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Member of Parliament from the Liberal Initiative and former party president, Rui Rocha, criticized the Portuguese state’s inability to determine “how many students are without teachers” this Tuesday, following the release of an audit requested by the Ministry of Education.
“The grand project of the Portuguese state in education is to one day, though it’s uncertain when exactly, obviously it won’t be soon, find out how many students are without a teacher,” he wrote on his profile on the social network X (formerly known as Twitter).
He concluded: “It would be comical if it weren’t tragic.”
An external audit commissioned by the Ministry of Education and released on Monday revealed that the existing system to determine how many students are without classes due to a lack of teachers “does not allow for the exact determination of the number of students without classes.”
O Estado português não sabe quantos alunos há sem professor.
O grande projeto do Estado português na Educação é um dia, não se sabe exatamente quando mas obviamente não será para já, saber quantos alunos há sem professor.
Seria cómico se não fosse trágico.
— Rui Rocha (@ruirochaliberal) July 1, 2025
The audit requested from KPMG by the Minister of Education, Fernando Alexandre, came in the wake of controversy over the data on students without classes released by the ministry last year.
The audit indicated “gaps and shortcomings that undermine the reliability of the data reported by the Directorate-General of School Establishments (DGEstE) concerning the number of students without classes in a subject, as well as the possibility of verifying this number for the academic years 2023-2024 and 2024-2025.”
The existing system to determine how many students are without classes due to a lack of teachers “does not allow for the exact determination of the number of students without classes,” according to the external audit requested by the Ministry of Education and released today.
Lusa | 12:27 – 30/06/2025
Furthermore, the National Federation of Teachers (Fenprof) also reacted to the results of the audit, expressing astonishment that the existing system does not allow for the determination of how many students were without classes.
“The mountain has labored and brought forth a mouse: not only was no number of students without classes determined, but it also confirmed what Fenprof has long been denouncing,” the federation stated in a press release.
