Minister says ‘structural reform’ in competitions improves conditions for teachers

The education minister said this Friday that the new teacher management and recruitment system is a “structural reform” that will improve working conditions for teachers while also combating instability.

The Decree Law was approved on Thursday in the Council of Ministers, and at a press conference on the new regime, Joao Costa explained that the diploma essentially supports what was presented to the unions last week.

Considering that this is a “structural reform”, the minister once again defended the changes, considering that the decree-law defines “specific measures, the main objectives of which are to improve the working conditions of teachers, their stabilization, increase the salaries of teachers”, in addition to promoting “struggle and a strong reduction in the insecurities historically associated with the profession.”

The revision of the hiring regime was discussed with the sectoral trade union organizations for more than five months, and this process ended without reaching an agreement.

However, and after the approval of the Council of Ministers, the diploma should be put into effect in the near future, and the changes will start to apply in the next tenders.

More than 10,500 teachers will be hired later this year, equivalent to 50% of those hired, according to Joao Costa, and a dynamic linkage mechanism will be put in place to ensure teachers are integrated into the staff of the Ministry of Education as they meet the requirements. .

“This is a change that comes from the Council of Ministers, taking into account what was presented to the trade union organizations. The conditions for dynamic linking are no longer a temporary provision that should be in the body of a decree-law, thus becoming part of the regime,” the minister explained.

Like this one, the Diploma, approved on Thursday, makes other detailed changes to the submitted final proposal, such as removing one of the salary increase criteria for contract teachers, namely waiving schedules, and introducing issues related to travel between educational institutions that were supposed to be included in an autonomous shipment.

In 2024, as already announced, there will be 20,000 job openings on the school’s staff, in a competition open to all affiliated teachers to secure 90% of affiliated teachers on the school’s staff, leaving only 10% in the teaching area. board, to meet temporary needs.

This measure reverses the current trend in which the majority of teachers (80%) are in pedagogical areas, but communication is not mandatory, explained Joao Costa.

According to the Minister of Education, in collaboration with the team of the School of Business and Economics of the University of Nova de Lisboa, work is underway to determine the distribution of places in each school based on criteria other than the number of subjects. and students.