The recent collapse of the digital platform for Portugal's National Exams has been described as "digital chaos" that exposed deeper problems in educational assessment and national politics. Raquel Varela, cited by Funchal Notícias, argues that the only way to protect teachers and families would be to halt the process rather than postpone or improve it.
The central critique is that assessment should not be reduced to measuring competencies, a concept imported from the industrial era, but should be a continuous, formative process based on trust between teacher and student. Excessive digitalization and the transformation of schools into "data factories" for automated work are seen as detrimental to education and the subjectivity of students and teachers.
