The national coordinator of the Bloc de Esquerda said this Monday in Setúbal that “an arm’s length between the government and teachers makes no sense” and that the seniority of teachers must be respected.
“Teachers’ seniority must be respected. We have always defended this and will continue to defend it. But we need to do more, we need to compensate the laid off teachers so they can cover their expenses, rent, accommodation and huge expenses. the distances they have to travel. It is necessary to increase the professionalism of this profession,” said Mariana Mortagua.
“This democratic country spends so much time, effort and effort on providing working conditions, creating quality public schools, and they are trying with an iron fist to destroy everything that does not make any sense,” added the BE coordinator, who was speaking to journalists after the visit School Secundária D. João II in Setúbal.
Stressing that the recent findings of the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) “confirm that Portugal has failed to recover learning after the pandemic and that it is losing the quality of teaching,” Mariana Mortagua accused the government of failing to respond to teacher expectations to address these problems.
“We had teachers who fought very, very fairly for working conditions and for the opportunity to guarantee the quality of teaching. And we had a government that said for four years that it was impossible to reinstate teachers.” length of service, for the Minister of Education, who was already approaching elections, and now says that, in the end, there is even the possibility of reinstating the time worked; the government didn’t want to do that,” he said.
“There is no greater irresponsibility than playing with people’s lives,” he emphasized.
When asked by journalists, Mariana Mortagua admitted that she does not know how much it might cost to compensate teachers for their seniority, but said that this is not a budgetary, but a political issue.
“The government doesn’t say how much it costs. [a recuperação do tempo de serviço dos professores], it is impossible to feed this idea. But at the same time it retains the tax benefit for unusual residents, which costs 1.5 billion euros per year. And so this is not a budgetary issue, it is a matter of political choice. And it is the Minister of Education himself who says that this is not a budgetary issue,” concluded the BE national coordinator.