Education System in Portugal

As with many other countries worldwide there are two choices for the expatriate parent when considering their child’s schooling and the education system in Portugal.  Firstly you have the state run education system and secondly you have a wide variety of private alternatives.

A lot will depend on the location you choose to move to and the catchment area you find yourself in and the reputation of the schools in that catchment area.  In recent years the Portuguese education system has received serious criticism and the Government are now addressing some of the more pressing problems affecting schooling.

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development conducted a survey of schooling across 30 countries last year and its findings proved so embarrassing for Portugal that the Portuguese government can no longer ignore the situation.  Not only has their massive under funding resulted in high drop out rates for students but it has also resulted in serious under recruitment of teachers.

Teachers in Portugal are under paid and over worked, most schools don’t have sufficient resources to manage the number of pupils they have on their books.  Despite the fact that schooling is compulsory for all pupils up to the age of 16, the high drop out rate is resulting in poor literacy and numeracy standards across the country, particularly in some of the more rural and less economically developed areas of the country.

The report by the OECD revealed that pupils in the state education scheme in Portugal spend fewer hours physically at school being taught than their peers in the other countries surveyed, and they spend fewer years in the state education system as well.  All this means that Portugal’s youth are currently badly positioned to compete in the global jobs marketplace as few if any of them have the technological experience of computers and the internet for example, and few have an international language like English under their belt either.

There is encouraging news on one level however; of those pupils who remain in school up to the age of 18 many then go on to university and out of these students a very high percentage will achieve at least a university degree.

Expatriate parents moving to Portugal might like to consider some of the private school alternatives available, or the international schools that teach through the medium of English for example.  There are private alternatives available for children from nursery level right through to secondary school level.

Don’t be totally put off the state system altogether however, for a start the quality of schools varies incredibly with some of the best schools located in the richer economic areas particularly in the Algarve region.  Some of the schools there are far better than what you can find in the UK or Germany.  Furthermore, the Portuguese government have been sufficiently embarrassed by the findings of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development report and are now investing intensely into the entire education system in Portugal.