The present study focus the opportunity that the development of the Upper Education European Space brought to Portugal, namely to the polytechnic upper education system. In the last five years, the portuguese governments produced several bills in order to alter the national organization of upper education. Many positive and negative expectations were so suggested. Not only institutions organization but also pedagogical models shoul be transformed and everyone was asked to participate. Given all the challenges involved, we find that it is was very important to study the application of such a process by the polytechnic institutes of the centre of Portugal, namely Castelo Branco, Coimbra, Guarda, Leiria, and Tomar. Once this is the context that more concerns the life of our schools. Three years passed since we first analysed pupil’s expectations regarding the transition to upper education. The findings, presented at ECER 2005, pointed at that moment that it what was necessary to be careful. We now focus on the institutions evaluation of what was achieved since that fiirst approach to the undergoing trasformations. The objectives of this study where the following: to define the stage of development of each institution; to identify the reactions of the different participants to the new pedagogical paradigm; to understand the influence of the process regarding the access to higher education; to evaluate pupils adhesion to the new pedagogical model. We expect that by comparing the steps we can learn from the process in order to avoid errors and find out the better paths.

Presidents and School Directors were interviewed. A questionnaire was applied to get students and teachers perceptions of the ongoing transformations. We received 189 questionnaires from teachers and 927 from pupils.

Globally the process obtained satisfactory results: all the major objectives were acquired. But we found that different initial attitudes produced different results and, in consequence, some are more advanced than others, regarding the adaptation of the curricula and the pedagogic methodologies applied. If some institutions have a slight advance, since they started early, they are all very near of the same stage. By now, all courses have three years duration and all the courses demand hundred and sixty credits. Yearly, each pupil has thousand and five hundred working hours, including the attendance to class as well as study and evaluation periods. The number of works required seems to have increased in a significant way. The model of continuous evaluation with tutorial attendance seems to have been well adapted. However, some difficulties were felt to reach the full acceptance of this model and a great lack of resources is registered. We should take in consideration that the, so called, "Bologna Process" implies a new paradigm, in which everything is more centred in the pupil and so it is not a surprise that we found a feeling of work overload on the teacher’s side. On the side of pupils, reactions are divided: some approve the process, other are sceptical, once they feel that things are going pretty much in the same way they where in the past. No variation in the number of candidates is by now sensible, but a break down is expected and it is certain that some financial consequences are to be held on.