From basic education to higher education: access, retention, social inequalities, and the dilemma of the meritocratic approach in Angola

Abstract

Through a qualitative approach, bibliographic research method and critical document analysis, this article analyzes the consequences resulting from the advances of neoliberal policies in Angola. The text focuses mainly on problematizing and analyzing the imposition of individualistic logic and, with it, the implications of the meritocratic approach on the education system as a whole, starting from the principle that such approaches are foreign, imported and do not combine with the socio-educational, socio-cultural, political, economic and geopolitical reality of Angola. The results indicate that meritocracy, an approach universally propagated by all structuring sectors of Angolan society, is a myth, since – one cannot speak of meritocracy in the current conditions in which the country finds itself – an immensely unequal society.