This Wednesday, the SDP is putting to a vote in parliament five initiatives that address “core issues” in education, including a recommendation that the government negotiate with unions to reinstate the seniority of teachers, refusing to interfere in the process.
“The SDP is concerned about what is happening to the education sector and the future of public schools. (…) After seven years of PS management, none of the fundamental issues affecting education have been resolved, we can only conclude that education is not a priority for the government,” said MP Antonio Cunha, PSD coordinator in the parliamentary committee in education and science, in statements to Lusa.
The Social Democrat MP believed that over the past seven years “nothing has been said about career restructuring, or teacher recruitment, or reducing bureaucracy in careers, or initial teacher training, or how to make this career more attractive. for young people.
“It is scary that in our country almost no one wants to be a teacher. We are worried about, and in what way, a time bomb that will become a severe shortage of teachers in the coming years,” he said, referring to the fact that over the past two years there are already “thousands of students” who spend a whole year without a subject teacher.
On the other hand, the MP stressed the SDP’s concerns about the restoration of education after the COVID-19 pandemic.
“No one knows how things are going, students are rebuilding their studies or not? There are no results that can be compared with 2016, the entire amount of information that the country had at the end of the test cycle, the Government finished it all,” he criticized.
Thus, one of the five diplomas that the SDP is voting on this Wednesday – and the only one in the form of a bill – intends to reintroduce measurement tests of universal and compulsory application at the end of the 4th and 6th years of study (the resulting classifications can be used for weighting the final classification by choice of school or group of schools) and excluding those that currently exist in Years 2, 5 and 8.
As regards the restoration of seniority for teachers, a matter which continues to divide the government and trade unions, the Social Democrats include this matter in a resolution (without the force of law) in which they recommend a series of urgent measures to the executive branch. in the field of education., including the negotiation process with teachers “to restore the missing service time” and to create conditions “for the elimination of vacancies for admission to the 5th and 7th grades, a tourniquet that is not in other classes.”
“We do not interfere in the negotiations between the trade unions and the government, but we believe that it is necessary to start a negotiation process with the structures in order to see the possibilities to restore the missing service time,” Antonio Cunha justified.
According to the PSD MP, the recent statements of the Minister of Education, Joao Costa, open to “career advancement” demonstrate that this position of the PSD, as well as demonstrations and strikes in the sector, “will force the government to sit down with the unions.”
“The public school cannot continue living under a state of siege,” he said, arguing that the measures should also include salary increases at the start of teachers’ careers to make them more attractive.
The PSD also makes recommendations to the government to improve the “effectiveness, duration and funding of learning recovery measures”, reduce the bureaucratic burden currently placed on teachers, and increase the 2024 state budget allocation for school social activities.
“The life of the Portuguese is not easy, and the main goal of Ação Social Escolar is to fight social exclusion. PSD recommends increasing enrollment of students,” he said, giving the example that currently a couple with a child in which two elements receive the minimum wage “are not eligible for any contribution.”
In addition to the five PSD diplomas, Iniciativa Liberal (IL) and Livre will also present their own educational projects at the debate this Wednesday, with a total of 12 initiatives between the three benches.
Like PSD, IL proposes reintroducing assessment tests in the final years of each basic education cycle, reintroducing them in years 4 and 6, and recommends that the government expand the learning recovery plan.
Among the resolutions, the Liberals also want to re-evaluate the decision to digitize the GCSE in Year 9, so that compliance with the intervention program for school buildings is checked and that more autonomy is given to teaching in the private and cooperative for the recruitment of teachers.
The Free Party will discuss a bill that would set the maximum number of students in preschool and at different levels of education from 18 to 20 students, depending on the year of study (but which could be further reduced due to special circumstances). – and a government decree to guarantee all teachers who are more than 60 kilometers from their place of residence “a fair payment of housing and transportation allowances.”
Author: Portuguese
Source: CM Jornal
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