these shortages are particularly pronounced in schools attended by disadvantaged students since the mep has invested significantly in upgrading schools infrastructure and rolling out access to new technologies through the internationallyrecognised educational technology programme programa de informatica educativa pronie but this programme has only reached of public primary and lower secondary schools and roughly of students mep and limited attention has been given to the widespread and acute shortage of textbooks and other important learning materials teachers can no longer require children to repeat the first grade of primary school while students have more opportunities to retake exams and only have to repeat the subjects failed rather than the entire year