Bilingual education

Following on from an Early Bilingual Learning Project in basic education, the Bilingual Schools Programme in English (Programa Escolas Bilingues em Inglês - PEBI) was created from the 2016/17 school year as part of a partnership between the Ministry of Education (through the Directorate-General for Education) and the British Council Portugal, which is monitored by the Directorate-General for Schools.

In 2024/2025, following the national call, the network of bilingual schools includes 41 schools (from pre-primary to ISCED 2).

Apart from basic education, PEBI covers pre-primary education, as the first stage of education in the lifelong learning process, demonstrating the benefits of familiarising children with a foreign language as early as possible in their development and learning.

In pre-primary education, children are exposed to English using a playful and informal approach, becoming a part of daily pedagogical routines, in line with Curriculum Guidelines for Pre-Primary Education (OCEPE), starting from a minimum of 20% of the curriculum (5 hours per week).

Itinerant teaching

Itinerant teaching is an educational provision designed for children and pupils whose parents  are itinerant professionals who frequently travel from their home for work (circus performers, street vendors, market traders, seasonal activities, cultural itinerancy, freelancers, alternating parental care, etc.). The programme covers children and pupils from pre-school to secondary school, who, if their families so wish, can join and attend distance learning from the 2nd cycle of basic education onwards.

These children/students attend a large number of kindergartens and schools throughout the school year, for more or less prolonged periods, which fragments their learning, so the aim of distance learning is to guarantee educational continuity, assess learning and prevent early school leaving.

Using a database created by the Ministry of Education, Science and Innovation, the schools where the students are enrolled monitor the pupils’ educational pathway of pupils who are children of itinerant professionals. These schools have access to up-to-date information on pupils' learning, for the purpose of assessing it, based on the records and reports made by the various host schools that pupils attend throughout the school year.

Itinerant pre-school education

Itinerant pre-school education is a legally established category that consists of providing pre-school education services when a pre-school teacher regularly travels to areas that are difficult to access or to areas with a small number of children (Article 15(1) and (2) of Law No 5/97, 10 February). Despatch No 10319/99, 26 May establishes itinerant pre-school education as a category of pre-school education.

Itinerant pre-school education is a category of pre-school education that gives children aged 3 to 5 living in rural areas access to educational activities in places where, due to insufficient numbers of children (fewer than fifteen), it is not possible to set up a kindergarten.

The kindergarten teacher travels to geographically distant places that are difficult to access, working with a small number of children and teaching the curriculum in accordance with the curriculum guidelines for pre-school education, in the same way as kindergarten teachers.

This model makes it possible for children living in small settlements have access to pre-school education.

Its objectives are the following:

• create methodological and structural alternatives to kindergarten
• to experiment with different ways of involving and co-operating more closely with families and communities
• raise awareness and involvement of local authorities, services, institutions and formal/informal groups to support pre-school children. 

This type of provision was created to accommodate pre-school children, taking into account the following:

• the low birth rate and decreasing number of children makes it economically and pedagogically unfeasible to set up kindergartens
• distances, lack of transport, lack of facilities
• high rates of failure and early school leaving
• lack of family support structures for children's education.

Learning, Playing, Growing Groups 

The Learning, Playing, Growing Groups (LPGG) arose from an experiment funded by the European Commission (‘Playgroups for inclusion’) and are a non-formal response designed for children up to the age of 4 (who did not attend creche or kindergarten) accompanied by their families.

A Learning, Playing, Growing Group is a number of carers (fathers, mothers, grandparents, uncles, cousins, siblings, etc.) and their children who meet twice a week in a specific place to interact and play together. Each session is led by one or two monitors who use culturally sensitive and stimulating contexts for socialisation and experimentation, which are conducive to the children's learning and the caregivers' training.

These sessions focus on interpersonal relationships and creating an empathetic climate of respect, cooperation and reciprocal sharing. The aim is to meet the needs and interests of the children and the carers who accompany them through play and educational activities that occur at each session.

Provided by public and private institutions, the venues, which are within the community, are very diverse and include schools, libraries, parish councils, associations, health centres, foundations, local institutions, parks, markets, shops, among others.

There are currently very few LPGG operating, due to a lack of available funding.