Higher Education in Portugal

Annex B. TSI Project focus groups

The OECD team organised two rounds of semi-structured focus groups held in person across five locations across continental Portugal in 2024 and 2025. The purpose of the focus groups was to gather insights from stakeholders engaged in supporting the transition of young people from low-income backgrounds from upper secondary education to higher education in different regional contexts.

In the first round, the focus groups were designed to collect information from stakeholders on their perceptions of how low-income can affect opportunities to attend and complete higher education, and opportunities to participate in the most selective programmes in the country. To this end, the TSI project focus groups were structured around four main topics:

• Characterising educational opportunities at the local level

• Understanding whether and how opportunities to participate in higher education differ between low-income and high-income local secondary education students

• Exploring reasons for differences between low-income and high-income secondary education students

• Considering reasons why some low-income secondary education students do attend higher education

In the second round, the aim was to discuss and gather feedback on directions for future policy action that have emerged over the course of the project to address situations where barriers mean that young people from low-income backgrounds are disadvantaged relative to high-income students. There was interest in assessing the feasibility of the proposed policy actions and identify potential responsibilities for the feasible actions across stakeholders, government and institutions (i.e. municipalities, secondary schools, and higher education institutions). In line with this, the focus groups were structured around four main topics:

• The role of schools and higher education institutions in mitigating accumulated disadvantage in students’ academic achievement leading up to the potential transition to higher education

• The strength of current pathways to higher education for students in vocational secondary education orientations and how they can be improved

• The capability of schools in providing career advice with the resources at their disposal in accordance with their current remit

• Higher education recruitment practices and the collaboration between schools and higher education institutions in complementing in-school career advice

To enable the TSI project focus groups to be facilitated in Portuguese, the OECD contracted the Centre for Research in Higher Education Policies (CIPES) to organise and hold them. The OECD team, in consultation with CIPES and based on existing evidence as well as initial results from the survey, developed a topic guide to steer the discussion for each round. Each session was then facilitated by two members of staff from CIPES and recorded by two dedicated note takers as well as an audio recording. The findings were then analysed thematically and summarised in a report provided to the OECD team along with the detailed notes.

The focus groups were held in five locations across Portugal:

• Northern Portugal: Gondomar, Peso da Régua (including Lamego and Resende), and Covilhã

• Central Portugal: Amadora (including Odivelas and Loures)

• Southern Portugal: Olhão

In the first round, two separate TSI project focus groups were held in each of the five locations: one focused on students in general science-humanistic courses and one focused on students in vocational courses. A summary of the participants can be seen in Table B.1.

Table B.1. Professional roles of TSI project focus group participants, round 1

Role of the participants	Number of participants
Teachers (including programme coordinators)	35
Psychologists	12
Representatives from school boards	7
Technicians	6
Representatives from parents’ groups	4
Representative from school councils	1
Total	65

Source: CIPES.

In the second round, one focus group was held in each of the five locations, combining staff from general scientific-humanistic courses, staff from vocational courses, and representatives from higher education institutions. Prior to the meeting, participants received the OECD’s recommendations document, titled "Action Plan: Policy Directions for the TSI 2023 Project – Making Higher Education in Portugal More Inclusive". This document is structured around key policy themes, identifying specific challenges and proposing targeted recommendations. A summary of the participants can be seen in Table B.2.

Table B.2. Professional roles of TSI project focus group participants, round 2

Role of the participants	Number of participants
Teachers (including programme coordinators)	23
Representatives of Social Services at HEI	11
Psychologists	7
Parents’ Representatives	5
Representatives of Municipalities	4
Representatives of School Boards	1
Total	51

Source: CIPES.

The five locations for the TSI project focus groups – referred to as Consultation Communities – were selected to reflect a range of regional contexts in Portugal. The guiding principles of choosing the locations for the Consultation Communities were established in consultation with the Extended Advisory Group and the detailed selection criteria for specific municipalities were developed in collaboration with MCTES.

Three main student-related factors remain the foundation of the final selection criteria: i) the socio-economic composition of the student cohorts completing secondary education; ii) the types of secondary education students participate in; and iii) the geographical context in which students participate in secondary education.

Members of the Extended Advisory Group provided oral and written comments, advocating an approach based on the representation of the current student population. It was suggested that socio-economic background of students and their educational achievement were considered in combination. It was argued that such a combined approach could take into account different dimensions of equity in educational attainment. For instance, this approach could consider indicators of equality of opportunity and the resilience of lower-income students to perform well despite their disadvantage.

The Extended Advisory Group argued that while representation of different geographic contexts is important, is should not distract from the main aim of representing young people. Therefore, geographical representation was considered as a second-order criterion.

A set of primary selection criteria were applied as the first step in the process of shortlisting municipalities. This comprises three equity-related variables in each municipality in mainland Portugal, where lower-income students are defined by students in receipt of school social action in eligibility bracket A:

1. Low transition rates from secondary education to higher education for lower-income students.

2. Large disparities in transition rates between lower- and higher-income students.

3. A reasonable cohort size of lower-income students.

The condition of low transition rates for lower-income students is defined as municipalities where the proportion of lower-income student transition rate is below the median transition rate for that group across municipalities. The condition of large disparities in transition rates between lower- and higher-income students is defined as municipalities where the disparities in transition rates between recipients and non-recipients of school social action is above the median difference across municipalities.

The final condition relating to cohort size aims to ensure data reliability and the anonymity of any stakeholders and students participating in the qualitative research. Therefore, municipalities were only shortlisted if in the year 2021/22, they had more than 50 secondary education graduates receiving school social action in eligibility bracket A.

In addition to the main TSI project focus groups, an online focus group was held on the island of Madeira.