In statements to journalists at the end of a visit to the Vouzela Secondary School in the Viseu district, the minister said he could not specify the exact day when the competition would be opened, nor the number of vacancies. “We will publish the vacancy ordinance very soon, which is the first necessary step, and then the notice will be issued. So, in the coming days,” he added.
Fernando Alexandre emphasized that the Government is handling this process very quickly and considered that “the most difficult part is done.”
On Thursday, the President of the Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, promulgated the Government’s decree for the creation of an exceptional and temporary regime for teacher recruitment and financial support for displaced teachers, a day after the measures were approved by the Council of Ministers.
The competition, which the Government anticipates may be completed by November, seeks to resolve the shortcomings identified in the extraordinary binding competition carried out by the previous executive, which left 3,000 schedules without an assigned teacher, 19,000 teachers without placement, and 1,600 teachers without a schedule.
Fernando Alexandre clarified to journalists that teachers will not be able to accumulate relocation support and rental support. “They have to choose one, whichever is more beneficial for the teacher,” he explained.
Financial support for displaced teachers placed in needy schools more than 70 kilometers from their residence, regardless of the recruitment group, varies between 150 and 450 euros, depending on the distance between school and residence.
When questioned about the controversy surrounding the number of students without a teacher, the Minister of Education said that the Government’s objective is only, through “real numbers,” to show the gravity of the problem: “we are facing it head-on and we are not hiding it.”
“There is no single way to measure. The former Minister of Education chose the number he preferred. We show various numbers. There is one that is 300,000, there is another that is 22,000,” he considered.
However, according to the minister, “whatever the number,” what matters is that “the problem of students without classes is very serious” and this Government will solve it.
On Thursday, the Ministry of Education, Science, and Innovation clarified that the disclosed number of 324,000 students without classes in September of the previous school year refers to those who were without a teacher “at some point” during that period.
“The number of 324,000 students referred to by MECI concerns students who were without classes in a subject, at some point, during the month of September,” the ministry stated in response to Lusa agency, in a clarification after former Education Minister João Costa accused the current Government of inflating the number of students without classes at the beginning of the school year.
