The teacher told the students that they could miss the exams they did not need to enter higher education, but the students ended up splash due to the absences.
Four students from the Ponte de Lima Secondary School were retained in secondary education after following the guidance of the class director, who will have guaranteed them that could miss the descriptive geometry examination without prejudice to the evaluation.
The situation, contested by the parents, is now in the hands of the Ministry of Education and the General Inspection of Education.
The controversy began in the school year of 2023/2024, when one of the students, in the 11th grade, questioned the teacher, via Microsoft Teams, could miss the exam, by Do not need the test to enter higher education.
The teacher’s response was clear: if he had positive and did not need the examination for the candidacy, he would maintain the classification. Convinced that the procedure was correct, four students missed the descriptive geometry examination and another four to the history of culture and the arts.
The surprise appeared in the 12th grade in early 2025, when they were informed that they were disapproved of not having attended the tests.
According to the rules of the new exam model, in force since 2023the completion of the secondary requires three national examinations – one of Portuguese and two from the specific component – which invalidated the practice during the pandemic to perform only exams necessary for access to higher education.
The in charge of education claims that the school omitted the National Exam Jury (JNE) the exchange of messages that would prove the wrong information. The institution, they say, presented only a partial version of the facts, leading JNE to maintain disapprovaldecision communicated in July 2025.
JNE later admitted not having access to messages and was not informed of its existence.
The school board and the teacher argue that all the information has been made available in the context of classroom and online, through the Microsoft Teams platform and the group page.
However, families claim that digital information is difficult to interpret many parents and that they have legitimately trusted the teacher’s nominations, says.
Of the eight students involved, four managed to perform the missing exam in the 12th grade, while the remaining did not get approval in either the 1st or 2nd phasegetting the discipline for completing. Now, the options are repeating the exam next year or resorting to a Qualification and Vocational Education Center, risking the average access to higher education.
Families filed a formal complaint to the Ministry of Education Against the school and the teacher, for “functional negligence, professional misconduct and omission of information”.
