Episode 55: Back to School in Portugal: It’s Not What We Were Used To
Back-to-school season is here in the United States — but here in Portugal, we still have a few weeks to go!
In this episode of As the Dinesens Turn, we talk about some of the differences we've discovered between schools in Portugal and the U.S. From getting textbooks and school supplies to schedules that don't arrive until the last minute, the Portuguese school year operates very differently from what we were used to.
We also talk about Portugal's new restrictions on phones in schools, national exams, the possibility of repeating a grade, and the different paths students can take once they reach secondary school.
For our family, this school year is an especially big one. Tyler is finishing basic education and will need to decide which secondary-school track he wants to pursue. Meanwhile, Jack is entering his final year of a professional secondary program, complete with internships, certification exams, and decisions about work or university.
It's hard to believe that three and a half years ago, we were dropping two kids who barely spoke Portuguese into public school and wondering how any of this was going to work.
Now we're talking about graduations, university, internships — and even driving school.
Life changes fast.
Welcome to As the Dinoson's Turn, where we chronicle the adventures of the Dinoson family. A seemingly ordinary family from Iowa who decided, hey, you only live once, so let's move to Portugal. And now your hosts, Jason and Tracy Dynason.
SPEAKER_01Welcome to another episode of As the Dinoson's Turn. We thought maybe a timely topic this time around would be to talk about the differences between back to school in Portugal versus the United States, because as this episode drops, it's back to school time in the U.S. In fact, people have been back to school for probably a week or longer, and ours still have several more weeks to go.
SPEAKER_02I know. Our students here don't go back until the middle of September, sometime between the 11th and the 15th. It depends on your school district. Tyler will go back, I think the 14th, but secondary schools are delayed one week. So they won't, he won't go back till the 21st. Jack won't. So yeah, but my body still feels like we should be doing all the back to school. Like summer should be over. And we're just we've got weeks left.
SPEAKER_01And as we record this, it feels like full.
SPEAKER_02I'm wearing a sweatshirt today because it's like 65 degrees and rainy today. And so it definitely feels like October. It's crazy. It's really chilly.
SPEAKER_01It's that time of year where our town has been invaded. Oh my goodness. It's little France right now.
SPEAKER_02It is like literally the grocery store this morning. Every car that surrounded our car, we're all from France. Yeah. August is still a month of secation. Everybody's in their fiddyish, they're on their vacations and their holidays. And so seeing everybody go back to school. Back to school supplies have only been in the grocery store here for about a week. Jack was just saying to me this morning, he's like, Mom, we're gonna have to do back to school shopping soon. The way things work here is very different. The school puts out orders for books for each one of the students. And there's a national app. You go into this application and it tells you by your student what books they have to order, whether they pick up those books at the school or they pick up those books at a bookstore, order them through a bookstore. And when you order them through a bookstore, they're completely free. But then you also order through a bookstore any of the support workbooks that go with any of the materials. I always order all of the support workbooks. I might not use them all of the time, but I do because almost always the support workbooks are great ways for people to study and know what's going to be on the test. Imagine that, the teacher and me. But Tyler uses his support workbooks for his science and for his math in particular. But this year he'll have geography and history both together. He didn't have geography last year. And so he's gonna have to do a lot more memorization. I don't know. So you go to either a bookstore or you pick up the books at school. And then when it comes to supplies, you get whatever you want. Really, there'll be a set list for some of the classes. Art will require certain types of pencils. So for art, you have to have certain numbers of drawing pencils, and you get those at the bookstore at the Thought Billet Yesh, right? Sometimes you can get a couple of at the supermarket, but usually you have to go to an office supply store or an art supply store to get the different types of pencils they need for art. They do have to have different colors of pens because they have to use different colors of pens in all of their work and note-taking. It's interesting. So when students do exams here, they'll do the exam first in pencil most of the time, and then you go back and write your answers again in pen and erase your answer from before. A lot of my students will do that. I don't think our boys do. I think they just write it. But it's all about precision. Yeah. But we haven't even started. We have to see if Tiger's lab coat fits because he has to have a lab coat that he has to have for lab days. They do, they wear a white lab coat. I don't know. It's a little different.
