Language-education policy and diagnostic assessment in a migration context: an analysis of Roraima’s state school system

Abstract

This article examines how the reconfiguration of sixth-grade Portuguese-language diagnostic assessment in Roraima’s state school system between 2024 and 2026 gives concrete form to language-in-education policy decisions in a region marked by migration and linguistic diversity. Assessment instruments are understood as institutional mechanisms that determine which forms of knowledge are recognized and how students may demonstrate them (Shohamy, 2006). The distinction between multilingualism, understood as the coexistence of languages, and plurilingualism, concerning the development and mobilization of linguistic repertoires, helps identify the different roles assigned to languages in the tasks (Coste, Moore and Zarate, 2009). We conducted a qualitative, comparative documentary study using content analysis (Bardin, 2016) of tests, teacher guides, answer keys, scoring rubrics, and recording spreadsheets. The findings show that the 2024 and 2025 instruments incorporated local references while retaining the same marking and recording procedures. In 2026, linguistic diversity became explicit in communicative situations and cross-linguistic comprehension tasks, while Portuguese curricular knowledge remained the object of assessment (Melo-Pfeifer and Ollivier, 2025). The revised instruments also introduced guidance for recognizing resources from different languages in students’ responses, along with separate rubrics for short written answers and extended writing, whose six dimensions were recorded individually. These changes expanded the documented opportunities to recognize linguistic repertoires and interpret learning, without supporting claims about their effects on school practices.