Portuguese education minister grilled over exam grading crisis, calls most reports false

Minister faces parliament amid grading chaos

Fernando Alexandre spent the morning of 1 July 2026 before the parliamentary education committee, fielding questions about the troubled rollout of digital correction for this year's national secondary exams. The minister acknowledged that technical problems, chiefly a malfunction linked to the QR code and software errors, had disrupted the availability of answer items for teachers to mark, but he maintained that logistical distribution and scanning of the over 300 000 exam scripts at the Sintra centre proceeded without major incident.

"The calendar will never override the rigour, transparency and equity of evaluation. No student will be harmed. I can guarantee that," Alexandre told lawmakers. He revealed that the Ministry of Education had considered switching back to paper-based correction and put the option on the table, but the EduQA agency and the National Exams Jury assured him that digital marking could still be completed within the existing timetable. For now, the grading deadline remains 10 July, with results scheduled for release to students on 14 July.

Teachers' reports and MetaPROF verification

Since the first days after the exam period (16 – 26 June), teachers' platforms and unions have flooded social media with complaints: markers receiving items from subjects they do not teach, answer sheets that are cut off or mix responses from different candidates, blank screens after login, and even deceased educators being summoned as graders. The MetaPROF platform, which has served as a public repository for these testimonials, issued a statement after the hearing directly rejecting the minister's characterisation.

“It is inadmissible that the minister tries to shift the blame … to divert focus from who should be providing answers. Not a single testimony is published without moderation. Each report is reviewed by MetaPROF teachers, may include annexed documentary evidence, and the author always leaves a verified contact.”

The paper correction option and deadline pressure

Alexandre confirmed that the government floated a return to paper marking as a fallback, but EduQA's repeated assurances that the platform would hold persuaded the ministry to stay the course. Cristina Mota of the Movimento Escola Pública argued in a radio forum that conditions for digital correction are still missing and warned that many markers had not even received their summons, making the statutory ten working days impossible to meet.

“We have information that the majority of markers have not even received their summons … if we count from today until 10 July, we do not have ten working days.”

The minister responded that the schedule would not be sacrificed for speed and that EduQA's confidence, relayed in a meeting late on Tuesday evening, gave no reason to doubt.

Political reactions and blame game

The hearing sharpened when the opposition Socialist Party (PS) pressed the minister on the genesis of the digital project. Alexandre countered that the digitalisation programme was inherited from the previous António Costa government, which had aimed to move exams entirely online but never launched the process. Filinto Lima, president of the school directors' association ANDAEP, welcomed that the minister no longer blamed schools for the delays but challenged him to "deal with the software, the platform and digitalisation." Lima also predicted an "exponential" rise in requests for remarking once results are released.

Student impact and next steps

Alexandre stressed that "no pupil will ever be prejudiced by any evaluation process." The ministry will wait to see whether the current difficulties affect the fairness of marking before making any date adjustment. Once the grading cycle ends, the minister pledged a full audit to identify what went wrong, with particular focus on the QR code and software failures. For now, the digital classification continues, under the watch of daily meetings between the ministry, EduQA, and the National Exams Jury.