The Education Minister said this Friday that there are currently around 4,000 pupils without a teacher in at least one subject, but in many cases the teacher shortage is due to the recent need for replacements.
“The number of students who still do not have a teacher, and I want to emphasize that we are not talking about students who have not had a teacher since the beginning of the school year, but about his replacement, will be about 4 thousand,” he said. Joao Costa.
The Minister of Education is being heard at a joint hearing of the parliamentary Budget and Finance and Education and Science committees as part of a specialized assessment of the State Budget 2024 (OE2024) proposal.
In response to Communist MP Alfredo Maia, who warned of the need to take action to address the shortage of teachers in public schools, the minister stressed that in recent years it has been possible to speed up the process of replacing teachers throughout the school year.
Every week, schools look for teachers to fill about 700 substitute time slots, and on average they manage to do so in two to three weeks.
Therefore, he added, many of the 4,000 students who currently do not have a teacher in at least one subject have been in this situation for several weeks.