Two public schools in the North among the best in the 6th grade MOdA exams

Ostudents from two public schools in the north of the country appear among the best in the national tests of Portuguese and Mathematics of the sixth year, between private schools and artistic music schools that stand out again.

In the first Tests for Monitoring Learning (ModA) of the 6th year held in 2025, private colleges lead the tables performed by Lusa based on data provided by the Ministry of Education.

But there are exceptions: The students of the Escola Básica No. 1 in Eiriz, in Baião, managed to overcome the results of the most prestigious schools in the country, becoming second to Mathematics, while the Escola Básica No. 2 of the Viso, in Porto, reached first place in Portuguese performance.

With a national average score of 51.7 points to Mathematics, private education dominates the top places, with a strong presence of Catholic colleges and artistic schools of music.

The students of the Quadrant College had the best performances in the race, putting the Cascais primary school first with 74 points (on a scale from zero to 100), then followed by the Eiriz School in Baião (72 points).

Among the 20 schools with the best results, there are only two more public schools, all of which are artistic music education: Espinho Music Academy and the Calouste Gulbenkian Music Conservatory in Braga.

Among the schools with the best results it is also customary to find Catholic colleges with good performances in Mathematics.

On the other hand, Portuguese students from the Viso Basic School 2 in Porto achieved the best average performances, with a score of 67 points that allowed putting this public establishment first of a ranking led by colleges.

Colleges dominate in the top 20 of Portuguese, but there are more public schools. Once again, there is the Escola Básica No. 1 de Eiriz, in Baião, which appears in 5th place with 62 points, and several artistic schools, such as the Escola de Musica de São Teotónio, in Coimbra, or the Conservatory of Music Calouste Gulbenkian, in Braga.

Also Portuguese, students from the north dominate the table, corroborating the report of the Ministry of Education that pointed to schools in the north and center of the country as having better average performances.

In the Portuguese ModA there is a particularly strong concentration in the metropolitan area of Porto and Minho, but once again there are several Catholic schools.

The report published by the Ministry on the tests stressed that students have more difficulties in Portuguese, and more than half had results below expected, not reaching the Proficient level.

Be at the level Proficient is equivalent to demonstrating the competencies that the educational system expects a student to master in that year of schooling. Being below this level means that there are still unconsolidated learnings.

In an analysis by Lusa of the results of the 1,154 schools involved in these tests, the average Portuguese score was 48.9 points, on a scale between zero and 100 points.

Students have more difficulty in writing than understanding texts, while Mathematics, the biggest problem is solving problems, but more than half of the students managed to reach Proficient or Advanced levels.

The lowest results are obtained by the Alentejo, Algarve, Azorean and Setúbal peninsula students.

A report with the results of the ModA Tests carried out between May and June this year showed a slight improvement in the results of Portuguese and Mathematics compared to 2025, but also warned that writing remains the area that requires more pedagogical attention.