This Friday, the Parliament voted in favor of a draft resolution to change the process of devolution of powers to municipalities in the field of education, which, according to the Communists, endangers the right to education.
PKP MPs today launched an initiative to reverse the process of municipalization of education, arguing that there are not enough financial or human resources for this and that the current situation will exacerbate inequalities between students from different regions.
The initiative received positive votes from the PCP bench, Bloco de Esquerda e Livre, but failed due to votes against PS, PSD and the Liberal Initiative and Chega’s abstention.
The draft resolution came along with a petition from associations representing teachers, non-teaching staff, principals and guardians.
The undersigned “No devolution of powers to municipalities in the field of education” collected more than eight thousand signatures and was also presented at the plenary session of the Assembly of the Republic.
“What the PCP brings here is the feeling of an educational community,” said Communist MP Paula Santos.
Both in the petition and in the draft resolution, the PCP believes that the transfer of powers “casts doubt on the universality of the constitutional right to education.”
Paula Santos explained that “conditions were not provided” for the transfer of authority, “primarily because there was no thorough study of the needs”.
The MP spoke about the lack of sufficient financial, technical and human resources to put the plan into action, which envisages, among other things, that the work in schools will be entrusted to the municipalities.
The PKP cited as an example the cost to be transferred to the municipalities, which has risen from about 20,000 euros to more than 30,000 euros per year, but which the communists consider “manifestly insufficient” given the “bad state of the school”.
However, the government guaranteed that it would finance the retraining and construction of schools, and guaranteed the availability of funds to do so.
During the debate, PS MP Lucía Araujo confirmed that “certain values guarantee the continuity of services”, highlighting the fact that the amount to be transferred has increased and that there is “a mechanism to ensure that the values will take inflation into account”.
Municipalization also provides that local governments will manage school canteens, school social activities, non-teaching staff (operational and technical assistants), accommodation, school transportation, and curriculum enrichment activities.
The Diploma does not provide for the possibility for municipalities to hire teachers, but this was again one of the issues discussed.
The “danger” of hiring teachers by municipalities was mentioned by Bloc Esquerda deputy Joana Mortagua, who recalled the statements “of Rui Moreira and Carlos Moedas, who made it clear that they want to move forward with the municipalization “The danger is somewhere nearby,” he said.
Chega’s Bruno Nunez accused the PKP of “talking about things it doesn’t know”, given that “leftists and extreme outsiders have tried to use teachers”.
“It’s all a lie,” Bruno Nunez accused, saying that a diploma on decentralization of competencies “never has anything to do with hiring teachers.”
Socialist MP Lucía Araujo also criticized the “false narratives” spread about the possibility of hiring teachers by local authorities, which was rejected several times by the Ministry of Education.
Focusing again on the diploma, Joana Mortagua recalled that many countries have experimented with municipalization “with disastrous results”, citing as examples cases where the risks of inequality between municipalities and the degradation of the labor rights of workers transferred to municipalities have increased.
PSD’s Gabriela Fonseca said municipalities have long been demanding a devolution and recalled the fundamental role that mayors have played with students during the covid-19 pandemic.
For the SDP MP, “the decentralization now carried out corresponds to failure” compared to the work begun by her party.
Socialist Lucía Araujo also defended that “the local democratic government has shown that it solves the problems of the population more effectively”.
Author: Portuguese
Source: CM Jornal
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