After our experience this year with the “school reports fiasco”, I decided that perhaps it would be a good idea to document exactly what procedures we needed to do in order to get our children’s school reports accepted by the authorities here in Portugal.
This is by no means gospel, but this is what appears to be the official requirements for getting your UK kids into Portuguese schools.
1. Current school reports for their last completed school year.
This may or may not need to be accompanied by a separate letter, from the school, detailing whether a child has passed or, less usually in the UK, failed their year.
A child who has completed year 5 in England will usually move into year 6 in Portugal, regardless of the different ages and years in school they may have had. If you want your child to repeat their last school year when they start in Portugal, you will need a letter from their UK school saying that they have not passed their current school year. Strange but true!
2. Apostille Certificate** for their school reports.
Oh boy, don’t we know about this!
Portuguese authorities will want to know that those UK school reports are genuine and this is how: by having them legalised. To do this, you need to get your school reports to a UK official notary (which may be a solicitor or lawyer or other official, but be warned, they HAVE to be a notary. Not just any solicitor or lawyer or other official person!)
The notary will contact the school to confirm that the reports are genuine and then create an official document to confirm this. This document is then returned to you, along with the school reports and the school will want copies of this.
3. Translations of their UK school reports.
More often than not, this will need to be a certified translation, and I would say that it pays to get it done by a certified translator, just to save time (if not money!). You will need to locate somebody who can stamp it officially. Such translation services can usually be found by asking about (school itself, solicitors, local English publications, friends etc)
Now, only once you have the reports, a pass/fail confirmation, the Apostille AND the translations, THEN the school might actually let you sign up your child!
Don’t forget though, they’ll also (at some point, if not immediately) want to see confirmation of vaccinations (you can take your red UK vaccination book to your local health centre and have your child’s records copied over and updated free of charge), residency certificates and fiscal numbers for both parents and kids along the way. Oh, and passports.
To date, I haven’t been asked for waist size, but nowadays, nothing surprises me!
** link for information only. I would strongly recommend going directly to a notary in the UK to do this, rather than using an internet service.
[…] the subject of school, I’ve just added a bit of information about school reports when moving from UK to Portugal. It’s neither gospel or exhaustive (different schools have different interpretations and […]