The minister of education said on Tuesday that more than 100 teachers in the Lisbon area were called upon to mark national exams, but many were either on holiday or on sick leave, emphasising the need for a new selection model.
«Just yesterday [Monday], in the Lisbon region, we identified 111 teachers who had been selected and called upon, but who are on holiday or on sick leave and were therefore unavailable,» said the minister, on the second day of marking the second-phase national secondary school exams.
Minister Fernando Alexandre said it was necessary to devise «a new model», as the current selection process «is extremely inefficient».
Despite this criticism, Fernando Alexandre emphasised that the marking of the second phase of the national exams is «proceeding as normal»: all the papers have now been distributed to the teachers and «20% of the papers have been marked», he said.
The minister acknowledged that the first phase took place «amidst many disruptions» due to platform failures – problems that led to the hiring of Deloitte, which continues to provide support.
Fernando Alexandre said that «all the conditions are now in place for Portugal to take another step forward in its education system», which involves the digitisation of exams.
Challenges related to digitisation, access to the platform where the items to be marked were stored, and the distribution of the answers led to the rescheduling of the release of the results for the first phase of the national exams.
Although the announcement of the results had been rescheduled for 17 July, thousands of pupils had to wait several days to access their marks, and there are still «dozens of cases» to be resolved today, the minister revealed.
«We have a few dozen cases that have dragged on due to discrepancies. All discrepancies have been resolved, and this work is now being dealt with in conjunction with the school clusters and the pupils,» said Fernando Alexandre, at the end of the inauguration ceremony for the new president of the National Education Council (CNE).
Stressing that he wished to «recognise the impact this has had on each individual pupil», the minister reiterated that problems had been detected in 820 exam papers out of a total of more than 290,000.
«Each case is being dealt with individually, and I believe we are nearing a conclusion very quickly,» he added, saying «every student will be treated fairly».
Despite the problems, the timetable for the first phase of the National Higher Education Entrance Examination remains unchanged, with applications open until 6 August.
However, there will be a special examination session in September for students affected by the digitisation process.