Legislation concerning conditions in the labor market and working life is also applicable to schools. The Law assures employees of the right to information and negotiations before major alterations to school activities are decided on. Various enactments concerning the entitlement of employees to leave of absence -for child care or in order to study, for example - also apply to school staff.



The legislation contains more detailed provisions concerning the organization of teaching, the constitution of various conferences, the duties of headmasters and teaching staff, the organization of school management and teaching appointments and eligibility for the same, decision-making powers in various matters and rights of appeal against particular decisions.

The Education law includes a provision making it the Government's business to issue a Curriculum for compulsory schools. This curriculum is the instrument whereby the community controls schools and their staff. It is divided into two parts, a General Part and a set of related commentaries. The General Part lays down the goals and guidelines of school activities. It also includes time schedules, time schedule regulations and syllabi.

Goals and Guidelines are based on the formulation of goals to be found in the Education law. It enlarges on these goals and indicates the guidelines for the local planning activities of local education authorities.

Individual schools, work units and class committees. In certain cases the Education Law contains more detailed provisions. That the Guidelines, especially where decision-making powers and organization are concerned. In cases of this kind, the Guidelines and the Law have to be implemented conjointly. The time schedules and the time schedule regulations indicate the time per pupil which is normally to be devoted to different subjects or groups of subjects at different school levels.

The syllabi describe, under the heading of Goals and Main items, the focus of teaching and the content of different subjects. The General Part of the Curriculum contains syllabi for the subject's common to all pupils, and it also includes syllabi for English and French (as second foreign language), home languages and Portuguese as a foreign language, together with guidelines for the typing lessons which are a compulsory ingredient of the pupils' training in skills.

The Curriculum also includes extensive commentaries to support local development work. These commentaries are published, revised and updated on continuous bases. They do not include any regulations as such. Instead they are intended to describe current problems and difficulties as experienced by people working in international schools, and on this basis to discuss alternative methods of tackling these problems and difficulties and working in the direction indicated by the goals laid down for schools. Experience and research findings are successively fed back into revised version of the commentaries, and various goal conflicts are elucidated.

Reports on research, experimental activities, everyday school experiences and current problems can provide a starting point for discussions and decisions concerning different working methods, subject matter selection and forms of organization. Together with information, in-service training, local development work and teaching material development, the commentaries should be able to make an active contribution towards the renewal of content, working methods and organization.

In this way the commentaries should be able to provide inspiration for the working plans and development curricula which are to be drawn up locally within each school management.

The commentaries deal with problems specific to individual subjects and with alternative working methods. They are also intended to shed light on various salient questions concerning the internal work of schools, above all by furnishing information and suggestions in the following fields:

-working plans

-development of basic skills

-evaluation within the class, the work unit, the school management.

-assistance to pupils in difficulties

-free study options

-the pupils' own responsibility for school work

-parental participation in schools