SPEAKER_01When do we even get their schedule? Because that's something that's always kind of dysfunctional, where it's like you don't even necessarily know officially when the first day of school even always is.
SPEAKER_02No, they tell you nationally what the range is. And then we will get, we will get if there'll be a parent meeting. So here you're encargados educação, those who are in charge of education. You have a parent meeting, you go to the parent meeting and you meet the director of their class. And their class is the students that are in his class. There's like Tyler's class, there's like 24 or 25 of them. They all have the exact same schedule, right? It's the same people that he's been in school with this whole time. And we'll learn his schedule at that parent meeting. We otherwise we have no idea. We don't know which days he will have a morning schedule or afternoon schedule, if that'll be it, or which days will be his full days. We don't know that. It's the same thing with Jack's schedule. We know what topics they're going to have. We just don't know what the schedule is going to look like. I don't know how many days Jack will have. So his first year of secondary, he was at school from 8:30 to 6.15 every day. Except for Fridays, he was 8:30 to 1.30. And then last year he had 8:30 to 4:30 and 8:30 to 525 for two days. And then it was 8:30 to 6.15, two other days, and then a half day on Friday. But he has fewer classes this year. So I don't know if he's going to have shorter days or if they're going to compress them more because he also has more internship experience. So he has to do, I think it's either 300 or 400 hours of internship experience this next year. His first round of internships is at the end of the first period, which will be November, December. So there are no classes during that time, just internship hours because they're working full-time. And then he'll have them again in February and March right before Easter break. He'll have those again. But he won't have internship hours again in at the end of the year, like this year, his were in June and July. I have no idea. We don't know what dates those internship things are either. So we don't know if he's going to get to go and see grandma and grandpa when we go to a conference in Texas or not. So I think that we just kind of get to play it by year. It's crazy. I don't even know what to say, but these parent meetings are like I've said this before, they're the most surreal thing I've ever seen. Also, they just passed and announced the new national law that students all the way through ninth grade are not allowed to have phones at school at all. So they can have them in their backpacks, but they're not allowed to be on, they're not allowed to be out. If they see a telephone, it's confiscated by the office, it goes to the main office, and the parent has to go and pick up the phone. And they have so many warnings before they'll then face a demerit. And that you get so many of those. And I think there's like a national law where you have to then do additional school days. It's not like in school suspension or anything like that. It's like, no, literally, you're they're just gonna keep adding days to your school year. It's like they're serious about it. So no phones, which is fine. They were only allowed to use phones during break times last year. That means that the kids are actually playing with each other and doing things.
SPEAKER_01Well, the school year goes about two weeks longer than it does in the US, and I guess it starts about four weeks later in the fall.
SPEAKER_02It starts about three or four weeks later, but then there's no Thanksgiving break. So they go all the way through. There's one day off in October, and then there are two days off in December. December 1st and December 8th are holidays. But if that falls on a weekend, that doesn't change their schedule. They'll have a three-day break for carnival, and then the end of the second term will be their two-week break for Easter. And really, both boys will have national exams this year. So Tyler will have his ninth grade national exams, which 25% of his final grade in both Portuguese and in math are based on his performance on this national exam. If he were to not pass two subjects, he would have to repeat the year. They don't have a problem making them do that. So there are people who have to repeat ninth grade because they don't pass the national exams with their scores and everything like that. And so that happens. But that means that both boys will really be done with classes probably the week of June, usually like June 11th, June 12th, right around there. They'll be done with classes. And then there'll be intensive studying times and things at the school, and there'll be national exams, Tyler's national exams. I think ninth grade exams this year were like the 17th to the 22nd of June for the first round. And then Jack will have national exams for his professional certification. And then he'll also have an exam for the Polytechnic University, which is like a terminology exam or something like that. And that's at the very end of June, right before all of that. Then there's a break, and then you get your results like the very beginning of July, like right around July 5th, July 6th. And then you see if you have to take the tests again. And if you take the tests again, then it's the middle of July. You've got tests again. So it's a different system. I think it's a little more intense. But yeah, we're just now starting to think of like, oh yeah, it's almost back to school time. That's crazy. I don't know. I like starting later. I like starting like after Labor Day in the US. That's like ideal, right? Well, here we are starting the middle of September. I hope that everybody's having a good beginning of school, but I can't even think about that yet. Who are we kidding? I got weeks.
