Public schools have received 400 new enrollments only in the last week

O In the last week, the Ministry of Education registered 400 new applications for enrollment for public schools, many of which have not yet arrived in Portugal, today Minister Fernando Alexandre revealed.

“An additional 400 new applications for enrollment were made last week,” said Minister Fernando Alexandre, during the joint hearing in parliamentary committees of Budget, Finance and Public Administration, and Education and Science, in the context of the assessment in the specialty of the State Budget for 2027.

The minister stressed that this is a phenomenon that “has been happening for years in Portugal” and that many of the children and young people enrolled in the registration portal “are not in Portugal yet”.

“Many hundreds arrive in January and February,” he explained, corroborating information that has been advanced by school directors, who explain these are students from countries with different school calendars.

In Brazil, for example, classes end in December and the new school year starts in February.

But as Fernando Alexandre has said, this is not a problem that arises only now: “On the plate portal, I have hundreds of students to place every week. They can have an assigned school and they are not put up because they are not even in Portugal and many of them do not even have a citizen's or passport card ", he said.

The minister answered the deputy of the Left Block Fabian Figueiredo who accused the guardianship of being aggravating the situation experienced in schools, with more lack of teachers, more students without classes and more families without knowing where they will study their children.

“ The students who are in Portugal, Portuguese, are fortunately all placed and are all taking classes. And in the case of the 1st cycle, which is the most difficult case we have in Lisbon, they have classes, but often have teachers of 2nd cycle, but they are teachers with qualifications to teach in the 1st cycle ", said the minister.

About the increase of students without classes, Fernando Alexandre said that when he took possession of the system that existed to make this survey was fallacious: “Today we have an accounting of the schedules requested by the very strict schools, which did not happen when we arrived.”.

Still on students without classes, he stressed that the problem is located and that “the families affected by this scourge are very few, they are a very small group in Lisbon and on the south bank”.

The minister announced today that from December 14 it will already be possible to have access to data on the number of students without classes, through a new monitoring system that uses the summaries of teachers in classes.