Study alert for example for “alarming” scenario in the secondary. Fenprof, FNE and directors ensure that they are not irresponsible.
One study About the alleged lack of teachers It came to shake the teaching sector in Portugal this Tuesday.
The study of, an initiative of the Belmiro de Azevedo Foundation and coordinated by former Minister of Education David Justino, concludes that the lack of teachers results from “Inefficiency in human resources management“considering that “there is a high discrepancy in student distribution.”
About 40% of mainland Portugal schools have Less than 15 students and 26% have Less than 10 studentsdistributed in the different years of school cycles, the research.
No Secondary education, For example, “the scenario is even more alarming, With more than 60% of the offers of professional schools from public schools to register less than 15 students, representing a waste of resources, especially teachers and public money. ”
But quickly several guardians came to public rejecting these conclusions.
Mário Nogueira, Secretary-General of the National Federation of Teachers (FENPROF), He assured that there is no poor distribution of teachers: “This is false. This It’s a lie. The public school has to respond to all familiesthey live in deserted areas, live in areas with higher population pressure. ”
“Students cannot be developed. Its move is tremendous violence. The interior is already very penalized by the educational system. ” Therefore, he argues, it makes no sense to limit the educational offer to students of the interior, even in some areas there are fewer students enrolled in the minimum number imposed by law.
Also at, Pedro Barreiros, Secretary-General of the National Federation of Education (FNE) prefers to emphasize something that the study does not explicitly indicate: “We have 140,000 foreign students. Of these, 28% do not even know their language. That is, a dedication and attention specific of each professor for these students ”.
And look at the map to ask for more details: “The country is not just Lisbon and Porto. There are other zones of the country where students and families are entitled to access the same type of formative and educational offer and this is only able to often create lower classes to that which is legally said to be the ideal value. ”
The president of the National Association of School principals, Manuel Pereira, summarizes: “Or we close the schools And we transport students to the coast, or we assume, in social terms, the need to keep schools live inside the country and keep communities alive. This is the real situation. ”
Manuel Pereira confirms that there are courses with “very few students”but what would be the alternative? “There are no courses or transporting young people to other municipalities. And the state is not available to assume ”these costs.
Already Filinto Lima, president of the National Association of Directors of public groups and schoolsleaves a guarantee: “We, directors, and also the Ministry of Education We are not irresponsible. We do not form classes that go against the law. And it seems that this study, and now statements by the author of it, indicate that. ”
It admits that the study “reflects the reality of the country”, but because of a fundamental factor: The interior has much less people. Therefore, there are fewer students per class. “But -and it is good that this is said -across the country, which is the coast, we have classes to cram from students, we have classes far above the number that sends the law,” he warns.
Paulo Cardoso, from the direction of the National Confederation of Parent Associations (Confap), commented that one cannot face “the number of students per class as a whole, when this is not the reality of the country”.
