The first decade of the 21st century saw a marked increased on the performance of the Portuguese education and training system. Early school leaving, traditionally very high in Portugal, dropped sharply while involvement in lifelong learning activities and enrollment on tertiary education, both very low traditionally, have seen steep increases. This improvement is tied to the increase of public investment in the training of teachers, the renewing of schools and in the diversification of educational paths – such as the mass offering of vocational courses at secondary level in public secondary schools and the setting up of a national network for validation of informal and non-formal learning. Social policies which tied social transfers to involvement in education and training - such as the Minimum Guaranteed Income – also played an important role. However, the crisis that hit Portugal on the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crash challenges these developments on two levels; on the one hand, fast-rising unemployment, generalized wage income drops and increasing poverty are reducing scope for family investment in the education and training of both adults and children; on the other hand, the adoption of austerity measures has meant severe spending cuts in education, thus undermining the public-driven dynamics of change in the system that led to its performance increase. The current paper discusses the effects of these challenges on education policy in Portugal, emphasizing how different social groups and stakeholders have been differently affected by them. It also draws comparisons with analogous phenomena in other Southern Europe countries hit by the crisis – namely Spain, Italy and Greece - that share with Portugal a relatively recent authoritarian past, a fledgling welfare state and severe productivity and economic competitiveness problems.
