“This is a very serious problem within the Portuguese educational system, which only this government, during the previous legislature, aimed to resolve by implementing an immediate set of measures to mitigate the entire situation,” Pedro Alves stated.
Speaking to journalists at the Assembly of the Republic following a meeting with the Minister of Education, Science and Innovation, Fernando Alexandre, Pedro Alves referred to an external audit requested by the Ministry of Education. The report revealed that the current system “does not allow for accurate ascertainment of the number of students without classes” due to a lack of teachers.
The Social Democrat deputy highlighted that these measures yielded “immediate” results but acknowledged that “the problem is much deeper,” which will necessitate additional complementary actions.
Concerning the conclusions of the audit, Pedro Alves remarked that “numerous methods are employed to calculate” the number of students without classes, and “there is significant difficulty in consolidating these data.”
When questioned about the figures released by the Ministry last November, the PSD deputy confessed that “there were various data and information circulating, not in a consolidated manner, but rather very sporadically, leading to situations that are now identified as impossible to quantify accurately.”
The Social Democrat denied that these were “unreal numbers,” explaining that “the way teachers are assigned and the lack of data on a platform made it impossible to assess the situation at any given moment accurately; rather, evaluations were based on some provided information.”
“I believe that, possibly, those who wished, and I believe in good faith, to provide reliable information to the Minister might have inadvertently led him to a mistaken conclusion, causing the Minister to accept information that was not completely correct, although it was passed on by the services,” he asserted.
In separate statements to the media following his meeting with the Education Minister, João Almeida of the CDS-PP noted that “there is a path to reduce” the number of students without teachers and emphasized “the necessity of revising the statistical treatment of these data to ensure reliability in the numbers.”
“Transparency is essential for this majority and this government; therefore, knowing the exact evolution of the situation is crucial, especially as we believe the progress is clearly positive, and it will be important to demonstrate this,” he added.
In light of the controversy surrounding data regarding students without classes released last year by the Ministry of Education, Science and Innovation (MECI), Minister Fernando Alexandre commissioned an audit. The audit concluded that “the current process does not allow for the accurate determination of the number of students without classes.”
The audit identified “gaps and deficiencies compromising the integrity of data reported by the Direção-Geral dos Estabelecimentos Escolares (DGEstE) concerning the number of students without a subject class, as well as the ability to verify this figure for the 2023-2024 and 2024-2025 academic years.”
Given these shortcomings, auditor KPMG recommends the implementation of a system that “allows timely and centralized data collection directly from schools,” such as “compiling class summaries” available in electronic format.
