JNE President testifies on digital exam grading pilot failures

Rui Pires, president of the National Jury of Exams (JNE), testified before the parliamentary commission on Education and Science regarding a 2025 pilot project for the digital grading of national secondary school exams.

Pires stated that while the pilot program confirmed the general viability of digital grading, it identified operational difficulties. Specifically, the process relied too heavily on manual intervention to associate continuation sheets with exams, leading to instances of swapped or incorrectly associated papers.

Crucially, Pires noted that the pilot did not detect a specific issue with QR code reading that would later affect the digital association of sheets to exams in 2026. He confirmed that although the pilot's conclusions were not formally documented, they were taken into account when preparing subsequent processes to improve validation and traceability mechanisms.