Fenprof asks the government to analyze specific cases of sick teachers

Fifty teachers demonstrated on Tuesday to demand that the government review the rules on mobility due to illness and analyse specific cases such as that of Fernando, who had cancer of the vocal cords.

Fernando Gonçalves, a professor of visual arts, attended a protest at the Ministry of Education, Science and Innovation (MECI) in Lisbon on Tuesday, organised by the National Federation of Teachers (Fenprof), to challenge the Guardian’s decision to postpone until September the start of talks to revise the mobility due to illness (MpD) regime, delaying the entry into force of any changes.

Fernando Gonçalves, an art teacher for nearly three decades, discovered he had vocal cord cancer in 2016. He told Lusa that the cancer had robbed him of his voice and his ability to teach.

The situation for teachers worsened in 2022, when new MpD regulations deprived teachers of the right to take time off from teaching if they were ill, explained Francisco Gonçalves, deputy secretary general of Fenprof.

“Since then, I have depended on the goodwill and sensitivity of the principals who did not give me lessons. Fortunately, I was lucky and played secondary roles,” said Lusa, a teacher at the school in Valadares, Gaia, who traveled to Lisbon today to demonstrate the “injustice of the diploma.”

This is one of the points of the MpD that has been criticised by trade unions, who are demanding that the new ministerial team urgently review the regime.

“What they are doing is inhumane and unacceptable,” accused Fenprof Secretary General Mario Nogueira after reading the unanimously approved motion that calls for the revision of the diploma to be “a priority and come into force in this year’s school.”

While negotiations are not progressing, teachers are asking for specific cases such as Fernando’s to be analysed.

One of the demands of Fenprof is the ability of schools to allow exemption from teaching of all teachers who do not have the health conditions for teaching.

Francisco Gonçalves gave examples of other “dramatic cases”, such as that of a teacher from Viseu who takes care of her brother but does not graduate, since it only provides for cases in which informal guardians are responsible for their spouse or family members, direct ascendants and descendants in the 1st degree.

In June, MECI presented a proposal that would reduce the distance between a teacher’s place of residence or place of medical care and the school where they live from 50 to 40 kilometers, and move the minimum distance between their current school and the one they want to enroll in from 20 to 15 kilometers.

For Mario Nogueira, the guardianship proposal was “worse than the previous one because it kept what was bad and even made some aspects worse,” reducing the possibilities of getting a transfer because it reduced the radius within which receiving schools could be located.

Mario Nogueira also criticized the criterion that the host institution had to have eight hours of teaching experience to hire a teacher, and increased the minimum time required for a vacancy to be open from six to eight hours.

As for vacancies, it was proposed that they should make up a maximum of 10% of the number of teachers on the staff of each school/group, while the current government considers this percentage to be minimal, adds Fenprof.