More and more students are passing the 9th-grade exams after a journey without failures

An increasing number of students are achieving positive results in the 9th-grade exams after completing their studies without failures. In 2024, nearly 200,000 exams were taken, showing improved average scores in Portuguese but not in Mathematics. Approximately 39,000 out of over 91,000 students who took the exams had positive evaluations after progressing without retention in previous years. This marks a rise from 36% in the previous year and 34% in 2022/2023. However, only 326 out of over a thousand schools achieved over 50% success in direct pathways, with 28 schools reaching a 90% approval rate. Conversely, 44 schools, mostly public, had less than 10% success, particularly in the Lisbon Metropolitan Area and Setúbal Peninsula, which face significant teacher shortages. Overall, there is a slight improvement in the percentage of students completing their education on time, except for the 2nd cycle, where it dropped to 95%.