Human Resources Management in the Portuguese Education System

Acknowledging the revival of the debate around school management models, following the criticism neoliberalism has brought into discussion, this work focusses on the human resources management paradigm in the Portuguese compulsory public education system. Analysing secondary quantitative and qualitative data, it describes the observed performance comparing it to the expected one (strategic human resources management). The system's main coordination mechanism is the standardization of competencies, centrally delegated from the Ministry of Education and Science, as so, “mobilization” is the vector in which the system is more constrained towards the expected performance, harming its potential for flexibilization and adaptation. This work concludes there is no strategic human resources management in the Portuguese compulsory public education, despite some positive efforts already being taken to overcome such situation. These insights can be used as an analytical guide to the implementation of changes towards the expected performance in the Portuguese education system.