Private Schools Fill the Top of Portugal's 2025 Exam Rankings and the Best Public School Comes 38th: How to Check Your Child's School on the Ministry's Own Data
Media rankings of the 2025 national exams put private schools on top again and the best public school 38th, while public schools improved. Each outlet uses its own rules; here is what the tables show and how to check any school on the Ministry's InfoEscolas portal.
Portugal's annual school rankings, built by the media from the Ministry of Education's results for the national exams sat in summer 2025, came out on 30 October. Private schools fill the top again, public schools improved, and the North leads. But there is no single official league table: each outlet sets its own rules, so the same school can sit in different places in different lists.
What the 2025 tables show
The news agency Lusa ranked about 570 schools (479 public and 91 private) that held more than 100 exams across 16 subjects. On its count, as published by Notícias ao Minuto, the Grande Colégio Universal in Porto leads for a second year with an average of 16.93 out of 20. The best public school, the Conservatório de Música do Porto (an arts school), comes 38th with 14.01; last year's best public school was 33rd.
Observador's ranking, built with Nova SBE business school, uses different rules: 10 subjects and any school with at least 20 exams, 618 schools in all. It also puts Universal first, with 16.81. Observador reports that the exam average rose in 397 schools (64.2 percent) and that schools averaging below a pass fell from 31 to 25. Portuguese, compulsory for every student from 2025, improved in most schools; Maths A fell in about four in five.
Lusa found that 61.9 percent of the 223 schools above the national average are in the North, while 61.7 percent of the 60 public schools averaging below 10 are in the Lisbon and Setúbal districts. A separate Lusa count of top marks, reported by RTP, concerns the grades schools give their own pupils, not exam grades: the Secundária Alves Martins in Viseu gave the most 20s (713), and the next places all went to schools on the northern coast.
Why a raw average is not the whole story
The lowest public school in Lusa's table, the Secundária da Baixa da Banheira in Moita, averaged 7.09. Most of its pupils receive school social support, it is in the TEIP programme (Territórios Educativos de Intervenção Prioritária, for disadvantaged areas), and it sits in a zone officially classed as short of teachers. Lusa notes three other bottom-ten schools share that teacher-shortage context.
The Ministry's own measure is the percurso direto de sucesso ("direct path to success"): a pupil who finishes secondary school in three years and passes the final exams. Observador's equity table compares how many pupils on school social support achieve it against the national rate for pupils with a similar profile. On that measure, 148 schools fell below the comparable national rate, up from 139 a year earlier.
How to look up your own school
The official source is InfoEscolas, run by the DGEEC, the Ministry's statistics directorate. Search by district, municipality or school name, public or private. For each school it shows the share of pupils finishing in three years set against the national rate for pupils with a similar background (age, social support, mother's education), retention rates, and whether the school's internal grades line up with the exam results of comparable pupils. The exam figures come from the Júri Nacional de Exames, the national exams board. The technical note explains each indicator.
InfoEscolas runs a year behind the media tables: its school pages currently cover 2023/24. The full data can be downloaded as spreadsheets. For help with school costs, see our guide to school social support (Ação Social Escolar); on the teacher gap, see the Ministry's draft to fill empty primary classes.
