Luísa Ucha, has a degree in Geography (1981) and a master’s degree in Educational Sciences, area of Educational Technologies (2005) from the University of Lisbon. She had a career as a geography teacher at both lower and upper secondary education and worked as geography specialist of initial teacher training in the educational branch of the Geography Degree, from the Faculty of Letters of the University of Lisbon for 12 years.
She held technical-pedagogical functions in the General Directorate of Curricular Development and Innovation, from September 1999 to January 2012, where she was Director of Curriculum Development Services.
She was a national expert in Working Group B - Basic skills, foreign language teaching and entrepreneurship, European Commission (2004).
She was President of the Installing Committee of the Mobile School, a distance learning school for the children of itinerant families (2009).
She was a member of the international panel of consultants at UNICEF, representing the Ministry of Education of Portugal - The transition from early childhood care, Innocenti Report Card No. 8, 2008. UNICEF Innocenti Research Center, Florence.
She was a co-chair member of the OECD Education and Child Care Network - Starting Strong II.
From December 2015 to March 2022, she was advisor to the Secretary of State for Education and has been working especially in curriculum, citizenship education and inclusive education.
She coordinated the Interministerial Working Group on Inclusive Education, which presented the new law for inclusive education (2018). She also integrated other working groups:
• the working group which presented The Students’ Profile by the End of Compulsory Schooling (2017),
• the Interministerial working group on Citizenship Education, which presented the National Strategy for Citizenship Education (2018),
• the Interministerial working group on Special Needs in Science, Technology and Higher Education (2018),
• Interministerial Working Group for the Celebrations of 70 years of the Universal Declaration Human Rights and 40 years of Portugal’s accession to the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights (ECHR).
Since 2021 she integrates the Governing Board of the Observatory on History Teaching in Europe (OHTE) of the Council of Europe.
Since April 2022 she is advisor to the Ministry of Education.
