Portugal authorizes €2.674 million for teachers who graded national exams, first payment since 2010

Government authorizes €2.674 million payment

The Portuguese government authorized on Friday, 14 August, a payment of €2,674,705 to teachers who graded this year's secondary school national exams across two phases. Minister of Education, Science and Innovation Fernando Alexandre signed the authorization, and schools can request funds from the Agency for the Management of the Education System (AGSE) starting the same day, with payments processed in teachers' August salaries. Whether the money reaches teachers in August depends on how quickly schools submit their requests.

The payment rates, set in a dispatch published at the end of July, are: €1 per item classified digitally, €10 per exam graded on paper for Geometria Descritiva and Desenho A, €12 per exam for reappraisal processes (up from €8 previously), and €18 per exam for complaint processes handled by specialist teachers (up from €16). This marks the first compensation for secondary school exam classifiers since 2010, resuming a practice abandoned 15 years ago.

Scale of the operation

In the first phase, more than 11,000 teachers were mobilized to classify over 290,000 exams. The second phase involved more than 4,500 teachers who graded approximately 82,500 exams. Across both phases, more than 2.5 million items were classified through the electronic platform, according to the Ministry's statement.

The government justified the payment by citing the "commitment, availability, professionalism and rigor" of teachers who worked under demanding deadlines and criteria set by the National Exam Jury (JNE). The Ministry noted that recognition is "even more fair this year" because the first phase was marked by "constraints and disruptions" linked to the generalization of electronic classification, which made the classifiers' work more difficult.

Unions and teachers' movements respond

The National Education Federation (FNE) welcomed the payment but called for a permanent remuneration regime for exam classifiers, sending a proposal to the Ministry to establish "clear, transparent and predictable rules" for compensating all tasks associated with external assessment. FNE argued that teachers should not reach exam season each year without knowing their remuneration conditions.

This payment is fair and recognizes the additional work carried out by thousands of teachers who, in a particularly demanding process, responded with professionalism, rigor and sense of responsibility.

Cristina Mota, spokesperson for the Missão Escola Pública movement, told TSF that the value is unjust.

It does not reflect in the slightest the work the teachers had.

She estimated that each classifier would receive between €200 and €300, noting that the amounts are subject to taxation and deductions, and that some items correspond to compositions in Portuguese. She said some teachers offered to return the €1 per item "if they had dignified working conditions," and emphasized that the classification work was additional to ongoing school duties such as class councils, exam secretariats, and timetable preparation.

José Feliciano Costa, one of the secretaries-general of the National Federation of Teachers (Fenprof), told TSF he filed a complaint with the Inspectorate General of Education, arguing that the values presented by the Ministry do not comply with the law. He noted that teachers worked on rest days and weekends during the classification process.