Students concentrating on a test in a sunlit classroom

News 18 July 2026

Portugal's exam results are out, but some students got 'suspended' instead of a grade

Portugal's 2026 national exam results were finally posted, but hundreds of papers show a suspended grade. The exams board and EduQA are due to explain the fix this Saturday.

Portugal’s national exam results are finally out — three days late and posted well into the night, with school directors waiting at their desks until closing time. And the ending came with a plot twist nobody had scheduled: instead of a grade, hundreds of papers appeared on the lists marked “suspended”.

What does a suspended grade mean in Portugal’s national exams?

It means the paper has missing items or unresolved marking problems, so no final grade could be issued. The education minister has acknowledged there are hundreds of exams with assorted failures — the direct legacy of a first-year digital marking system that stacked up platform outages, QR-code problems and papers marked three times over, as we covered when the results date was finally set.

What happens to students with no grade?

The official answer comes this Saturday: the National Exams Board and EduQA are due to explain the situation of students with suspended grades and present solutions, with the official exams calendar available on the Directorate-General for Education’s site. Meanwhile the confusion keeps adding chapters: ninth-year exam results never appeared on Friday at all, and the school directors’ association is pointing at an unfairness between schools that managed to post results and schools that couldn’t.

Relations between the ministry and the schools haven’t cooled either. The minister warned he will ask for explanations from directors who didn’t post their lists on Friday; directors reply they spent hours waiting for grades a broken system wouldn’t deliver. Amid the exchange, one concrete promise emerged: markers’ overtime will be paid.

For university applicants, the essential holds — the first admission phase is not compromised. But after weeks in which the exams fiasco dominated even the State of the Nation debate, the year of digital marking is ending the way it began: everyone staring at a platform, hoping it answers.

By Marta Carneiro

Illustrative · Photo: Kari Alfonso / Pexels

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