An audit by KPMG, requested by the Ministry of Education and released on Monday, has identified “serious flaws in the current data collection system,” particularly its inability to “accurately determine the number of students without classes.” The audit also noted that the Interactive Management System for Human Resources in Education (SIGRHE) “does not identify affected classes or subjects, hindering effective pedagogical intervention.”
KPMG has recommended the urgent implementation of a centralized data collection system directly from schools, using electronic summaries, and outlined the need for clear definition of procedures and entities responsible for data validation. The Ministry of Education stated on Monday that KPMG’s recommendations will inform planning for the next academic year, although specific timelines, resources, or impacts of the proposed changes have yet to be clarified.
Given the critical importance of this issue for educational quality and community trust in the public education system, there is a need for clarity on these data, according to IL. Consequently, the party is requesting an urgent hearing with Fernando Alexandre to “provide details on measures to be taken following the audit,” to outline a timeline for implementing the recommendations, and to “clarify how data reliability will be ensured during the 2025/2026 school year.”
The KPMG audit, released Monday, highlighted that the existing system for tracking the number of students without a teacher “does not allow for an accurate determination of the number of students without classes.” This audit was initiated by Fernando Alexandre following controversy over data on students without classes released last year by the Ministry of Education, Science and Innovation (MECI).
The audit identified “gaps and deficiencies that jeopardize the robustness of the data reported by the Directorate-General for Schools (DGEstE) concerning the number of students without classes in a subject, as well as the possibility of verifying this number for the 2023-2024 and 2024-2025 school years.”
