The Government guarantees that it did not receive any technical alert recommending stopping the digital marking of exams in 2026, despite the problems recorded in the system implementation. The Ministry of Education, Science and Innovation explains that "aspects for improvement" were identified, but no alert of infeasibility of the solution. The technical information transmitted to the ministry did not point to the infeasibility of electronic grading and the implementation in the national Philosophy exam, in 2025, was considered "globally positive".
However, the Ministry admits that the initial implementation revealed "operational and technological constraints". Among the problems identified are failures in the integrity of digitized files, with missing pages, incorrect association of sheets to exams, errors in the identification of exam versions, failures in reading multiple choice answers and parameterization errors with impact on the calculation of grades. These weaknesses disrupted the assessment process, generated "anxiety and uncertainty" among students and families and affected the functioning of schools and the working conditions of marking teachers.
Following these problems, the Ministry requested the National Education Council to conduct an "in-depth, independent, comprehensive and participatory" evaluation of the external assessment model. The CNE may establish a specialized committee to conduct this evaluation, with a plural composition representative of the different parts of the educational system. The Government guarantees that it will have no intervention in defining the methodology nor in formulating the conclusions, and the final report should be submitted to the Government and the Assembly of the Republic by December 31, 2026.
The evaluation comes after the PS sent questions to the Government about the decision to proceed with digital marking, admitting to proceeding with a parliamentary inquiry committee. The Ministry states that the second phase proceeded without constraints, with error reports on the platform dropping from 90,479 to 5,110 and PDF non-conformity reports from 870 to just 5. An extraordinary exam season was created and 21,013 grades were affected by parameterization corrections, with 87.7% of those corrections resulting in grade increases.
