Exam appeals more than double as confidence in Education Ministry collapses – Portugal Resident

Requests for Portugal’s national secondary-school examinations to be reassessed have more than doubled this year, adding further pressure to an Education Ministry already facing widespread criticism over its troubled new digital marking system.

Around 15,000 requests for reappraisal have been submitted so far, compared with 6,200 during the entire first phase of last year’s examinations, Education Minister Fernando Alexandre has admitted.

The number could rise further, as some pupils received their papers late and are still within the period allowed for requesting a reassessment.

As of Sunday night, 170 pupils had yet to receive their final first-phase marks. Once notified, they will have two working days in which to lodge an appeal.

Alexandre said the sharp increase is a predictable consequence of the new marking method, under which individual answers within the same paper are assessed digitally by different teachers.

Because each marker sees only part of the examination, rather than the pupil’s complete performance, final marks are produced by combining the scores awarded to individual answers.

The minister argues that this produces a more objective result, but it has also generated an unusually large cluster of marks just below the 9.5 points required to pass on Portugal’s 20-point scale.

Some 2,400 examinations received a mark of precisely 9.4 — leaving pupils one-tenth of a point short of passing.

“Faced with that mark, it is natural that pupils request a reappraisal,” Alexandre said during a visit to Figueira da Foz. “They are, in fact, one-tenth away from passing.”

Around 20,000 of the 290,000 examinations marked this year produced scores within four-tenths of the pass threshold, he said.

The minister promised that the 15,000 requests would be examined quickly under the normal reappraisal procedures.

This year was the first in which almost 300,000 national secondary-school examinations were marked digitally. The change was beset by technical and administrative failures, including illegible scans, missing pages, papers attributed to the wrong pupils and difficulties accessing results. In some cases, whole exams were reportedly misplaced altogether.

The publication of first-phase marks was postponed until July 17, but results were not displayed at schools until that evening – and some pupils were forced to wait several more days.

Second-phase examinations were also delayed, eventually taking place between July 21 and 24.

The ministry has identified 825 papers with discrepancies requiring correction. Alexandre cited that number as evidence that the overwhelming majority of the 290,000 examinations were processed correctly.

His assurances have done little to restore public confidence, however. According to a new DN/Aximage opinion poll, more than half of those questioned rated the ministry’s ability to organise the remaining stages of the national examinations as “poor” or “very poor”. Of the 501 respondents interviewed on July 20 and 21, 31% described the ministry’s capacity as poor and 23% as very poor.

Only 4% believed the ministry was very well equipped to manage the process, while a further 12% rated its ability as good.

Asked who bore responsibility for the failures and delays, 76% blamed the education minister, Prime Minister Luís Montenegro and/ or the government. Teachers and unions were held responsible by 12%.

Confronted with the findings, Alexandre dismissed their significance.

“There are many polls,” he told journalists, insisting that confidence should instead be measured by the proportion of pupils who had received the correct examination and accepted its classification.

“When the vast majority of pupils receive their paper, recognise that it is theirs and see that the mark is appropriate — and, if it is not, request a reappraisal — that is the basis of the confidence we are building,” he said.

The government has maintained the timetable for first-round university applications, which closes on August 6, despite the disruption.

Registration has meanwhile opened for an exceptional examination period from September 3 to 8, introduced to compensate for delays caused by the digital marking problems.

The September examinations will be open to all pupils who were eligible for the second phase, whether or not they sat those papers. Registration closes on Friday.

Alexandre continues to insist that no pupil will be disadvantaged. With 15,000 reappraisal requests awaiting attention, 825 known discrepancies and some pupils still waiting for final first-phase results, that assurance has yet to be fully tested.

Source: Observador/ LUSA/