“It’s impossible to guarantee rigorous marking in national exams by Tuesday”

Portugal’s troubled national secondary school exam marking process has entered a new phase of controversy, with the government insisting it remains on schedule while teachers warn it is “impossible” to guarantee accurate marking before the deadline.

Education Minister Fernando Alexandre has said today that 92% of this year’s more than 300,000 Year 11 and Year 12 exam papers have already been marked, maintaining that students would receive their results as scheduled on Friday (July 17).

“At present, 92% of the exams have been marked, and the pace of marking is very high,” the minister told reporters before a meeting with the Schools Council in Lisbon.

He acknowledged that teachers had worked intensively over the weekend, saying “many people worked very hard” on Saturday and Sunday to ensure the marking process was completed accurately.

Under the revised timetable introduced after weeks of disruption caused by the rollout of digital marking, all exam papers are due to be corrected by tomorrow. Fernando Alexandre insists the deadline will be met “with rigour”.

However, teachers’ movement Missão Escola Pública (Public School Mission) strongly dispute this claim, arguing that the volume of work assigned in recent days makes a thorough assessment impossible.

Speaking to SIC Notícias on the eve of the marking deadline, the movement’s spokeswoman, Cristina Mota, explains that repeated technical failures and administrative problems have undermined confidence in the entire process.

She said one of the greatest concerns was the late distribution of exam answers that had not previously been digitised and were only delivered to teachers over the weekend after reportedly being misplaced.

“These answers weren’t digitised. They had been lost and only now have reached teachers. That is something that worries us,” she said.

Mota also criticised the ministry’s decision to telephone teachers who had not originally been recruited to mark exams, asking them to help complete the remaining workload.

According to Mota, some examiners received instructions to mark as many as 190 assessment papers in just two days.

“One colleague told me she can accurately mark six essays a day. If she suddenly receives another 30 or 40 essays that must be completed by Tuesday, it will be very difficult to guarantee the quality of the assessment,” said the teachers’ representative.

Asked whether it would be difficult to complete the marking by the July 14 deadline, Mota replied: “It is impossible to do it with rigour.”

The pressure placed on teachers risks compromising the reliability of students’ results, she stressed – adding that the immediate priority should be ensuring a fair and accurate assessment, rather than assigning political responsibility.

This latest clash follows weeks of disruption to Portugal’s first nationwide digital correction system for handwritten secondary school exams. Teachers have reported technical failures, missing exam scripts, repeated outages of the electronic marking platform and security-related interruptions, prompting the government to postpone the second phase of the national exams and triggering criticism from opposition parties, teacher unions and parents.

Despite the setbacks, the Education Ministry continues to insist the revised timetable remains achievable and that students will receive their results on Friday as planned – and the PM has said that he retains confidence in his minister, suggesting there are always those who actively seek to undermine government reform…

Source material: LUSA/ SIC Notícias