Grading is integral to the regimes of performativity governing educational systems and practices (Ball, 2003). In Portuguese public debate, grade inflation has become a prominent concern. Yet, teachers' understandings of the phenomenon are heterogeneous and often misaligned with the statistical indicators through which it is publicly acknowledged. Based on 18 interviews with teachers across school levels in public and private schools throughout Portugal, this study examines how teachers make sense of grade inflation and what it reveals about grading practices. Data were analysed using thematic analysis. Findings show that grading concentrates multiple purposes within a single decision: monitoring progress, producing evidence of performance, and responding to accountability demands. Grade inflation, bound up with the system’s sorting and regulation of educational trajectories, carries different meanings for teachers: discrepancies between internal and external assessment; broadened assessment criteria; legal adaptations to avoid grade retention; increased valuing of socio-affective or oral components; and forms of manipulation oriented towards more favourable grade records. These interpretations vary by sector (public/private), educational level, and exposure to national exams. This multiplicity places teachers at the centre of negotiation, where pedagogical and systemic demands are weighed and grading emerges as a situated practice. Grade inflation emerges not as a self-evident phenomenon but as a field of interpretive dispute where pedagogical criteria, organisational pressures, and institutional context intersect. Adequate accounts of grade inflation must attend not only to indicators but to the social and institutional conditions under which grading decisions are made and rendered legible — or invisible.

Authors:
Tiago Neves, Universidade do Porto, Portugal
Toledo Cibelle, Universidade do Porto, Portugal
Alexandra Doroftei, Universidade do Porto, Portugal
Gil Nata, Universidade de Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro, Portugal

About the Presenter(s)
Tiago Neves is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Psychology and Education Sciences of the University of Porto and researcher at CIIE-UP.

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