Primary schools in Lisbon and the Portuguese interior on the cusp of decentralisation in the nineteenth century

Abstract

The Regulation of 20 December 1850 reinforced the role of local government, providing that new schools would be granted preferentially to towns and parishes with properly furnished buildings of their own. This legislation was supplemented in 1866 by the promulgation of a set of norms to regulate school spaces and equipment. The Municipality of Lisbon did not enjoy special privileges with regard to public education and was governed instead by the same legislation as the rest of the country. Like other municipalities, Lisbon lacked sufficient financial means of its own, despite being home to most of the state administration offices and political institutions of the country. This article analyses the situation of primary education in two distinct territories: the predominantly urban Municipality of Lisbon, capital of the Kingdom of Portugal; and the Municipality of Proença-a-Nova, a predominantly rural, poorly communicated region of the Portuguese interior. Primary sources for this study include questionnaires completed during an Extraordinary Inspection of Primary Schools in 1875, and other official documents and studies from the time.