Has your child been given a place at a public school? If not, you are not alone — and there is already something you can do about it. A group of parents from Lisbon and the surrounding area is taking the Education Ministry to court: their children still have not been assigned places at public schools, even though classes are already underway. Other families can join the lawsuit.
Rui Boavida has been waiting since late July for an answer to his application to transfer his twins into Year 9. On Portal das Matrículas, the government’s school enrollment portal, both children still have the status “Não Colocado” — not placed. “These days, getting into a public school is harder than getting into university,” he says. According to Boavida, there are more than a dozen families in the same situation. Some children had previously attended private schools, but their parents decided to move them to the public system — and now they are sitting at home “without textbooks, without a school, without a teacher.” Some parents have sent their children back to private schools while they wait, but not everyone can afford that.
The parents have been unable to get through to the ministry. The relevant services do not receive members of the public, and their emails and phone calls go unanswered.
Schools say the problem is linked to a reform. Over the summer, the government abolished DGEstE, the General Directorate for School Administration, which was responsible for assigning students to schools, and transferred its functions to a new agency, AGSE. Teachers who worked at DGEstE and knew the entire school network were sent back to their schools, leaving only permanent administrative staff behind — and there may simply not be enough of them.
Patrícia Gramaxo, from the Restelo school cluster, says schools can now process enrollments themselves, but they cannot see where places are available. The usual meeting of schools in the municipality, where students are reassigned based on where they live, has also not taken place this year. When asked who is now responsible for managing Lisbon’s school network, Luísa Gomes, who previously handled it at DGEstE, simply replied: “I don’t know.”
The parents decided not to wait and formed a group called “Não Somos Bonecos” (“We Are Not Puppets”), which is preparing the lawsuit. “We want to make sure this never happens to another child. The state must be accountable for how it treats children and families,” Boavida says.
If your child is also still listed as “Não Colocado,” trying to get an answer from the ministry on your own may be pointless — there is simply no one there answering. A collective lawsuit is a different matter: the more families join, the harder it is to ignore.
Anyone in the same situation can join, regardless of citizenship or language: naosomosbonecos@gmail.com. Write to them — and to us too. We will be following this story.
We’re not exactly puppets either.
