Starting in 2017, any students embarking on a Basic Education course – which would entitle them to become teachers further down the line – must pass both their Portuguese and Maths courses.
Up until now, passes in either one of the subjects has allowed students to go through, but this has resulted in the situation of teachers teaching “essential subjects like Maths even though they may have failed it at ninth grade, or stopped studying it altogether in high school”.
Explaining the motivation behind the new move, the Ministry of Education said that it is trying to “prepare the new generation of educators and teachers in the best way possible”.
Although the new measure has already been announced in the government’s official newspaper Diário da República, it will only be enforced in the 2017/2018 school year.
The announcement comes only a couple months after thousands of teachers all across the country expressed their indignation following a controversial exam introduced by the government to test the knowledge of educators with less than five years experience teaching.
