Portugal education minister orders school inquiry as opposition demands resignation over missing placements

Ministerial inquiry into enrolment refusals

Portuguese Minister of Education Fernando Alexandre ordered a formal investigation into state schools suspected of turning away prospective students despite having open spots. Speaking in Lisbon on the sidelines of the presentation of the PISA report, the minister addressed reports that hundreds of students throughout the country had not been allocated places at the start of the academic year. Alexandre stated that rejecting student enrolments when classroom capacity exists constitutes a very serious irregularity and confirmed that school directors will be required to provide explanations for any unjustified refusals.

If a school has the capacity to receive students and is not receiving them, we will investigate why. Obviously, the director will have to explain why they did that.

To handle the immediate backlog, the Agency for the Management of the Educational System stepped in to coordinate directly with school administrations across the country. The agency began placing some students administratively into schools with remaining room. However, the wider government inquiry continues to focus on why individual school leaders initially turned families away during regular enrolment procedures.

Parent legal challenge over admission delays

The government inquiry follows a decision by a group of parents to file a formal lawsuit against the Ministry of Education. Families organised the legal action after the new school year began without their children receiving assigned placements in mandatory public education. Several affected parents reported waiting weeks without receiving administrative responses or school assignments after seeking transfers into the state education system.

Nowadays it is harder to enter a public school than a university.

Rui Boavida, one of the parents pursuing court action, explained that he had submitted transfer applications for his twin sons into the ninth grade in late July. He noted that his family received no official reply before teaching began, leaving both children without school spots. Boavida stated that he is personally aware of more than ten other students in the same situation. These cases involve families seeking transfers from private institutions, including Colégio São José and Avé Maria, into the public school network for various reasons.

Opposition demands political accountability

The school placement controversy triggered political backlash from opposition lawmakers in Lisbon. On Sunday, 13 September 2026, Socialist Party parliamentary leader Eurico Brilhante Dias held a press conference at the party national headquarters to address the crisis in public education. Brilhante Dias argued that leaving hundreds of children without access to mandatory schooling was unacceptable in 2026 and accused the minister of evading accountability by redirecting blame onto school directors and teaching staff.

In 2026, it is scandalous that public education leaves hundreds of people out, hundreds of students without access to public education, which is mandatory.

Brilhante Dias stated that Fernando Alexandre is probably running to be the worst minister of education since 25 April 1974. He argued that the current placement dispute compounds previous operational failures, pointing specifically to recent difficulties with the grading of national exams and subsequent delays in publishing student classifications. The Socialist Party had already demanded political accountability during that earlier dispute, with party Secretary-General José Luís Carneiro stating that Alexandre would not remain in office if the Socialists led the government. The National Federation of Teachers (FENPROF) joined the criticism, asserting that the education ministry consistently attempts to transfer responsibility for administrative failures onto teachers rather than accepting political responsibility.