Teachers, parents and students protest in Lisbon over exam marking crisis

Teachers, parents and students will stage two protests in Lisbon today as anger continues to mount over the Portuguese government’s handling of this year’s national secondary school exams.

The demonstrations come after weeks of disruption caused by the troubled rollout of digital marking for paper-based exams, which forced repeated deadline extensions and delayed the publication of results until Friday.

The first protest, organised by the S.TO.P. (Union of All Education Professionals), was, as this text was being uploaded, due to begin outside the Lisbon Congress Centre, where Education Minister Fernando Alexandre is billed to attend a conference.

In a statement, the union said the protest was prompted by the “serious problems” surrounding the conduct and marking of national exams, which it said had affected “thousands of students, teachers, other education professionals and their families”.

S.TO.P. accused the Education Ministry of poor planning, failing to introduce timely solutions and refusing to accept political responsibility for the crisis.

Rather than providing clear answers, the union alleged, the minister has attempted to shift responsibility onto others within the education system instead of explaining the government’s decisions or addressing the concerns of the education community.

The union also criticised what it described as Fernando Alexandre’s reluctance to provide public explanations, arguing that this had fuelled frustration among teachers, students and parents.

S.T.O.P. has invited teachers, students, parents, education staff, trade unions and members of the public to join the demonstration in defence of Portugal’s public education system and to demand political accountability.

A second protest is due to take place outside parliament at 8pm this evening (shortly after the close of the State of the Nation debate), where a group of teachers will hold a candlelit vigil to denounce what they describe as the “destruction of education” in the name of supposed progress and innovation.

In their appeal for participants, organisers say the problems surrounding this year’s national exams have gone “beyond all acceptable limits in a society” and represent a negative turning point for Portugal’s education system.

These protests follow weeks of technical hitches and failures. Teachers have reported problems ranging from missing or poorly digitised exam papers and repeated platform outages, to duplicated corrections and continually revised marking deadlines.

The disruptions affected the marking of more than 300,000 first-phase exam papers. A second phase is due shortly, and the government has said it will use exactly the same process, in spite of all the issues.

Source material: Executive Digest

Natasha Donn

Journalist for the Portugal Resident.