The Chair of the Parliamentary Committee on Education and Science, Chega’s MP Manuela Tender, stated that the hearing of Fernando Alexandre was unanimously approved by the deputies.
Manuela Tender noted that the deputies unanimously voted for the requests submitted by Iniciativa Liberal and Chega, which included one abstention.
The Iniciativa Liberal’s request was based on an audit by KPMG revealed on Monday, while Chega’s was based on both the audit and an estimate from the National Federation of Teachers (Fenprof), according to Tender.
Following the controversy surrounding last year’s data on students without classes published by the Ministry of Education, Science, and Innovation (MECI), Minister Fernando Alexandre commissioned an audit by KPMG. The audit concluded that “the process of determining the number of students without classes currently in place does not allow for accurately ascertaining the number of students without classes.”
The audit indicated that there are “gaps and deficiencies that undermine the integrity of the data reported by the Directorate-General for School Establishments (DGEstE), concerning the number of students without classes for a subject, as well as the possibility of verifying this number for the academic years 2023-2024 and 2024-2025.”
In light of these shortcomings, KPMG recommended the implementation of a system to “promptly and centrally collect this information directly from schools,” possibly through “the collection and compilation of lesson summaries” available in electronic format.
Over the weekend, Fenprof presented an estimate accounting for nearly 1.4 million instances of students without classes in at least one subject. The figures, however, include duplications of students left without multiple teachers or at various times.
