Families who cannot find a place for their children in a public school in Lisbon go to court: "The children are left at home"

As the new school year began in Portugal, in addition to the teacher shortage, another problem emerged: some students still could not find a place in a public school.

Some families, especially in the Lisbon region, who want to transfer their children from private school to public school, say that they remain in the status of "Não Colocado", meaning "not placed", in the Portal das Matrículas system, even though classes have started.

A group of parents are preparing to apply to court against the Ministry of Education.

Class started but there is still no school

Rui Boavida, one of the families Lusa interviewed, said that he wanted to transfer his two twin children to a public school for the 9th grade, but he could not get any results since the end of July.

As of September 11, both students still had the phrase “Não Colocado” on their Portal das Matrículas registration screen.

Boavida says he knows of at least more than 10 students in a similar situation.

Some students were temporarily re-enrolled in private school.

However, according to families, children who do not have the opportunity to pay private school fees stay at home and wait for school quotas.

Second complaint of parents: We cannot reach anyone

The problem is not just lack of quota.

Parents say that they cannot receive an answer from the relevant units of the Ministry of Education.

The duties of the former Direção-Geral dos Estabelecimentos Escolares (DGEstE) were transferred to the newly established Agência para a Gestão do Sistema Educativo (AGSE) structure.

Families are in the new system:

face to face They could not find a unit they could apply to,

They have difficulty reaching phones,

They couldn't get answers to e-mails

states.

Did the closure of DGEstE cause transition problems?

The statements of school administrators and former DGEstE employees are remarkable.

In the previous system, officials who could see the quota status of all schools in the region helped administratively place students who could not be resolved in individual schools to other schools.

After the closure of DGEstE, some teachers who held this position returned to their schools.

Schools in Lisbon can see whether there are vacancies within their own structure, but they cannot manage the quota network throughout the city in the same way.

This shows that the problem may be more complex than just “there are no places in schools”.

Normally, coordination was done between schools.

According to Patrícia Gramaxo, a teacher from Agrupamento de Escolas do Restelo, at this time of the year, coordination meetings were held between school groups within the municipality to determine quotas and redistribute students according to their residential addresses.

However, he states that this year the mechanism in question has not yet worked in the same way.

There are limits to what schools can do on their own.

If there is no place in a school, the administration does not have the opportunity to send the student to another agrupamento on its own authority.

The group “Não Somos Bonecos” was founded

Parents affected by the problem formed a group called “Não Somos Bonecos”.

The group not only wants their children to be placed, but also to ensure accountability in the system and to prevent the same situation from recurring in the coming years.

For this purpose, parents are preparing to initiate legal proceedings against the Ministry of Education.

This does not mean that there are no public schools left in all of Portugal.

It is necessary to make an important distinction here.

Current news is based on specific families and transfer requests, especially in the Lisbon area.

This does not mean that all students or all new enrollments across Portugal face the same problem.

However, in regions such as Lisbon, where population and housing pressure is intense, the simultaneous occurrence of school capacity, teacher shortages and administrative restructuring makes the system more fragile.

Teacher shortage continues

The problem of students waiting for places in public schools arose at a time when Portugal was already starting the new academic year with a shortage of teachers.

At the beginning of September, more than 2,000 teaching syllabi were still waiting to be filled, and the shortage was particularly concentrated in Greater Lisbon and Setúbal.

Thus, for some families, two separate problems overlap:

First, finding a place at the school, then waiting for teachers to be assigned to all the student's classes.

What should families do?

whose child still appears as “Não Colocado” It is important for families to keep their application status and all correspondence on the registration screen.

Direct communication with the relevant agrupamento and keeping a written record of applications made to AGSE may also be useful in terms of possible administrative or legal objections.

Since no single solution can be applied to all families on this issue, the student's residence address, grade level, application date and preferred schools are important in the evaluation.

Resources

Renascença / Lusa — 11 September 2026 — “Pais processam Ministério da Educação por falta de vaga na escola pública”

https://rr.pt/noticia/pais/2026/09/11/pais-processam-ministerio-da-educacao-por-falta-de-vaga-na-escola-publica/485135/

Renascença — September 11, 2026 — New academic year and teacher shortage in Portugal

https://rr.pt/noticia/pais/2026/09/11/ano-letivo-ensombrado-por-falta-de-professores-e-assistentes/485041/