Investment Immigration to Portugal provides insights into Portugal's education policy: On November 13, 2014, the Portuguese government approved a resolution stating that starting from the new academic year in 2015, English will become a mandatory subject for Grade 3 in primary schools. The implementation of this policy will present an extraordinary challenge for teachers.
According to the Council of Ministers, starting from the 2015-2016 academic year, all Grade 3 primary school students must study English for at least 2 hours per week. Nevertheless, the hours for other mandatory subjects will not be affected, as these 2 hours will be deducted from the students' extracurricular activity time. This means that students do not need to worry about an increase in total class hours, but the time for extracurricular activities will be reduced. Furthermore, the mandatory English curriculum starting from Grade 3 will continue for 7 years, until it becomes an elective course after Grade 9.
In fact, previously, English was only made a mandatory subject in Grade 5 of Portuguese primary schools, and before that, it was an elective course. However, this also means that English teachers who originally taught the middle grades (Grades 5 and 6) will need to undergo appropriate training to teach English in the lower grades. Additionally, new master's programs focused on teaching English to lower grades have been introduced to cultivate English teachers for these grades.
The Minister of Education expressed to Portuguese Chinese journalists that this policy will help children better master English. The younger the age, the more beneficial it is for mastering the pronunciation and grammatical knowledge of English. Moreover, before the start of the first semester, Portuguese primary schools will recruit a new team of English-specialized teachers. Ensuring a smooth recruitment of English teachers for the new academic year in 2015 will be an extraordinary challenge.