind, it is not the same as the face-to-face classes, but we have managed to minimize inequality situations and we know that they are in class and have access to the materials.

Moreover, the interviewees have pointed out that, in addition to the platforms for remote teaching, they have used other infrastructures to communicate with students and, above all, to ensure that everyone had had access to information, such as WhatsApp, email, and mobile phones. In this regard, for example, they mentioned the need to use other technological solutions that allowed them to be in close interaction with students and ensure that all students were able to access the activities of the discipline:

The cell phone and email were very useful. There was a class with two gypsy students and I realized that it was best to use the phone to communicate with them. They had come to school to get the materials, but then what could they do with the materials? The oral message is different from the written one and it has been important to have other ways of interacting with them and with the majority of students.

#EstudoEmCasa has also been considered by 67% of the interviewees a means for all students to have access to classes, especially those from more disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds. According to a teacher who used to develop other online activities, #EstudoEmCasa proved to be the most democratic platform because it reached everyone in the same way, all the families and not only those who can buy a computer:

I think, in this context, #EstudoEmCasa was important, because in some way it gave access to classes to all students. Especially the most disadvantaged students, from socioeconomic backgrounds with more difficulties, have accessed the contents, classes on TV. (…) Parents may not have a computer (as in either case), but all students have a television. So, it was an important initiative, and that’s why the gap is not so big (…) In my classes, I explored the subjects of #EstudoEmCasa, but I also did other things. I used other materials, I put them to experiment with materials they had at home.

However, #Estudo EmCasa has been implemented differently. For instance, 27% of the interviwees chose to not explore it during synchronous classes, as described in the following excerpt:

In my discipline, television includes two years conjointly; as a complementary activity it is ok but developing my work with students becomes more difficult and I think it would accentuate the inequalities, because those who have support at home can follow the program and then they study it; those who have no one to accompany them at home, need the materials that the teacher gives them and guides them.

Moreover, it was evident some teachers considered that students who do not have support from families are also not encouraged to view the television program or have help to explore the contents. Thus, they are at a disadvantage compared to students who have this support from families. These teachers opt to develop close work with students with greater socioeconomic difficulties, to reduce inequalities.

School autonomy

The perception of the interviewed teachers is that the schools had the autonomy to decide whether they would use the remote teaching platform, define which one to use, as well as make decisions about the use they would make of the public television program. In some cases, it was not a teacher’s option, but a norm decided by school management, as mentioned:

It was an option taken in my school cluster. We give our synchronous classes, we send the materials to the students; those who have no chance of accessing synchronous classes, because they do not have a computer or internet, they come to schools and pick up the materials, and then use #EstudoEmCasa as a supplement (…) This has been defined by the school cluster and all [teachers] follow these guidelines.

In other cases, the school’s response has been standardized, resulting from collective decision-making, taken by the school’s administration and management bodies:

Here, the class and school principals have played a key role. [In my school] (…), the decision also involved the pedagogical and the department coordinators, [together] decided the plan for the group and it was defined that we were going to use Teams for synchronous classes, once a week (…); So, we have started with synchronous moments right at the start of confinement and it was good because it allowed everyone to be more involved and we tried to combat situations of inequality.

Unlike this case, there were instances in which the school clusters have taken the option to give a strong emphasis to #EstudoEmCasa and focusing synchronous classes on the program, as one teacher mentioned:

In synchronous classes, we have only cleared students doubts about #EstudoEmCasa. The school cluster decided that it would be used as a basis for learning. We have a large percentage of students who come from disadvantaged neighborhoods and have economic difficulties and we considered that #EstudoEmCasa would give everyone access to classes since all students have television. It was a way of not favoring any group of students. In class, we asked questions about #EstudoEmCasa.

Norms

Social support

In the interviews, teachers mentioned that, due to government rules, several schools have continued to serve meals for students with greater economic difficulties:

The school had to guarantee food to some very needy students because there are several who need it. The school is the place where they have access to food and sometimes, they only have this meal and that is a reality in my school cluster. In this situation of confinement, ensuring students’ meals was fundamental.

In addition to the protective social support given by schools, in the context of the pandemic, schools were tasked with taking on other missions that go beyond their intrinsic educational mission: working in collaboration with the municipalities, to respond to the social and labor needs of local families. An interviewee has echoed the welcoming of students up to 12 years old, whose parents worked at the forefront of combating the pandemic:

Not all schools are operating with support services for families of health professionals, mine is. This was organized by the municipality. There are not many students, but we have this service for these students, and it is important to help parents who are fighting the pandemic.

Teaching at distance

The guiding role played by the DLP in the confinement period has been widely recognized in the interviews. This plan was developed by the school clusters and put into action during March and July 2020:

My school cluster made an E@D Plan and that was important. The plan helped everyone to understand the platforms we were using, how we have organized ourselves during the confinement, the methodologies we were going to follow, and the main interlocutors, the class director, as well as the support and supervision team.

Another teacher stressed the importance of this DLP for students:

The plan was aligned with our educational project and its existence was important for teachers, families and kids to have access to information (…). It ensured a set of guiding principles for teaching during the pandemic, and more than that a useful document for everyone to be informed, to access.

