In 2020, the confinements caused by the Covid-19 pandemic involved the displacement of external large-scale assessments in favour of assessments built by teachers. In a post pandemic era, the reintroduction of external assessment was again discussed in Portugal. In addition to external assessment reintroduction, the project for External Assessment Dematerialisation (DAVE) foresees national gauging tests and exams in digital format. Assessment reforms, such as DAVE, brings concerns to school communities about its implementation and reliability. To identify and analyse those concerns, we have conducted 32 semi-structured interviews with school principals from mainland Portugal. Results showed that, on the one hand, there are some school principals that state that schools are ready, and DAVE’s implementation is inevitable in a near future. On the other hand, a major part of school’ principals considers that schools are not ready and there is a lack of investment before its implementation. Apprehensions about schools’ technological capacity, internet access, regular use of ICT for teaching, average teachers’ age without a concerted and continuous training plan for the application of digital educational resources in teaching, create fears of social injustice and alarms about the fairness of DAVE, especially when external assessments have stakes associated for students.

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