In Portugal, as in other European countries, the universalisation of the right to education through equal opportunities of access to public school did not guarantee, however, effective equality of opportunities for success and school became, for a large part of the students, mainly from disadvantaged groups, a challenge to their right to education.

In the ‘60s, Bourdieu and Passeron (1970), draw attention to the importance of social class in education. The cultural (capital) differences between the students from the dominant classes and the ones from the working classes are the main drivers for the school’s failure of the latter and, in this sense, for cultural and social reproduction. Even nowadays, social class is a factor of social and educational inequalities both in Portugal and at a European level (Abrantes, 2022; Costa & Mauritti, 2018; Melo & Lopes, 2021; Ball, 2019; Reay, 2021).

The debate on students´ social and cultural diversities and how the school should relate to them has been a central concern in the pursuit of the democratisation of the education system and to assure student´s right to education. The school has been trying to accommodate these social and cultural diversities through the diversification in policies and practices: different educational routes, autonomy and curricular flexibility, tutorial support, and many others.

One important topic in several national and European policy documents is the broadening of higher education to other publics, namely VET graduates that are mostly from the working classes. Since 2020, there are special calls for their admission to higher education[1].

In Portugal, the number of graduates from scientific-humanistic courses (“regular school”) going to higher education is around 85%. However, although in 2021 vocational courses represented the largest educational and training offer in secondary education[2], only around 38% of graduates from vocational courses go to higher education[3], and this proportion is even more reduced when we refer to the graduates from apprenticeship courses. Hence, the VET students that go to higher education are sociological and statistical exceptions.

Attuned to this, our study is about working-class students, specifically graduates from vocational courses (VC) and apprenticeship courses (AC), who perform academic success pathways. Our main research question is: which dimensions and factors contribute to an academic success pathway of VET graduates who are attending or have attended higher education? However, to achieve academic success, these young people had to overcome numerous inequalities and barriers.

Considering studies and policy documents on the theme and the analysis of 8 in-depth interviews with VET graduates, in this presentation, we find it relevant to reflect on how these subjects live and narrate their school pathways in relation to two specific diversities:

i)                 social class, i.e., their experience as working-class students: e.g. which meanings do they assign to school? Which institutional, situational, and dispositional barriers do they face and must overcome? (Ekstrom, 1979)

ii)               attending vocational education and training, an alternative educational route in upper secondary education, less prestigious academically and socially

Underpinned on Bourdieu´s concepts of class, "habitus" and "cultural capital" (1964, 1970, 1999, 2003), Ekstrom “barriers to education” (1979) and Fraser´s concept of “social justice” (2002, 2006), we aim to comprehend if and how these two specific diversities have influenced students´ right to education and social justice.

[1] . See Decree Law nº 11/2020 (https://dre.pt/dre/en/detail/decree-law/11-2020-131016733) and https://www.poch.portugal2020.pt/pt-pt/Noticias/Paginas/noticia.aspx?nid=1152&ano=2017&pag=2&nr=9

[2] . See https://www.cnedu.pt/pt/noticias/cne/1874-estado-da-educacao-2021

[3] . See https://www.dgeec.mec.pt/np4/47/%7B$clientServletPath%7D/?newsId=256&fileName=DGEEC_Estudantes_a_saida_do_secundario_2.pdf

We chose a fundamentally qualitative approach since we privilege the young people´s perspectives and intend to understand the meanings that the subjects assign to their discourses and practices. In addition, the study also has a participatory research approach (Gaventa & Cornwall, 2001) to promote the development of the participants' reflection about the object of study. The chosen method is the multiple case study (Amado, 2014) that allows us to study young people from vocational courses and apprenticeship courses who attend (or have attended) higher education and present unlikely school pathways. To understand the young people´s perspectives, we are analysing their biographical pathways through in-depth semi-structured interviews with 10 graduates from vocational courses and 10 graduates from apprenticeship courses, and, subsequently, we will draw “sociological portraits” (Lahire, 2004). “Sociological portraits” are an innovative methodology or tool designed by Bernard Lahire to “capture the complexity of the plural actor”. According to the author, it´s the core tool of a “sociology at the individual scale” since it makes it possible to apprehend the multiple, heterogeneous, and even contradictory dispositions that characterise individuals. From our point of view, “sociological portraits” are the one that best responds to the object of study since they: allow us to capture the complexity of individual singularity, based on heterogeneity and dispositional and contextual plurality; for the heuristic value of the concept of “plural actor”; for the role assigned to the interconnection between structure and agency in the interpretation of the social. Until now, we have carried out 8 in-depth semi-structured interviews with graduates from apprenticeship courses and 4 with graduates from vocational courses. In this presentation, as said before, we will present and discuss the results of the analysis of the interviews with 8 vocational education graduates. The content analysis of the in-depth interviews and field notes is based on authors such as Bardin (1995) and Vala (2005). The analysis is organized around the simultaneous consideration of theoretical issues and empirical data. In a first analysis, we have performed successive readings of the transcription of the interviews. Then, we have analysed the interviews using a priori categories to streamline the analysis process, as well as emerging categories. Finally, it was important to re-analyse the data as a whole.

From the interviews´ analysis, we can argue that, as working-class students, they had to face and overcome numerous barriers to assure their right to education: i) institutional barriers (e.g. high tuition fees in higher education; the university not offering the course in an after-labour regime); ii) situational barriers (e.g. low socioeconomic situation; being of a family with “ low cultural capital”) and iii) dispositional barriers (low academic aspirations and expectations; not having an ”academic habitus”; low self-esteem as a student) (Ekstrom, 1979). Attending VET - and although these courses are mostly aimed at the transition to the labour market - paradoxically, turned out to be an “institutional detour” (Charlot, 2009) for these young people i) to complete secondary education and ii) was in many cases central for them to continue to higher education through their "re-mobilisation for school and study" (Charlot, 2009; Almeida & Rocha, 2010). Nevertheless, this comes with numerous constraints and inequalities that might challenge students´ right to education and social justice: through the analysis of the interviews, there is some evidence that these courses may put at risk, to some extent, their right to what Young (2010) calls “powerful knowledge”. For instance, most of them have difficulty in the national exams to enter higher education, and, for that reason, they have to apply through a specific call for VET students. However, not all higher education institutions open this call, so VET graduates are constrained in their choices and, most of them, do not attend the most academic and socially privileged institutions and courses. Hence, if VET may assure their access to higher education and in some cases their educational success, it also contributes, in a certain manner, to social reproduction and, for that reason, we question wether it guarantees social justice.

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