45,000 Laptops Missing in Portugal's Schools Despite €14M Funding

Classrooms across the country were promised a seamless digital leap, yet many Portuguese pupils are still queuing for a turn at a flickering screen. The Education Ministry insists the purse is open and full, but local directors keep counting the missing machines: 45 024 computers, by their latest tally, either never arrived or broke down before the third school year ended.

Funding is plentiful, but the hardware is scarce

The government’s narrative is straightforward. Since late 2024, nearly €10 million in fresh money has been wired to school accounts for upgrades, and another €4 million followed this spring for maintenance. Minister Fernando Alexandre has repeated that “no school was denied a budget request.” His officials point to the 1.04 million laptops already dispatched since the pandemic as proof that funds outstrip demand. In other words, “lack of money is not the bottleneck,” as he told parliament this month.

What directors see once the vans drive away

Head teachers describe a different scene. They speak of aging kits from the Escola Digital rollout—most now in a third year of heavy use—whose batteries fail midway through lessons or whose keyboards have lost letters. Some devices date back to 2009, rendering coding classes nearly impossible. Filinto Lima, who leads ANDAEP, says the decentralised model forces each agrupamento to run its own public tender, a procedure that “eats an entire term” before any laptop can legally be bought. By the time paperwork clears, prices have risen and technical specifications have changed, leaving schools to start over.

Parents demand answers while pupils wait

Families, organised through CONFAP, complain that inadequate stock turns homework that requires digital tools into an unequal race. In several primary clusters, an entire class is sharing a single trolley of tablets. That bottleneck, parents argue, threatens Portugal’s goal of introducing mandatory Computer Science in the next academic year. Their concern is not only access but also quality, as many kits were designed to travel daily between home and school and are now, according to one Porto parent, “held together by tape.”

The hidden technical gap

Beyond the missing laptops lies a shortage of human support. Teachers of Informatics often double as on-site technicians, patching Wi-Fi routers during lunch breaks. The National Association of IT Teachers says there are schools with just one part-time specialist for hundreds of devices. Without routine servicing, minor faults snowball and whole labs fall silent. A recent Tribunal de Contas follow-up hinted that spending on procurement outpaced spending on maintenance by almost two to one, creating a backlog of repairs that no supplementary grant can fix overnight.

European context and Portugal’s balancing act

Official statistics still present Portugal as a digital frontrunner, with roughly 1.1 students per computer in public education—an enviable ratio on paper. Yet European Commission surveys show southern systems often struggle more with upkeep than with initial supply. While northern countries refresh devices in four-year cycles, Portuguese schools have stretched some units to a sixteen-year lifespan. Policymakers now face a choice: keep adding new devices to the inventory or finance the staff and infrastructure that keep them usable.

What happens after the audit

Minister Alexandre has ordered a fast audit to trace why his ministry’s spreadsheets diverge so sharply from classroom reality. He pledged to publish findings early next year and hinted at a national framework contract that would let schools bypass lengthy tenders. Until then, teachers continue to improvise. In one Lisbon secondary, a physics class recently combined two groups so everyone could share the four functional laptops left in the lab. The lesson ended close to dusk, long after the final bell, but the minister’s words still echoed in the corridor: “The money is there.”