Students in Portugal will only take the national exams needed to enter higher education. The rules for access to universities and polytechnics and for entrance exams will be the same as last year. The National Commission for Access to Higher Education (CNAES) recommended “the maintenance of all provisions” of 2020/21.
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For the next school year, the rules for access to universities and polytechnics and for entrance exams will be the same as last year. The National Commission for Access to Higher Education (CNAES) recommended “the maintenance of all provisions” of 2020/21, something the Government agrees with. The final decision rests with the Government and should be taken at the next Council of Ministers, scheduled for Thursday.
In a note published this Tuesday and cited by Público , CNAES classifies as "positive" the experience of entering higher education in the last academic year "in an identical pandemic scenario" and, therefore, defends that the rules are the same, both in the national competition for access to higher education, through which more students enter universities and polytechnics, and in local public education competitions and institutional competitions, in private higher education.
Secondary school students only have to take the exams that the courses they want to take as a “specific test” and whose weight varies between 35% and 50%. For the rest, there are no changes in the formula for calculating the access average, which takes into account these entrance exams and the final grade of secondary education. Maintaining these rules, defends the CNAES, is the way to “guarantee the stability of the system of access to higher education”, avoiding more changes than necessary due to the impacts of the pandemic on this academic year's calendar.
There is the possibility of grade improvement, but only for specific subjects. In other words, students who want to increase their average entry into higher education cannot take national exams to raise the internal classification of secondary education, just like last year.
The schedule for access to higher education will also be very similar to last year. Secondary national exams take place in the first half of July (1st phase) and in the first week of September (2nd phase). The dates for the national competition for access to higher education will also be adjusted. The deadline for submitting applications for the 1st phase will extend throughout most of the month of August and the results will be announced at the end of September . The 2nd phase of the competition for access to universities and polytechnics takes place again between the end of September and the first week of October.
The president of the Institute for Educational Assessment (Iave) acknowledged that the model used in national exams for secondary education in the last school year contributed to “too high” grades being given. In this way, this year's tests will keep the same solution (with optional groups of questions), but, to avoid a similar situation, the degree of difficulty of the questions will be changed.
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