The number of immigrant students in Portuguese primary and secondary school increased over 160 percent over the last five years, prompting the Ministry of Education to begin preparing a set of mechanisms to enable better integration for these children and adolescents.
Data from the 2024 Organisation for Economic and Co-operative Development (OECD) report Education at a Glance reveals that around 53,000 foreign students were enrolled in Portuguese schools for the 2018 to 2019 school year, accounting for 5.3 percent of students. By the 2023 to 2024 school year, that population had grown to 140,000. Immigrants now account for 13.9 percent of the student population.
“More than 30,000 foreign students enter our education system every year, and they are all over the country. This poses immense challenges for us,” explained Minister of Education, Science and Innovation (MECI), Fernando Alexandre at the presentation of the OECD report. He also said that schools would have tools “very soon” to meet the needs of this growing population of students.
[See more: There are now more than a million foreign residents in Portugal]
The influx of immigrant students is “one of the major challenges” facing educators in Portugal, Alexandre told reporters, although he was quick to highlight the benefits as well. Immigrants disrupted a downward trend in the number of students enrolled in Portugal, preventing the closure of many classrooms and schools across the country. Portugal, the minister stressed, has no future without immigration.
“The integration of immigrants is essential for the functioning of our economy, but above all for our society to remain cohesive,” he explained. “The integration of these people depends on education and begins with the children of these immigrants. If we fail in education, we will fail in our migration policy.”
Among the main challenges facing educators, particularly in areas like Lisbon or the Algarve where immigrants are a much higher percentage of the student population, is that 25 to 30 percent of them do not speak Portuguese.
This is a “good problem” to have, according to Alexandre. The education minister also highlighted an increase in international or foreign students in higher education, jumping from 4 percent in 2013 to 12 percent in 2022. While nearly all OECD countries saw gains during this period, Portuguese masters’ programmes saw bigger gains (from 5 to 15 percent) than the OECD average (from 10 to 15 percent).