The difficulties felt by schools in the amplification of this Strategic Plan were mainly in relation to the learning assessment (25%), the diversification of work with students (15%) and interventions in the scope of inclusive education (15%). However, according to the ME (2020), schools have been working on the plans, between March and June 2020, adjusting and improving them, which has resulted in a maturation and consolidation of the DLP.

Algorithms

Technological educational responses

Following what has been previously mentioned, each school had to develop a DLP for the temporary suspension of teaching activities to plan the measures and methodologies that were the most more appropriate in each of the implementing contexts. As the teachers mentioned in the interviews, the DLP has been felt as integral in responding to school needs during the confinement, guiding their action regarding on how to act, what to do, and when to do it. The causal relationship behind this instrument was that it would guide schools’ action strategically and technologically while guaranteeing the right of education to students. In fact, as one of the teachers reported, there has been a perception that it was only from the moment DLP was defined and synchronous classes started that the quality of students’ learning has been guaranteed:

My school took a while to react and define a plan for this situation. When I started to work with students in a context of total confinement and without access to synchronous interaction, I started to realize that it was not possible. It was difficult to assist the pupils, there were many doubts and doing so by email was not enough. The pressure on our school started to increase to ensure the quality of students’ learning, and the school management has taken action.

The same happened in relation to the #EstudoemCasa program, as mentioned by a teacher who, in his perspective, “only for itself, it does not guarantee access to learning, but if we explore it with our students and value it in synchronous classes, students give importance and feel that #EstudoemCasa can help them learn.”

Protective social responses

80% of teachers mentioned that some of their students did not have a computer at home or had to share the computer with their families. Therefore, in their view, providing access to these resources was essential to mitigate inequalities. In the following excerpt, that aspect is very visible:

Microsoft Teams was very important for kids to have classes in real time and my school had already developed the digital technology plan. Not everyone had access to computers and the internet. In my class, there were still 4 or 5 students with more economic difficulties. The school lent them computers to guarantee access to classes and our municipality was also spectacular and arranged some computers for the kids. (…)

8.6 Conclusions

This chapter investigated the policy measures introduced by the Portuguese authorities to educate during the COVID-19 crisis and how these policies have been perceived and interpreted by teachers to ensure equity in learning. We examined official and public documents prepared and made available during the first confinement period (March to July 2020) by the Ministry of Education and conducted interviews with 15 teachers from various schools in Portugal.

Our findings show that when schools were physically closed, issues of equity, and social justice were particularly pronounced in the policy discourse, as students with little access to technological devices or learning support were forced to study at home.

These students at the center of this discourse tend to have less access to relevant digital materials (e.g. laptop, computer, quality internet access), physical conditions to work at home (e.g. quiet space to study and/or a desk), parental support (e.g. familiarity with digital resources, socio-cultural capital of families, nutrition). Moreover, students with special educational needs, single parents, or large families are also considerably vulnerable (Education International, 2020). The school closure caused by COVID-19 is believed as likely to contribute to an increase in the number of students who drop out by the time schools reopened. In addition, as there are still many students who do not have computers and/or internet access, protective social responses were taken to respond to inequalities, such as through broadcasting television.

In the following section, we present the main ideas drawn from the results of this study.

Policy tools

The analysis of the documents published between March and July 2020 showed that public authorities quickly responded to the pandemic using two types of tools to reach the school actors and students: informative and communicational. The informative tools consisted of websites to support schools, provide information about distance learning, best practices in teaching, as well as provide diverse information about the implementation of the DLP and inclusive education. Also, a TV program and YouTube channels were created for sharing classes and educational initiatives, along with webinars. Regarding communicative tools, they were diverse, such as, Facebook for consultation and sharing of documents, a platform for school principals’ questions to be answered within 24 h, and an email to clarify #EstudoEmCasa for schools. Therefore, public authorities offered varied resources to help to resolve teaching problems, suggest strategies, and offer resources for remote teaching. Also, a set of guidelines, instruments, and tools to assist teachers during the suspension of classroom activities were prepared.

Policy Measures

By examining the policy measures implemented to cope with COVID-19, it has been possible to apprehend the values, norms and algorithms that made up the referential of the Portuguese COVID-19 emergency policy. While the adoption of online education was accepted as the key solution to maintaining educational goals, it has also highlighted the vulnerabilities that exist in education systems in different countries and student inequalities (Di Pietro et al., 2020). Findings showed that schools’ closure has exposed students to new vulnerabilities. Therefore, regardless of the cycle of studies they attended, students started to have less time on average dedicated to curricular learning, and were forced to stay at home, sometimes with little or no conditions to learn and without support for studying.

