Portugal’s national exam review requests double to 15,000 after digital grading overhaul

Review requests surge

More than 15,000 students have asked for their national exam papers to be re-evaluated after the first phase of this year’s secondary school assessments, the education minister, Fernando Alexandre, said on Monday. The figure already surpasses the 6,200 review requests recorded during the whole of the 2025 first phase and may still climb because the window for appeals remains open for pupils who gained late access to their scripts. The spike follows what the minister described as a major change in the marking method, which now involves multiple graders each scoring separate parts of a given paper.

Last year we had practically no marks between 9 and 9.5 because a single teacher corrected the entire exam. Now, because we sum the different answers that make up the exam and each grader sees only their part, without an overall view of the paper, the result is a more objective assessment.

That objectivity has produced a considerable number of scores just shy of the 9.5 threshold needed to proceed to higher education. According to the minister, roughly 2,400 scripts carry a mark of 9.4, and across the 290,000 papers sat, 20,000 have grades that end in the four decimal places below a pass. Students within a fraction of the cut-off are the main drivers of the record appeal volume.

Unresolved grades and discrepancies

Alexandre acknowledged that the first phase did not go entirely smoothly. As of Sunday evening, 170 candidates still had no final grade, and 825 scripts had been flagged for inconsistencies. He said those 825 cases had already been reviewed and that the number requiring correction was small. The ministry intends to process all review requests rapidly so that applicants can still use their results in the first round of university admissions.

The system has the mechanisms to carry out this verification, which is precisely through the re-evaluation. So it is not surprising that this year, with this system, we have more review requests.

Special exam session opens

Registration for an exceptional exam session opened on 27 July and runs until 31 July. The session was announced one week ago as a compensation for the delays in the digital grading of the national exams. Pupils who received their marks late, or who otherwise would have been eligible for the second phase, can sit the extra tests between 3 and 8 September. If they choose to repeat an exam, the better of the two marks (second phase or special session) will count.

Public confidence shaken

A poll by Aximage for Diário de Notícias, conducted on 20 and 21 July among 501 respondents, showed that 31 percent consider the education ministry’s capacity to organise the next exam phases as bad and 23 percent as very bad. Only 4 percent rated it as very good and 12 percent as good. Asked about blame for the delays and failures, 76 percent of participants pointed to the minister, the prime minister or the government, while teachers and unions together were blamed by 12 percent.

Polls? There are many polls. What I feel is that we had 290,000 scripts, students received the pdf and checked their mark. As I said just now, 825 scripts out of 290,000 will have an inconsistency that will be corrected. I think that is the measure of trust.

The minister added that the vast majority of pupils recognised their paper and considered the grade adequate, and that when they did not they could request a review. That, he argued, was the basis of the trust being built.