FNE insists there is a shortage of teachers and says there are not enough of those being taught

The National Education Federation acknowledged the difficulty of replacing absent teachers highlighted in a study published this Monday, stressing that teacher shortages are a major problem and that there are not enough of those in training.

“It is important to understand the problem and the reasons. Indeed, there are difficulties with replacing teachers, on the one hand, due to absenteeism, illness, and what is associated with the factors that lead to these very absenteeisms. But there is another aspect. this is due to a shortage of teachers, which is not mentioned in the study,” said Pedro Barreiros, secretary general of the National Federation of Education (FNE).

The person in charge spoke about the study “Demographic and labor realities of public education teachers in Portugal 2016/2017 – 2020/2021”, launched by the Belmiro de Azevedo Foundation think tank and aimed at the education sector (Edulog), and in this second one released on Friday.

In this work, the researchers come to the conclusion that there is no shortage of teachers on permanent and annual internships, but there are difficulties in replacing teachers who are on vacation.

In this regard, speaking with Lusa, Pedro Barreiros insists on the shortage of teachers, stating: “This year, 1,200 teachers will receive diplomas, distributed among a variety of recruitment groups. And next year (…) this shortage of teachers (…) will continue because there are not enough trained teachers to meet the needs of the system.”

The person in charge also highlights the unattractiveness of the career and also points out to the manager the lack of programs for school years, emphasizing that teacher shortages are not felt equally in different subjects.

Pointing to data from the latest State of Education report, he says it could be seen that in 2030 what is happening in the Greater Lisbon and Algarve areas, in some disciplinary groups, will spread to the north of the country.

“Combating the teacher shortage immediately becomes difficult,” he said.

The study estimates that to put an end to student absenteeism, a scholarship would need to be created for approximately 20,000 teachers to replace absent teachers.

Regarding this aspect, Pedro Barreiros says that there is “some historical lack of knowledge” on the part of the authors of this investigation, justifying this: “We can talk about the exchange of personnel, and it already exists, it does not have to be created, or we can talk about something that was created specifically for these situations, such as teacher zone tables and district communication tables.”

“When they were created, they had a very specific goal: to create a scholarship for teachers in each of the districts to ensure that in the event of sick leave, high-risk pregnancy, work accident or whatever the situation may be, there were enough teachers in these teaching zones to cover this shortage,” he explained.

He also believed that these frameworks of pedagogical zones had become distorted over time from their original purpose.

“All these measures already exist, we just need to apply them,” added the person in charge, insisting: “When we talk specifically about the fact that thousands of students are left without teachers, we cannot point the finger solely at the problem of absences.”