Rodrigo Antunes / Lusa
The Minister of Education, Science and Innovation, Fernando Alexandre
At issue is the new model for correcting secondary exams, which will be digitized and with the same exam being evaluated by several teachers.
A few weeks before the start of the national secondary education exams, the new model for digital correction of tests is generating doubts, criticism and concerns among teachers, unions and school directors. The system, which is part of the education digitalization strategy in Portugal, will be applied in the 2025/2026 academic year, but many of its details remain unclear.
Year 11 and 12 exams begin on June 16th and end on June 26th. Although students continue to take tests on paper, answers will later be digitized and corrected through a mixed model, which combines automatic correction and digital assessment carried out by classifying teachers.
According to the Ministry of Education, Science and Innovation (MECI), the tests will be carried out on sheets with QR codes associated with each student. After the exams, the documents will be collected by the PSP and GNR and sent to exam groups, where they must be digitized before being distributed to teachers through a computer platform.
In the new system, classifiers fail to correct complete exams. Each teacher will only receive specific questions, distributed randomly and anonymously, and will be able to correct isolated answers from different tests.
The Minister of Education, Fernando Alexandre, guarantees that the process will be “more rigorous, objective and equitable” and accuses criticism surrounding digitalization of “alarmism.” MECI also assures that the security and reliability of the system are guaranteed, although it refuses to disclose operational details for security reasons.
The explanations did not convince many teachers. The Missão Escola Pública (MEP) movement accuses the Government of a lack of transparency and questions who will have access to the evidence during scanning. The movement’s spokesperson, Cristina Mota, considers that the model can increase the risk of errors, due to the greater wear associated with digital correction.
“The minister is put at risk the rigor and competence of teachers. Just because an exam is corrected by several teachers does not mean that there will be greater equity”, he tells , highlighting that the classification criteria already guarantee rigor in the current system. The MEP even admits appealing to the Commission for Access to Administrative Documents if the ministry does not clarify the process.
The concerns are shared by the unions. The National Education Federation warns of Risks associated with automating remediationarguing that assessment requires interpretation and pedagogical sensitivity that are impossible to replace entirely with technology.
FENPROF also fears technical failures similar to those recorded in experimental digital tests, where there were network problemslack of equipment and logistical difficulties in several schools.
