The Minister for Education, Science and Innovation, Fernando Alexandre, acknowledged today that the closure of the Aljezur International School, which took place last week, “took far too long to be implemented, unfortunately.”
Speaking to journalists at Avelar Brotero Secondary School in Coimbra, where he accompanied the Governor of the Bank of Portugal for an initiative marking World Savings Day, the minister addressed the controversy surrounding the private school in Aljezur.
According to Fernando Alexandre, the school “did not meet the required standards in terms of facilities and lacked official recognition for its international curriculum. The State’s duty,” he stressed, “is to ensure compulsory education and that schools comply with the necessary conditions.”
The minister expressed his hope that students would not be penalised by the management’s failure to comply promptly with the closure order, and assured that no other schools of this type are currently at risk of shutting down.
However, José Gonçalves, Mayor of Aljezur, voiced concern over the future of the 85 pupils who attended the institution. Speaking to press, the mayor admitted he had been “caught by surprise.”
“This situation is worrying for everyone, for the municipality, which loses an educational option, and for the pupils and families, who lose an important structure and will now have to travel to other areas,” said the mayor.
In a written statement sent out to journalists the Ministry of Education, Science and Innovation (MECI) clarified that the Aljezur International School was closed because it did not hold “any authorisation to operate, either provisional or definitive, and was therefore not recognised by the Ministry.”
The ministry recalled that the school was “forcibly closed” last Friday, 24 October, in a joint operation involving the Inspectorate-General for Education and Science (IGEC), the Directorate-General for Schools (DGEstE), and the National Republican Guard (GNR).
According to the ministry, the school had been refusing to comply with administrative closure orders since 2022, despite several official directives being issued to that effect.
Founded in 2010, the Aljezur International School began life in temporary classrooms, shipping containers placed on farmland provided by the local council. “We were granted a provisional operating licence, effective from 1 September 2010,” recalls headteacher Sílvia Catarino. “That licence had to be renewed annually for up to three years. We received two more temporary permits and, in 2013, moved into our current premises. On 24 February 2014, we submitted all the documentation and applied for a permanent licence. On 15 April, two inspectors from the Algarve’s regional education authority visited the school and recommended that we be granted permanent authorisation. The only note they left was that we hadn’t yet submitted the list of students for 2014/2015, which was absurd, as it was April and we didn’t yet know who would be enrolling the following year.”
For five years, Aljezur International operated without incident, maintaining a close relationship with the regional education authorities. Pupils participated in official sports programmes and received government-issued dental vouchers, both benefits reserved for fully authorised schools.
“During the pandemic, our teachers were even given priority testing, like staff in other schools,” Catarino notes. “We had every reason to believe our status was legitimate. We weren’t some makeshift school pretending to be something we weren’t. Our parents are very demanding and deeply involved in school life.”
The first signs of trouble came in 2019. “One of the parents tried to transfer her daughter online and found our school listed as a ‘study centre’ rather than a school,” Catarino recalls. “There had been no official communication, I thought it must have been a computer error.”
After requesting an emergency meeting with the regional education services, the school was told that its case had been “suspended” and that it would have to start the entire authorisation process from scratch.
According to Catarino, officials cited new building regulations requiring classrooms with higher ceilings. “They told us our rooms needed to be 15 centimetres taller,” she says in disbelief.
Parents were outraged. “You can’t close a school because of 15 centimetres of ceiling height,” argues Joaquim Lourenço, father of one of the 85 pupils now unable to return to class. The school doesn’t have a formal parents’ association: “we’re a united community,” he insists. “We’re 80 parents who know exactly what we want for our children. We’re completely behind the school’s leadership.”
Lourenço believes the closure has been mishandled from start to finish. “If a school needs to close, fine, but you don’t do it overnight. You give time to find solutions for the children. At the very least, you let the academic year finish.”
He highlights the school’s strong record. “Our pupils have done extremely well, many former students are now at top universities in the US, Canada and the UK,” he says. Lourenço is reluctant to enrol his son in a public school, citing overcrowded classes and teacher shortages. “Our children are used to classes of 12, where they learn with responsibility and independence. We pay one-fifth of what parents pay in many private schools in Lisbon or Cascais, we’re not doing this to make anyone rich.”
The school follows the Cambridge International curriculum, certified by British authorities. “We were inspected by Cambridge in May 2011, less than a year after opening,” explains Catarino. “We still receive surprise inspections from the UK to ensure compliance.”
All subjects are taught in English, except for Portuguese and Portuguese Culture, which are compulsory. “We even added Agriculture, given our rural setting, we have chickens and ducks, and Mindfulness,” she says.
The Ministry of Education, she adds, once praised the school for including Portuguese studies, something not all international schools do. Exams, meanwhile, are externally administered: “They arrive sealed from the UK and are sent back sealed. We don’t even mark them ourselves.”
In 2019, the General Inspectorate for Education and Science (IGEC) carried out its first inspection since the early years. “The inspector didn’t even look at the building,” Catarino recalls. “He just checked the student lists and confirmed class groupings.”
Then, on 26 July 2022, the school received a registered letter from the Directorate-General for Schools (DGEstE) ordering its closure. The management filed for an injunction, and on 7 August, the Administrative and Tax Court of Loulé suspended the closure, allowing the school to continue enrolling students. “The judge ruled there was no risk to safety or teaching quality,” Catarino says.
For two more years, the school operated normally, until last Friday, when officials from several government bodies, accompanied by the GNR, arrived to enforce the shutdown.
Catarino believes the timing was no coincidence. The day before, a blog post by Fernando Lobo, father of a former student, had criticised the treatment of his son, Gil Lobo, whose university place was revoked despite excelling academically. Gil, who is autistic, was later featured in a Now TV report.
“I have no doubt that the visit from the authorities was linked to that broadcast,” says Catarino. “The journalists did their job, they contacted the Ministry, and someone there must have panicked. They needed a scapegoat, and the easiest one was the school.”
