Seminar

Public policy of affirmative action in higher education for the Roma population in Portugal: the Operational Programme for the Promotion of Education (OPRE)

Margarida de Cássia Campos (Universidade Estadual de Londrina)

February 19, 2020, 16h00

Room 2, CES | Alta

Overview

The Operational Education Programme (OPRE) is a distributive justice programme of political and social singularity in Portugal, positioning itself as an instrument to combat the accumulated effects of discrimination and racism over the course of more than five centuries of presence of the Roma population in the Portuguese territory.

The objective of this seminar is to present and debate OPRE as the first initiative of a public policy of affirmative action for the Roma population in higher education in Portugal. The qualitative research was based on exploratory interviews and analysis of reports on the living conditions of the Roma population in Portugal. During the seminar, the following questions will be discussed:

In what context did the affirmative action programme for Roma students in Portuguese higher education come forth?

Is OPRE is an important strategy/action for the democratisation of Portuguese higher education?

Have compensatory education policies - in particular, the TEIP (Priority Education Territories) instituted since 1996 - managed to democratise the learning opportunities of students from the most disadvantaged classes?

Can affirmative action public policies for student permanence themselves guarantee plurality in the representation of the various population groups in Portuguese universities?

It is expected to problematize some notes on the creation and expansion of affirmative action policies in Portuguese education as a strategy of democratization and plurality in higher education.



Bio note

Margarida de Cássia Campos: PhD in Geography from the Federal University of Santa Catarina (2010). She is currently a professor in the Geography Degree course and the Geography Teaching Specialisation course at the State University of Londrina. Has experience in the area of ​​Geography, acting mainly on the following themes: geographic education, affirmative action policies for higher education and race relations with an emphasis on education.