The work that is presented here gives an account of how the education system and, in particular, the
teachers were away at
school for the failure of their
students and want to legitimize the process using the psychology. The assertion, but said, is supported by an empirical research which studied the processes of schools and school failure of the students of the 1st cycle of basic education (first 4 years of schooling) as: 1. The rates of retention ( "disapproval") of these students; 2. The (co) relationship between the process of learning and not the source of social ecultural students; 3. The management practices of teaching staff; 4. The charge of failure to pupils and their families and consequent disclaimer of
teachers; 5. Belonging to the resolution / legitimacy of the failure by psychology. From the theoretical point of view is the return to meritocráticas theories and the "handicaps" putting family is from the theories of social and cultural reproduction, and especially the processes school. In this work then to consider, so quite rapidly, some theoretical assumptions about school failure and policies developed in Portugal have been quantitative results with which we want to confirm the assertion originally placed.