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Almost 150,000 secondary school students are registered to take the first stage of the exams, in most cases so that they can then apply for higher education, according to data released this Monday by the Ministry of Education. 150,000 secondary school students are registered to take the first stage of the exams, in most cases so that they can then apply for higher education, according to data released this Monday by the Ministry of Education. About 21% intend to use the exam to improve their internal classification, with 6% still needing the grade to pass the subject. Of the 66,201 boys and 83,485 girls enrolled, the overwhelming majority are in scientific-humanistic courses (86%). They are mainly science and technology students, with 66,740 enrolled (46%), in addition to 31,895 language and humanities students, 16,886 socio-economic sciences and 7,878 visual arts students. As in previous years, Biology and Geology (44,145), Portuguese (42,451), Physics and Chemistry A (39,703) and Mathematics A (39,683) are the most competitive tests.
Portuguese and Mathematics A are the most used tests for applying to higher education, with 40,906 and 38,799 enrolled, respectively, for this purpose, while Biology and Geology and Physics and Chemistry A are the ones with the highest number of students enrolled for grade improvement , with 12,964 and 9,610 registrations, respectively, for this purpose.
The History A test, which, until the pandemic, was mandatory for language and humanities students, has only 9,270 students enrolled. The Italian tests have the fewest students enrolled (four), followed by Latin A (seven) and Portuguese as a non-native language (12).
In addition to students from scientific-humanistic courses, there are also 8% of those enrolled from professional courses. Specialized artistic courses, recurrent teaching and tests for equivalence represent, in each case, 1% of enrollments.
The first phase of secondary education exams starts on June 19, with the Portuguese test, at 9:30 am. The last test is on July 3rd, with História B.
This year, the exceptional rules implemented during the covid-19 pandemic are still in place, which exempt students from the obligation to take an exam to complete secondary education.
From next year, the new rules for the completion of secondary education will begin to be progressively applied, which return to the obligation of national exams, but with a lower weight in the final average and, with the exception of Portuguese, students can choose the two disciplines in which they take the test.
At that time, 11th grade students will already be able to choose the exams to take, with an impact on the final classification (become worth 25%) and only after that will the changes in the external assessment begin to cover all secondary school students.