Lisbon, May 4, 2026 (Lusa) - The superior reading performance of private school pupils in Portugal virtually vanishes when compared with pupils at state schools whose parents have the same level of education, reveals a national study published on Monday.
This is one of the findings of the Edulog study, which surveyed 6,513 pupils in their final year of pre-school and in the first and second years of primary school to understand how children are taught to read and write, to assess literacy among the youngest children, and to identify the factors that most influence the process.
Researchers from the LER Project concluded that the factor most influencing academic success is parents’ educational background: pupils with “at least one parent with a higher education qualification achieve better results”.
In a comparison between state schools and private schools, pupils at private schools performed better, but the researchers found that these pupils’ “initial advantage” was “insignificant” after “controlling for parental education”.
“When parental education is taken into account, the advantage of private schools virtually disappears,” states the study presented today at the annual international Edulog conference organised by the Belmiro de Azevedo Foundation.
The key difference is that in private schools the vast majority of pupils (88%) have at least one parent with a higher education qualification, whereas in state schools such cases are in the minority (46%).
The idea that private school pupils achieved better results had already been revealed last year by the ministry of education, when it published the results of diagnostic reading fluency tests, in which around 93,000 Year 2 pupils took part.
At the time, it emerged that, on average, pupils could correctly read 75 words per minute, falling within the international benchmark range for the end of Year 2, which is between 70 and 130 words.
However, the study highlighted that a quarter of pupils could only read up to 51 words per minute, placing them “at risk of reading comprehension difficulties”, as the Institute for Educational Assessment (IAVE) warned at the time.
Implemented in the 2024/25 academic year in 184 schools, the Ler Project shows consistent progress in the development of reading and writing skills over time.
In pre-school, for example, children improved their knowledge of letters and phonological awareness, and among primary school children a “consistent growth in literacy” was noted.
However, researchers found that half of pupils read fewer than 37 words per minute by the end of Year 1, and 25% read fewer than 21 words per minute.
The researchers put forward some recommendations to improve reading levels, such as oral games to develop phonological awareness and a better understanding of the link between sound and letter in pre-school, or “regular reading at home” and “interaction with books and stories”.
The results of the Ler Project will be presented on Monday, the first day of the international conference, which will address topics such as cognitive and linguistic development, and the prevention of learning difficulties and early intervention.
SIM/MYAL // AYLS
Lusa
