Worldwide, the covid-19 pandemic brought significant changes to teaching and learning processes, with impacts on students’ learning and educational inequality. Seeking to mitigate the impact of external high-stake assessment on students’ progression and grade transition in Portugal, towards the conclusion of the 2019/2020 school year, an exceptional consensus among educational communities has emerged, allowing a fast implementation of relevant educational assessment policies by the government, schools and teachers. This paper aims to explore these educational assessment policies implemented in Portugal during the first stage of the covid-19 pandemic, from March until July 2020. The main changes of assessment processes are discussed, highlighting their collaborative and multi-level decision-making characteristics, and the impacts that such changes had on students’ outcomes. Preliminary institutional data suggests that, though students’ learning has worsened, those changes were able to fulfil their goals, creating a positive impact on grade transition and students’ progression, and thus reducing educational inequality. Despite the existence of a positive impact on students’ outputs, some of those changes are unlikely to remain in the future due to validity and reliability issues. Nevertheless, some might remain or even be reinforced, creating a possible new high-stake assessment framework.

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• Educational Sciences - Social Sciences
• Other Social Sciences - Social Sciences