Portugal's school-safety operation restarted today. Last year it logged 2,631 crimes on school grounds
The GNR's Safe School programme covers more than 4,400 schools and around 670,000 pupils, and the PSP has been out since 7 September. Simple assault was the most common offence, with 950 cases.
The GNR launched its Safe School programme for 2026/2027 today, an operation covering more than 4,400 schools and roughly 670,000 pupils across the territory the force polices. The PSP did not wait for today, stepping up its presence around schools and on home-to-school routes from 7 September.
The figure that puts the rest in context sits in the same statement. Over the last school year, the GNR recorded 2,631 crimes in school settings.
What actually happens inside schools
The biggest slice is petty and grim in equal measure: 950 cases of simple voluntary assault. Then 388 for threats and coercion, 137 opportunistic thefts of unattended belongings, and 118 for defamation, slander and libel.
Then comes the category nobody wants to read and which exists anyway. Other crimes against sexual freedom and self-determination, 61 cases. Mistreatment or overburdening of minors, 45. Possession or trafficking of prohibited weapons, another 45. Drug trafficking, 44. Sexual abuse of dependent or vulnerable children and adolescents, 20. Breach of trust, 18.
On top of that sit 748 incidents that never become crimes but occupy the same officers: 374 disruptions of school activity, 230 school dropout situations, and 84 involving addictive behaviour.
The part you see on the road
In 2025/2026 the force ran 17,276 awareness sessions, reaching 790,073 people across the school community — pupils, teachers, operational assistants and guardians. That is where the programme explains itself better than any patrol car does.
This year there is an extra warning aimed squarely at traffic. The school run brings back the jam outside every gate, and the GNR says it will lean hard on the safety of child transport, with attention to seat belts and child restraint systems. It is the kind of enforcement that annoys in the moment and makes more sense next to the road-casualty numbers.
The political calendar has the subject booked too. The start of the school year goes to a parliamentary debate on 23 September, at the Communists’ request, in the same session that will pick over the exam process that went wrong — the one where remarking raised the grade in 76% of requests.
Image: GualdimG / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
