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Homeschooling in Portugal

Editorial policy

Last updated 26 September 2026

What we aim for

Our guides explain ensino doméstico and ensino individual in Portugal as the rules actually stand. We want a parent to be able to read a guide, follow every legal claim back to its source, and walk into a meeting with the school knowing what the law says and what it leaves open.

Primary sources first

We start from the official texts, in this order:

  1. Legislation and regulations published in the Diário da República: decrees-law, portarias, despachos and despachos normativos, in their current consolidated form where one exists.
  2. Official guidance from the bodies responsible: EduQA (which took over from the DGE and IAVE in October 2025) and the DGE pages that remain online during the transition, the Júri Nacional de Exames, and school calendars and exam regulations as published.
  3. Official statistics from the DGEEC.

Secondary sources (family associations, news articles, school websites, parent groups) help us understand how the rules work in practice. We use them to describe practice, never to state what the law requires, and we label them as secondary in the source list.

Every claim is cited

Every legal or procedural claim in a guide carries a citation that links to the source. Each guide lists all its sources at the end, marked as primary or secondary. If we cannot find a source for something, we do not publish it as fact.

Review dates and the review cycle

Every guide shows a "last reviewed" date. We review each guide at least every six months, and sooner when a relevant rule changes. A review means checking every cited source is still current, every link still works, and the text still matches the law. If nothing has changed, we update the review date. If something has, we rewrite the affected parts.

We also check links automatically, so a moved or deleted official page is flagged to us quickly.

How we flag uncertainty

The law does not answer every question, and schools do not all apply it the same way. When that happens, we say so in plain words: "the law does not say", "schools differ", "we have not found an official answer". We do not fill gaps with guesses, and we do not present one school's practice as the rule.

We never promise that a school will approve a request or accept a document. We explain; families and schools decide.

When the law changes

When a new decree, despacho or exam regulation affects home education, we:

  1. add a dated entry to our updates page, summarising what changed, from when, and linking to the official text;
  2. revise every affected guide and give it a new review date;
  3. add a short "changed" note at the top of the relevant section, so returning readers can see what is new.

Corrections

If you find an error, write to hello@homeschoolinginportugal.com. Tell us the page and, if you can, the source that shows the correct information.

We check every report. If we got something wrong, we fix it, update the review date, and, for any correction that changes the meaning of a legal or procedural point, add a dated correction note to the page saying what was changed. We do not quietly rewrite substantive errors.

No sponsored content

We do not publish sponsored articles, paid placements or advertorials, and we do not accept payment to mention or recommend a school, tutor, product or service. If we ever link to a commercial service, it is because it is useful to readers.

How we use AI

AI helps inside the paid tools. It drafts annual plans, suggests which Aprendizagens Essenciais an activity covers, and writes sample tests and exercises. These tools work only from curriculum data we have taken from the official documents, and every output is a draft that the family reviews and edits before using it.

AI does not write legal claims that go unchecked. Our guides are researched from primary sources and every guide is reviewed by a person before it is published and at each review. We may use AI tools to help with tasks such as searching documents, checking links or spotting inconsistencies between the English and Portuguese versions, but a person checks the result against the sources.

Independence

We are an independent project, run by the team behind alternativeschoolsinportugal.com. We are not part of, funded by or affiliated with the Ministry of Education, EduQA, any school or any online school.

The site is funded by the paid subscription. Subscribers get tools, not a say in what the guides conclude. The free guides are the same for everyone.