PS hopes the government won’t cut teacher vacancies

On Wednesday, the PS said the previous chief executive had followed “transparent targets” in teacher competitions and said it feared the education secretary’s recent statements on the matter would indicate a reduction in vacancies.

In response to an interview with Education Minister Fernando Alexandre in the newspaper Público, Socialist MP Isabel Ferreira told the Lusa agency that the competition for teachers “had the transparent objective of analyzing the history of each school and each group of schools, based on the positions that employees of the teaching area have successively occupied due to sick leave or anticipated retirement.”

Isabel Ferreira also added that the party received Fernando Alexandre’s statements “with great fear”, hoping that they “are not a sign” of teachers leaving, as happened “between 2011 and 2015”.

“Let’s hope that there is no intention to reduce vacancies or make this career less attractive,” the socialist stressed.

The MP claimed that the previous chief executive wanted to make the teaching career “more attractive” by placing teachers in schools closer to their homes, and recalled that it was the previous government that launched the operation to “deploy the teaching zone cadre, which today numbers 63 people”.

“Previously, some of them were more than 200 kilometers away, and today they are 50 kilometers away, which means that teachers are also closer to their homes. But above all, the fact that they have a connection and that many of them are based in a school privately or in a group of schools, represents the largest operation to stabilize the lives of teachers,” he said.

In an interview with Público, the current Minister of Education, Fernando Alexandre, said that he could not justify the creation of another 6,000 vacancies.

Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, he explained that he was waiting for a “thorough analysis” to justify opening the vacancies.

“When we are talking about opening up thousands of vacancies, I was hoping to find a thorough analysis to know where teachers will be allocated,” the Minister of Education, Science and Innovation said at the end of a round of talks with trade unions to discuss the new Career Regulations for Scientific Researchers (ECIC).

“We will wait until all the information is consolidated, but I am worried about a decision without figures and facts. But as I said, everything can go well,” said Fernando Alexandre.

Former Education Minister João Costa explained this Wednesday that the selection of vacancies for schools “did not meet traditional criteria”, with vacancies being opened with the possible replacement of sick teachers or those about to retire.

In an interview with Lusa and SIC, former Education Minister João Costa explained why his team decided to open six thousand more vacancies than requested by schools and determined by the Education Directorate, in response to statements made by the current minister.