“We have reduced geographic areas to accommodate teachers,” says education minister

Education Minister Joao Costa said this Thursday that the geographic areas in which teachers will be housed “will be reduced”. They will have locations approximately 50 kilometers apart.

Kindergarten hours will now be taken into account. These measures were taken after a new meeting with trade unions.

However, although the government and the unions have reached agreement on some issues, the teachers will continue to strike as most of the teachers’ demands have not been met.

The education minister said this Thursday that he was ready to discuss other issues, but called for a return to normalcy in schools and an end to the strikes, without confirming whether meetings would be scheduled to negotiate if the shutdowns continued.

A full restoration of working hours, one of the teachers’ main demands, is not being discussed, but the government is open to negotiations with the sector’s trade unions on four concrete proposals, announced this Thursday by Joao Costa at the end of the meeting. additional negotiations on placement and auctions that ended without agreement.

At the press conference, without going into detail, the Minister of Education explained that what was at stake was “correcting the asymmetric effects” of a period when teaching careers were frozen, correcting inequalities in shortening uniform training time, reducing bureaucracy, and streamlining the position of senior technicians with unreliable contracts.

“The accessibility that we need to discuss on these issues must be accompanied by a willingness to restore normality in schools, which will allow students to resume learning,” he said, specifying that a tentative start date for meetings has been provided: March 20. .

On the trade union side, everyone gave assurances that the strikes would continue and, presenting the trade union platform of the nine organizations, the general secretary of the National Federation of Teachers (Fenprof) announced a national strike in June, more district strikes and all non-academic service.

When asked if the meeting, scheduled for more than a week, would depend on a retreat of teachers’ representatives, Joao Costa was not peremptory and insisted on the same call.

“The whole country is waiting for calm. There has never been a position on our part that is not dialogic and open,” the minister began, adding: “It is in this spirit that we want to continue, but obviously, calling for us to have the conditions for a constructive and calm dialogue”.