The policy referential of the emergency policy adopted in Portugal has been highly focused on the need to ensure continuity of teaching activities remotely while safeguarding that all students have access to it. Therefore, in legislation, political documents, and in policymakers’ discourse, the right to education was the substance of the policy. The relevance that was given to this constitutional value has also been associated with the autonomy required by schools in taking decisions, on a local scale, together with a broad network of stakeholders (e.g. municipalities, scouts, postal office, parents associations, etc.), to face and mitigate the effects of COVID-19. This has been particularly important for vulnerable students, in line with the ODS 4, which requires quality, inclusive, and equitable education for all, so that no student is left behind (UNESCO, 2019). In this sense, the principles of action (the norms) focused mainly on switching from face-to-face classes to distance learning. Moreover, in addition to the educational response, schools have provided childcare services for essential service workers, and daily meals to approximately 2,600 students benefiting from the School Social Action in March 2020, which increased to 14,000 students in June 2020. The largest number of meals were served in the Metropolitan Area of Lisbon (ME/DGEEC, 2020).

Teachers perceptions

Through the interviews, we were able to assess teacher perceptions regarding the values, norms and algorithms that make up the policies referential. Therefore, the value—the right to equal access to learning—has been associated (i) with synchronous classes, during which teachers promptly noticed if students were following the activities. Also, they could resolve doubts, provide feedback and, above all, interact with students (an aspect highly valued by the teachers); and (ii) with #EstudoEmCasa, which teachers considered an inclusive strategy for all students, with an even greater importance for those from more disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds, especially when it is the only way for these students to access classes. This is in line with a questionnaire applied online to 1,754 parents, whereas the results revealed a notable preference for strategies that implied interaction, monitoring, and feedback. Therefore, the ability for students to clear up doubts with the teacher via the internet was the option that were most welcomed as ‘Very Important’ (98.4%), followed by the use of distance learning platforms (95.3%), video lessons with interaction (95%), sending worksheets by email (90.6%), and the existence of discussion groups on the internet (82.2%) (Benavente et al., 2020).

The value of autonomy to make decisions was also noted as important. Autonomy was seen as the interface between the right to education, understood as a matter of social justice, and the effective responses they can provide students and families. Thus, the way schools make use of autonomy depends on their governing body’s stance: in some cases, for example, the use of the TV program has been promoted by the administration and the management bodies and implemented uniformly by teachers; in other cases, school principals left this issue to the discretion of teachers, and consequently, in the same school, there have been different ways of using the TV program in online classes. In any case, the TV program was a basis for learning and an instrument that was perceived as having an important role in reducing student inequalities.

Regarding the norms, as we saw earlier, in the case of the neediest students, the government established rules designed to combat inequality and provide social support. Teachers recognized the value of focusing on the most vulnerable, and have reinforced the importance of networking, that has been developed locally with municipalities and other stakeholders. Teaching remotely was an official directive based on a strategy which was valued by those interviewed.

In conclusion, results show that in documents and in interviews, similar ideas and values were shared, such as the right to education and the need to support students learning while minimizing inequalities. Through a traditional command and control governing strategy, the government legislated to endorse schools as a public service of social support, and a protective space for the rights of students and families. School actors have been assigned social and economic responsibilities, assuming a duty to provide school meals to students supported by social services and ensuring a network of public schools’ childcare services for essential service workers (Ordinance No. 82/2020, of March 19).

The notion that schools can function as a mechanism to reduce social inequalities is widely expressed in political documents and in the voices of the interviewed teachers. Furthermore, the approach used by state authorities was not prescriptive but rather suggestive by providing ideas for what could be done in schools for remote teaching, and preparing a set of guidelines, instruments, and tools to assist the pedagogical work during the suspension of in-person classroom activities. Therefore, in addition to requesting schools to design and implement a DLP, state authorities have given support to the decisions made by the schools rather than imposing any specific practices for education continuity. Thus, we have witnessed a flexible governance of schools, through the offer and availability of varied and appealing resources that, while not being mandatory, gave space for effective proposals for solving problems.

Several implications arise from this study, which illustrate modes of state intervention in the government of education in the context of a health crisis. Thus, the study allows us to realize that in situations like this, it is important: (1) to assure the principle of equity, guaranteeing that students have access to the continuity of classes remotely, with special attention to disadvantaged students, in order to mitigate the exposed inequalities in the context of a crisis; (2) for schools to have the support and guidance of public authorities, whereas the government has a clear orientation of the way forward to respond to problems caused at the system level by crises such as COVID-19; (3) to empower schools and maintain a close relationship between schools and families, via communicative tools, and through the creation of local collaborative networks, involving various stakeholders in a logic of local governance that, due to the proximity of problems, allows to respond more quickly and more effectively to unforeseen events such as the pandemic; (4) to invest in strategies that, whenever possible, involve interaction with students, thus allowing to give feedback and monitor progress, in addition to contributing to the increase of students’ motivation.

Finally, while not intended to be representative of the national context, this study has made relevant contributions to the analysis of the referential (Muller, 2018) that supported the emergency policy triggered during this phase of the pandemic in Portugal. The interviews with teachers are illustrative of responses put into action in their local contexts, in view of the laws and recommendations issued by the government. In future research, it will be important to consider the influence of the schooling year of students in the response given to the pandemic, as well as the cultural and socioeconomic context in which schools are situated.