The Minister of Education, Science and Innovation said on Friday that the government had created a solution for 70 teachers “in a serious precarious situation” at a Portuguese school in Luanda, which will be implemented once all unions have had their say.
“We had a situation of serious instability for 70 teachers in this school and we agreed to ensure stability for these teachers and to guarantee that they would be treated equally with other teachers, which has not happened for two years,” Fernando Alexandre told reporters after a meeting with trade unions representing teachers.
The objective of the negotiations was to propose the issuance of a diploma linked to the extraordinary external competition for the selection and recruitment of teaching staff at the Escola Portuguesa de Luanda (EPL).
“The first meeting with the trade unions was aimed at listening to the trade unions in the process of approving the decree-law, the purpose of which is to urgently hold an extraordinary competition for the Portuguese school of Luanda,” he said.
The EPL, created in the 1980s, was managed by the Cooperativa Portuguesa de Ensino em Angola (CPEA) until 2021, but was suspended on September 7, 2021 following a dispute with some cooperators.
The Portuguese Ministry of Education has controlled the institution since 2006, although the school was run by a private organization that had a management contract with the state.
When the administration of CPEA was taken over by the Portuguese state, the teachers’ employment relationships were not transferred and, in order to continue teaching, teachers had to sign a new contract, losing the benefits and remuneration that most had accepted.
Fernando Alexandre assured that the Portuguese government attaches “great importance” to Portuguese schools abroad, namely EPL, where “more than 2,000 students study, where there are many Angolan students, as well as children of Portuguese, children of Portuguese employees working in Luanda”, in Angola, where they are in companies that have a very important connection” with Portugal, and it is necessary “to make sure that this school has all the conditions to operate”.
The diploma, which has been broadly approved by the Council of Ministers and will be awarded following a union hearing process, is a “very urgent” diploma designed to ensure that “the contracts of these teachers, ending on August 31, can be integrated into a career or guarantee a stable employment contract” .
The minister said 10 of the 12 trade unions had already given their consent to the diploma, leaving FENPROF and STOP to respond on Monday.