380 Pupils Enrolled in Portugal's Schools in the First Week of October, 73 Percent of Them Foreign, and the Minister Says Nobody Is Failing

Schools in Portugal received 380 new enrolment requests in the first week of October, and 73 percent of them were for pupils of foreign nationality, Education Minister Fernando Alexandre told parliament on Tuesday 6 October. Almost a month into the school year, he said, requests still arrive every day. "Nobody is failing. This is the dynamic of the system," he told MPs.

The minister was speaking at a hearing of the Comissão de Educação e Ciência (Education and Science Committee), held at the request of the Partido Socialista (Socialist Party, PS) on the shortage of school places. His remarks were reported by the Lusa news agency in copy carried by ECO, Observador and RTP. We found no statement on the hearing from the ministry or from parliament itself.

The enrolment figures

"We are in the first week of October and 380 pupils have enrolled, 73 percent of them of foreign nationality," Mr Alexandre said, replying to Socialist MP Miguel Cabrita.

He said cases are being looked at "case by case" and that, as in previous years, many of the pupils enrolled are not yet in Portugal. "In many cases, if they are placed, they then do not take up any place," he said.

The minister said the only change this year was the end of the network-coordination meetings run by the former Direção-Geral dos Estabelecimentos Escolares (Directorate-General for School Establishments, DGEstE), whose work has passed to the new Agência para a Gestão do Sistema Educativo (Agency for the Management of the Education System, AGSE). Those meetings decided how many classes each school could open across each municipality, even where a school had room for more. This year head teachers may instead accept as many pupils as they have capacity for. "We are allowing a larger number of pupils to be placed at the school where they want to be," he said, adding that the change has nothing to do with pupils left without a place.

On 24 September he had told MPs that 52 pupils were still waiting for a place.

Unfilled timetables: two figures, two measures

Two figures were also reported on Tuesday for horários (teaching timetables) without a teacher. They measure different things, and both refer to Friday 2 October:

• 1,301 timetables unfilled in total, according to Público. Of these, 633 were full-year, full-time timetables, and 40 percent of those were in Greater Lisbon and on the Setúbal Peninsula.
• 563 timetables unfilled since 4 September, the figure carried by Lusa and the one in Público's headline. The minister said 55 percent of these sit in the teacher-placement zones of the Lisbon Metropolitan Area and the Setúbal Peninsula. "It is a small number," he said, but the problem is that more than half are in those two areas.

The minister said the new continuous recruitment competition is placing about 200 teachers a day, but admitted it does not fill every need. A week earlier he had put the number of unfilled timetables at 664, as we reported.

What the opposition and unions say

When the PS asked for the hearing on 21 September, Mr Cabrita said the government was trying to present the situation as "normal and acceptable". It is normal every year for some families to enrol late, he said, but "this year there was no preparation of these processes nor any follow-up", because the ministry's structures had been "dismantled".

On Tuesday the Federação Nacional dos Professores (National Teachers' Federation, FENPROF) told Público that 197 timetables still had no teacher assigned, 92 of them in the placement zone that covers Lisbon, Sintra, Cascais, Oeiras, Amadora, Loures, Odivelas and Vila Franca de Xira. The Bloco de Esquerda (Left Bloc, BE) has questioned the government about three school clusters in Marvila, in Lisbon, where 14 primary teachers were missing and more than 300 pupils were affected, according to a count by the parish council.

For families arriving now

A child who arrives mid-year can still enrol. Official texts say:

• Enrolment outside the windows. Under the 2026/2027 enrolment calendar (Despacho n.º 4472-A/2026), a pupil with schooling from a foreign school may enrol in basic or secondary education outside the set periods, and acceptance depends only on there being room in a class that already exists.
• Records from abroad. The Direção-Geral da Educação (Directorate-General for Education, DGE) says equivalence of foreign schooling can be requested at any time of year, and should be requested when you enrol. The child is enrolled conditionally while it is processed. The reference time is 30 days once all documents are in.
• A year lower. The DGE says families can ask for a child to be placed one year below the level the equivalence gives, within the same cycle, if integration is difficult. The head teacher decides.
• Portuguese lessons. Pupils new to the system may take Português Língua Não Materna (Portuguese as a Non-Native Language, PLNM), according to their level. The DGE notes that Brazilian pupils, whose mother tongue is Portuguese, are not placed in PLNM.

Our guide to enrolling your child in a Portuguese public school sets out the documents and the Portal das Matrículas process step by step. Because acceptance depends on a free place in an existing class, ask the school cluster near your home which schools have room.