Polytechnic of Porto

CiiL – Centre for Research and Intervention in Reading – was created in 2015, in the pursuit for knowledge transfer. It stemmed from the research conducted by Polytechnic of Porto, particularly by Professor Ana Sucena. It is the result of a partnership between the Polytechnic of Porto, Porto City Hall and the Portuguese Ministry of Education. Ever since, CiiL’s journey has been characterised by a constant and an increasingly intense investment, resulting in the expansion of the project at both national and international levels.

On behalf of the Polytechnic of Porto, I salute CiiL’s actions, which, by fostering the success in reading and writing skills acquisition, promotes higher values, such as inclusion, equity and educational justice for all.

CiiL is a clear example of our mission to continuously seek and create new knowledge, applying it on our society and thus contributing to its evolution.
Porto, May 21 2021

Porto City Hall

PPALP - Portuguese Learning Promotion Programme

PPALP is a municipal programme, a tool with an innovative purpose and intervention methodology, which rates language as an essential dimension of the learning process. By doing so, it intends to boost reading skills and promote Portuguese learning from pre-school to upper secondary education.

It was born from common interests of the Municipality of Porto, of the city’s schools and of the Polytechnic of Porto. It is a collaborative work and its consolidation and success are due to that capacity of operating as a network.

Included in the Integrated and Innovative Plans to Combat School Failure, an initiative of the Municipality of Porto, PPALP has been conceived as a tool to adjust the municipal educational offer to its own territory and to ensure commitment from local institutions, bearing in mind the specificities of each individual school and the city’s groups of schools.

PPALP is a model of institutional synergies and it ultimately lead not only to the creation of CiiL, born in 2015 from the joint action of the Municipality of Porto, the Polytechnic of Porto and the Ministry of Education, but also to its expansion to a broader universe of primary schools and kindergartens. The involvement of more advanced education levels was later achieved by the funding from operational programme Norte 2020, which seeks to support circa 3700 students from pre-school, 1st cycle, 3rd cycle  of the Basic Education levels and from upper secondary education as well.

Porto, May 26 2021

Ministry of Education

The Directorate-General for Education (DGE) has been accompanying the Centre for Research and Intervention in Reading (CiiL) project, which was given a responsibility to promote research in the fields of educational innovation and in the quality of teaching and learning.

In fact, the project’s mission is to foster school success by operating in the scope of prevention and early intervention in situations of learning difficulties - particularly in reading – of children in pre-school and in the first grade of the 1st Cycle of Basic Education. The intervention is held within classroom environment and is conducted through programmes to promote phonological awareness, as well as lexical, speaking and reading comprehension development. Its scope of operation extends to preschool teachers and primary school teachers and also to research, by selecting the most appropriate assessment and intervention tools and by publishing research outcomes.

Since its creation in 2015 from a partnership between the Polytechnic of Porto, Porto City Hall and the Ministry of Education, CiiL has progressively increased its area of influence in the country.

DGE is still supporting CiiL as it seeks the continuity of this intervention in the successful learning of children’s reading skills in a school context.
Lisbon, May 20 2021