Estado Novo (Portugal) - Education

Education

Until the 1960s, post-primary education was limited to a tiny elite. In general, teenagers used to leave school and start to work early. In contrast with other European nations, the country had had a poor record in educational policies since the 19th century. By the end of the 19th century the illiteracy rate was at over 80 percent and higher education was reserved for a small percentage of the population. 68.1 percent of Portugal's population was still classified as illiterate by the 1930 census. Portugal's literacy rate by the 1940s and early 1950s remained low for North American and Western European standards at the time. However, in the 1960s the country made public education available for all children between the ages of six and twelve, founded universities in the overseas provinces of Angola and Mozambique (the University of Luanda and the University of Lourenço Marques during the period of Adriano Moreira as Minister of the Overseas Provinces), recognized the Portuguese Catholic University in 1971, and by 1973 a wave of new state-run universities were founded across mainland Portugal (the Minho University, the New University of Lisbon, the University of Évora, and the University of Aveiro – Veiga Simão was the Minister in charge for education by then). In addition, the long established Lisbon and Coimbra universities were highly expanded and modernized in the 1960s. New buildings and campuses were constructed, like the Cidade Universitária (Lisbon) and the Alta Universitária (Coimbra). The last two decades of the Estado Novo, from the 1960s to the 1974 Carnation Revolution, were marked by strong investment in secondary and university education, which experienced in this period one of the fastest growth rates of Portuguese education history to date. Though this corresponded to significant growth of post-primary enrollment in larger urban areas, yet there was a gap to be filled in the following years, given the little time to overcome their disadvantaged starting position. The massification of secondary education was only achieved in late 1970s and 1980s, so by the time of the Carnation Revolution in 1974 illiteracy was receding, but low-literacy and illiteracy was still high, compared with the highest standards already achieved by the most developed countries in the world.

Egas Moniz, a Portuguese physician who developed the cerebral angiography and leucotomy, received in 1949 the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine – even now, the only Portuguese recipient of a Nobel in the sciences.