An independent evaluation of the impact of digital textbooks on Azorean students has been completed and delivered to the Regional Government. As politicians debate delays, screen time, academic performance and the condition of school buildings, the report could help answer a more fundamental question: when does technology improve education—and when does it merely change its form?
A classroom can embrace the future without abandoning everything the past has taught it. That tension now sits at the center of an increasingly important educational debate in the Azores, where digital textbooks have become part of everyday schooling from the fifth through twelfth grades. During an urgent parliamentary debate on education requested by CHEGA, Regional Secretary for Education, Culture and Sport Sofia Ribeiro revealed that the long-awaited independent evaluation of the program has finally been completed and delivered to the Government. The evaluation itself originated in a resolution approved by the Azorean Legislative Assembly in 2025.
Ribeiro said she had received the report only this week and had not yet had the opportunity to examine it. She promised that its findings would eventually be presented publicly and to the Coordinating Council of the Regional Education System. The timing matters because digital textbooks continue to be provided free of charge alongside computer equipment and an integrated educational platform, covering students from grades five through twelve. At the same time, opposition parties have criticized delays at the beginning of the academic year. Ribeiro said schools had been informed that licenses were assigned, while emphasizing that procurement involves an international tender conducted during the summer and requiring review by Portugal’s Court of Auditors.
But the larger argument is no longer simply about whether licenses arrive on time. It is about what happens after students open them. CHEGA deputy Olivéria Santos argued that technology should not be discarded but balanced with other forms of learning, invoking international debates about screen use and the renewed emphasis on printed books in some European education systems. CDS parliamentary leader Pedro Pinto made a similar distinction: providing textbooks free of charge is, in his formulation, a question of social justice, while choosing digital rather than printed materials is a pedagogical and technological decision. For both, the independent evaluation should help determine whether the present balance is producing the intended results.
The opposition also questioned whether the Government has invested heavily in a model before sufficiently understanding its effects. Socialist deputy Inês Sá asked specifically about reading, mathematics, concentration, handwriting and whether digital materials work equally well for all students. BE deputy António Lima similarly criticized recurring delays and asked whether the Region would continue what he characterized as experimentation without evaluation. The Government, by contrast, points to improving educational indicators. Ribeiro said Azorean students have raised their results in national examinations and improved across the PISA domains even as results declined nationally and across the OECD. Recent government statements have likewise highlighted improvement in Reading, Mathematics and Science, although Azorean results still leave room for convergence with national performance.
The debate also demonstrated why education cannot be reduced to a quarrel over screens. Deputies raised shortages and retention of teachers, educational assistants and deteriorating school buildings. CHEGA called for a detailed regional plan identifying the condition of each school, the interventions required, their cost and completion schedules. Ribeiro acknowledged that substantial needs remain, while saying more than €60 million has been invested in school rehabilitation since 2020 and arguing that not every accumulated problem can be corrected simultaneously. The Government has also reported beginning the 2026–27 year with 98% of teaching positions filled and 1,489 permanent educational assistants, compared with a lower staffing ratio in 2019.
The independent report may therefore arrive at precisely the right moment. The most useful question is probably not whether schools should choose paper or technology as though one must defeat the other. A tablet can provide extraordinary educational possibilities; a printed book offers forms of concentration, physical navigation and freedom from digital distraction that remain valuable. Different ages, subjects and students may require different combinations. Evidence, rather than enthusiasm for technology or nostalgia for paper, should determine where that balance lies.
And perhaps this is what the Azorean debate now has an opportunity to become. Modernization need not mean placing every page behind glass, just as defending books need not mean turning away from the digital world children already inhabit.
Education has always depended upon tools. But the finest tool remains useless unless it helps a child do something profoundly human: concentrate, question, imagine, understand—and remember. The screen and the page are not the destination. Learning is.
Based on a story in Diário Insular-José Lourenço-director. The photo is from the Government of the Azores.