The right to education of adults in Portugal

Abstract

ABSTRACT The subject of this article is the right to education of adults, which is a central issue in the humanistic approach to Adult Learning and Education (ALE) that we are supportive of. From this angle we discuss human rights as an overarching framework for citizenship in Portugal, a country with a high number of low-qualified adults. The text provides a historical context, and for the analysis of the selected and specific current documents in recent policy agendas we use Tomaševski’s 1 theoretical 4A framework, built mainly for school contexts, and apply it to ALE policy. This heuristic exercise makes a significant contribution to advancing knowledge in the policy studies of ALE. The objective is to understand ways of realising the right to education of adults by means of policy measures undertaken by national governments, against the backdrop of today’s neoliberal trends in Europe. Therefore, the focus of this paper is to assess the degree to which the twenty-first century Portuguese policies have been adhering to the UN principles on the right to education in relation to ALE. From the discussion of the results, we conclude that the realisation of the right to education of adults has been successfully achieved.