Students will have to pass three exams in order to complete their secondary education.

The national examinations for completion of secondary education will remain, but with a lower weight in the final classification of 25% and in a model of three examinations in which Portuguese is compulsory and the other two examinations are chosen by the students.

The changes were presented this Monday at a press conference at the Ministry of Education in Lisbon by Education Ministers Joao Costa and Science and Higher Education Ministers Elvira Fortunato.

Answering questions from reporters, Joao Costa and Elvira Fortunato dismissed any differences between ministries regarding the retention or completion of national examinations in secondary education, while the Minister of Education justified the option of continuing on the need to provide mechanisms to measure the “reliability and fairness of the system” and with “the need to continue to deepen the complementarity between internal and external evaluation in the sense that secondary education is valued as an end in itself and not just as a path to higher education.”

“There is no discrepancy, although sometimes people like to create series,” said Joao Costa, who would later also reject any decision made to abolish national exams, and that any claim to the contrary “is nothing more than a fantasy,” further stating. that “several scenarios were equated”.

Elvira Fortunato stressed “coordinated work” between the two ministries and left guarantees that the government does not want to “create any problems in access to higher education.”

For students enrolled in the 12th year this year, there are no changes in the rules for calculating final secondary education or in terms of access to higher education compared to what was in effect in the last two years, for reasons of “predictability.” , the Minister of Education explained, emphasizing that the rules applied during the pandemic continue to apply for these students.

Changes will begin to be felt next year. The new model envisages that 10th grade students this year from the next academic year will already be covered by a model of three compulsory exams, with the final test in Portuguese being compulsory for all secondary education courses, and students can choose two exams. in the subjects they have taken that may not necessarily be part of their academic curriculum, as part of the curriculum flexibility now allowed for students.

Only those entering the next school year in year 10 begin to fully apply the new model, which means that when calculating their final secondary education, the different subjects they attended will have different weights depending on whether they are whether they are subjects three, two or just one year in a student’s course.

Three-year subjects such as Portuguese or Mathematics will carry a higher weight in the final average than one-year or two-year subjects.

For João Costa, this revision was “the time to introduce and guarantee proportionality between the subjects of secondary education.”

In the new model, national exams no longer have a weight of 30% for the final grade in the studied subject, and now only have a weight of 25% in this weight.

With regard to access to higher education, the rules of which are being revised and will be presented on Friday, in Coimbra, according to Elvira Fortunato, in the calculation formula for admission to universities and polytechnics, national examinations indicating access will have a minimum weight of 45%.

And each institution will continue to decide on the number of examinations required for admission, which the Minister of Science and Higher Education says will be “at least two”, similar to what is already happening.

The minister declined to provide further details on the review to be presented at the end of the week, but stressed that “the review process has been circulated to all actors” in the field of higher education, having received from all their views, which have been taken into account. account to achieve the “best possible output”.