Latest news and stories about school administration in Portugal for expats and residents.
Fernando Alexandre guaranteed in Parliament that 97% of the items from the second phase of national exams have been graded and that 50% of the re-evaluations are “ready”. It is the re-evaluation processes that most concern teachers and principals.
Currently, principals are elected by the General Council, which includes representatives of teachers and other staff, parents, students, local authorities, and the local community.
Sixty-nine schools submitted re-evaluations past the deadline and 29 were late in delivering the first-phase exams.
There are schools without posted grade lists and students waiting for grade reviews. The process was not completed on Friday as scheduled. Several school clusters received the data with delays and errors. The Minister of Education had guaranteed that all grade lists would be posted by Friday.
The Minister of Education guarantees that the deadlines for delivering the grade sheets with the results of the re-evaluations for the first phase of secondary school exams were met.
School cluster principals are elected by the General Council, which includes representatives of teachers, non-teaching staff, parents, students, local authorities, and the local community.
Alberto Veronesi, director of the Santa Maria dos Olivais School Group, believes that “we could never have moved forward with mass digital grading of exams, given the experience from the previous year in Philosophy.” The Minister of Education “decided to proceed without knowing the reality of the schools,” he adds.
Fernando Alexandre met with representatives of the school directors for over an hour. A statement from EduQa was promised for the coming hours.
This is what school principals guarantee. Also in this newspaper, former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro will remain under house arrest, but with more restrictions.
Schools are receiving new files this Saturday with the exam grades of students whose classifications were suspended on Friday, said the president of the National Association of Directors of Groups and Public Schools. “New files are arriving at schools where the word 'suspended' has been replaced by the grade number”, ...
Out of 997 grades at the Liceu São João de Deus in Faro, 99 were suspended. Students will need to submit a formal request for the exams to be evaluated, according to the school's deputy director.
The Minister of Education holds school principals accountable for not opening doors to post the grades. Additionally, the World Cup third-place match between France and England takes place today.
Filinto Lima believes that principals were “totally disrespected” by the National Examination Jury, which did not provide them with “any kind of information throughout the day”
Some schools closed before 7:30 PM, and therefore, grades will not be posted.
Fernando Alexandre admits he will have “great difficulty” in understanding such cases
The National Examinations Jury assured that it would send exam grades to schools by 7:30 PM, but some schools have still not received the grades.
At the João Gonçalves Zarco Basic and Secondary School in Matosinhos, the same question is still being heard: “Are the grades out yet?”. Without knowing when the marks can be posted, the school's management is considering waiting until midnight and opening the school over the weekend.
There are establishments that will remain open until late in the hope of posting the grades.
The Minister of the Presidency does not rule out the possibility of them being posted after school office hours.
School principals are urging for faster processing of exam-related procedures, noting that school administrative offices operate on specific schedules.
The minister stated that files with the grades would be sent to schools this Friday, but by early afternoon, principals of 801 school clusters were still waiting without further instructions from the ministry.
School directors express worry regarding the rise in administrative tasks and responsibilities.
Principals remain unsure of their role in the process of making national exams available to approximately 166,000 secondary school students, but believe there is no cause for concern.
There are reports of teachers complaining that they have yet to receive the items for assessment, others who were unable to access the exam portal, or who had student answer sheets with missing pages.
Two representatives from the parents' and guardians' association detailed the “direct implications” of the move. They mention the distance from the school cluster's headquarters and the discontinuity of the school cycle.
A group of parents says that they only found out about the transfer of the EB1 Rainha Santa Isabel school in Campo de Ourique “by chance” about 15 days ago.
The ongoing reform at the Ministry of Education is transferring new responsibilities to school administrators.
Problems with the reform of services lead Fernando Alexandre to ask for patience during an online meeting with the country's school principals.
Fenprof said today that the Ministry of Education has added “another source of disruption to the running of schools” by making the registration of lesson summaries compulsory, while the Missão Escola Pública is seeking clarification about what it calls a “non-issue”.
