Welcome to the Official page of the Presidency of the Portuguese Republic

It is with great pleasure that I am visiting the Marquês de Pombal School today and taking part in the ceremony for the symbolic award of diplomas to adults who earned the recognition, the testimonial and the certification of their skills in the Programme for New Opportunities.

In a society where knowledge is, more than ever, the essential part of development, people must be encouraged to give value and depth to their learning.

Not only to what they learnt at school, but also to what they gathered when exercising their profession. Thus new opportunities are visualized, generating, valuing and deepening knowledge.

It is essential that everyone recognizes the importance of acquiring more knowledge through learning and that school and university are regarded as determining factors for personal and social progress.

The fight against early drop-out and the incentive for continuous training are the main tools that permit professional insertion and progress through employment.

But the skills that must be given value are not limited to formal learning.

Each individual, throughout his professional life, gathers learning and theoretical and practical knowledge that he at times has difficulty in adequately characterizing.

An analysis should be made of a life’s career, specifically as to the skills acquired, in order that each person is effectively aware of what he learned, of what he has retained in accumulated knowledge.

This valuation cannot be simply left to the greater or smaller criterion of sensibility of an interviewer or of whoever examines a curriculum.

A qualification thus obtained, correlating a definite and objective grading with a specific acquired knowledge results in an added-value, both for whoever can demonstrate it and for whoever requires its use.

It is widely recognized nowadays that self-esteem, the notion of one’s own value, is a relevant factor for one’s assertion in the labour market, an impulse for personal fulfilment, and is equally responsible for a positive attitude that contributes towards a good working environment and to motivate individuals and teams.

The widely differing institutions which nowadays require that their employees obtain recognition and certification for their skills is the evidence of the growing relevance that qualifications assume in the labour market.

It is not just the search for individual added value. It is an association of mutually recognized interests in which the parties, employer and employee, have reciprocal advantages in identifying the real accumulated knowledge, in order to enable that all the advantages resulting from such skills be used for the common benefit.

This is also a pathway for the valuation of knowledge, and an encouragement for permanent training, so that each person assumes with greater exertion his place in society and in the labour market.

I congratulate the Marquês de Pombal Secondary School for their active participation in this path towards new opportunities, and salute their complement of teachers and other officials who place their best efforts in the work they perform in this establishment.


I congratulate all the institutions who wish and know how to take advantage from this pathway towards personal and professional improvement, and hope they will know how to reap the harvest of this investment in people, corresponding to the expectations thus created.

I equally congratulate the adults who completed this procedure with success and also those who are awaiting its completion. A special salute to those who work for the General Secretariat of the Presidency of the Republic. To all I wish great success and that they become the testimonial that it is worth while to persist in the search for permanent improvement.

The week end press told us the story of Mr. João André, from Salvaterra de Magos, who, at 83, has just completed the 9th year of schooling through the Programme for New Opportunities. He explains his motivation in a short poem: “It is never too late to learn / say the people, with reason / to be able to live better / and enliven the heart.”

That the example of Mr. João André and of those who, today, receive their diplomas, spreads to the many Portuguese who dropped out of school before completing their secondary education. Those are my wishes