This paper aims to analyse the impacts of the pandemic crisis on the Portuguese education system and the policies taken to address them. The fast development of the health crisis caused by Covid-19, posed the need for rapid adaptations to home confinement in order to ensure the continuation of the schooling process. In Portugal, as in many other countries, the adoption of educational solutions based on digital platforms were the alternative, articulated with a public TV home-schooling programme. Because of the restrictive budgetary policies, focused on reducing the public deficit, the Portuguese education system faced this new context clearly underfunded and under-equipped, with limitations in the available resources. The course of the three pandemic waves, particularly during the two school closure periods, showed not only the limitations of resources, but also the demotivation to promote educational policies able to restrict some of its’ most negative effects. Some groups, such as children with disabilities, children with specific educational needs, or children of immigrants, were particularly unprotected and left without any educational support, or any consideration for their living conditions or family educational resources. The selective character of the Portuguese system was also highlighted by the maintenance of standardised evaluation processes, ignoring the evident difficulties of families with lower economic and cultural resources, in order to recompensate the reduction or suspension of the educational compensation programmes. In conclusion, we can state the ineffective policy measures to the clear worsening of social inequalities in the access to education.

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covid19,educational policies,inequalities,e-learning