The President of the Republic said today that everyone from pupils and teachers to families will benefit from a “relatively normal” school year, stressing that the strikes already called by teachers’ unions are part of democratic life.
“The important thing is that everyone understands that they should benefit from a relatively normal school year. The main stakeholders are students, then families, then teachers, and it is a mistake to think that teachers are winners or losers,” said Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa in an interview with TVI at the Belém National Palace.
The school year starts from September 12 to 15, and the strikes already announced by some unions suggest that the year will be marked by resistance from teachers, like the previous one.
The head of state said that strikes are part of democratic life and in general everyone understands that the idea is to maintain dialogue.
“This is a difficult question. And a difficult question is to determine whether to make up for lost time and under what conditions,” he recalled.
Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa recalled that the government took a “closed position” on this issue and then, as a result of fiscal elasticity, allowed for an adjustment.
However, the President of the Republic believes that this 2023/24 academic year will be better than the previous one, because “people are learning.”
“I think it will be better, people are learning, I mean, obviously I heard the Minister of Education say yesterday that there are difficulties with the employment of teachers and that there is a need to make adjustments to the schedule, but this was intended to quickly normalize the situation,” he stressed.
On Friday, the education minister deplored the call for strikes at the start of the school year, saying students should come first and therefore the year should start “with schools fully operational.”
“We do not start the school year with schools closed, we must start the school year with schools fully operational,” Minister João Costa stressed in statements to journalists on the sidelines of the Book 2.0 meeting organized by the Portuguese Publishers Association. and booksellers in Lisbon.
Author: Portuguese
Source: CM Jornal
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