SPEAKER_01Well, we've got some things we can keep people updated on, and what's it like to be a senior in Portuguese high schools?
SPEAKER_02Well, and in a professional program, right? So there are two different tracks in secondary school. So there are the traditional tracks, which at our not every school district offers every single track of the traditionals programs. Our school does not offer arts, they offer humanities, they offer social sciences, and they offer science and technology. And then they also offer professional programs. So in professional programs, you have internship hours and you take an actual European certification exam. And you have to have so many work hours and you build your portfolio and all of those things too. So Jack could literally just start working for a company at the end of secondary if he would like, or he can go to university, or he can go to polytechnic university. But it's a completely different track because you have to choose basically your what I would call your college, your area of discipline when you go into secondary. And then university here is three years and not four. And everyone shares the same core curriculum, no matter what the secondary program you go into. If you follow the traditional route versus if you follow the professional program, everybody has their math and science and physical education and English and Portuguese. But if you follow the traditional programs, you also have two years of philosophy and ethics. And Jack was like, My Portuguese is not at a level that I can do philosophy. And so I think he would have loved it. You do them based on your program. So he does history of art and culture. And Tyler this year is going to have to decide what secondary program he wants to go into. If he wants to go into a professional program for information systems and computer programming, or if he wants to do science and technology and maybe do computer science engineering in university or what he wants to do. But it's it's a completely different system. I think that he'll have to decide if he wants to go just generally into technology and sciences, and then have the opportunity to decide what specific areas he would like to go into when he gets to university. But because it's science and technology, it's changing so fast. I'd be very hesitant to say you should learn this one field too. I think that's the problem. It's a very big event, and we'll have graduations for both of them this year, too.
SPEAKER_01That's true.
SPEAKER_02Graduate from basic education and secondary education.
SPEAKER_01Well, three and a half years ago, we didn't expect that they would even have to be in Portuguese public school, at least not right away, and they were and then they have right away. And I remember you sat at the cafe right next to the school on the first day of school on. Here we are.
SPEAKER_02I know. Now they're like all independent. It's crazy. We also are going to have a child who's going to start driving school because you can't drive here until you're 18. And so driving school has to happen this fall, too. So that's crazy. Oh, good lord. Life is changing. And I see that for so many of our friends out there too. Life is just at that season of change for everyone. So I feel lucky that we get another year before university starts. But at the same time, life here is so different that like the systems are so different that I think taking the extra time was really good. And Jack was always one of the youngest. And so was Tyler. All the students in their classes are the same ages as them anyway. So it kind of all worked out. I wasn't even sure our first full year here, if when Jack started in ninth grade, if we were going to have to move back or not, just because I wasn't sure if his anxiety got in the way of language so much, I wasn't sure if he was going to be able to be okay academically or not. And he's doing great. He really is. So I'm very proud of both of them. But wow. I feel like I talked this whole episode.
SPEAKER_01He pretty much did.
SPEAKER_02It's because I'm the encarregada de educação. I'm the one who's in charge of education here. So it's very funny to see their approaches to how our boys approach school differently. But I think that it also depends on the year and the program. There's a lot more testing here. I guess in the sense that there are a lot more exams and your grades are exams, and your exams are, I think, much more difficult than they are in the United States in a lot of cases. There are lots of projects and things too, but there's focus on you need to study and do all of your homework on your own, and there's not here's your homework that you have to do for your next class. It's the the exam is this date, and it's up to them to figure out how they're going to prepare for it. It really does become kind of a sinker swim at the end of basic education and secondary. They expect you to have it all figured out.
SPEAKER_01It's really different. Well, we've got things to keep everyone updated on, and that'll do it for this time around on As the Dinoson's Turn.
SPEAKER_00You've been listening to As the Dinoson's Turn, a podcast presented by Dinoson Media Ventures. Don't forget to like and subscribe, and catch us again next time for another episode.