The coordinator of the Bloco de Esquerda, Mariana Mortágua, on Tuesday proposed an allowance for displaced teachers “to be able to pay for housing” and demanded that the government value teaching careers, accusing it of a “total failure” in education .
“There are things the government can do and parliament can do. First, paying for travel: There needs to be an allowance for teachers to afford housing. The housing crisis today is an education crisis. It is necessary and it is also necessary to provide a supplement to displaced teachers,” said Mariana Mortágua, speaking to journalists.
The blockade coordinator was this morning at Escola Secundária de Santa Maria, in the municipality of Sintra, where she met with the director and demanded that the executive respect the careers of the teachers.
“Valuing the profession, making sure we can attract teachers today. Gone are the times when the right and the PSD told teachers to emigrate, that we had too many teachers. It was a mistake, there were consecutive years of mistakes and they are now paying for themselves with a lack of teachers in all schools”the block leader emphasized, warning that the high school she visited today has “more than twenty classes without teachers.”
For Mariana Mortágua, this high school is “a reflection of the country” and the “total failure of the government to solve Portugal’s educational problems”.
The block leader warned that “there are teachers on staff who are overworked to fill the gaps created by the lack of teachers” and that there are also “teachers hired without sufficient qualifications to teach certain subjects”.
“This school, and the report given to us by the school director, is a portrait of an impossibility: it is not possible to run a school, it is not possible to provide quality education to students, and what is provided comes from the efforts of teachers under these circumstances,” he said.
Mariana Mortágua also said that “what hinders learning is that there are not enough teachers for the whole country”.
“What hinders learning is that a teacher has to live in a van to teach. And I ask which students can learn and get a quality education if they are taught by a teacher whose endeavor involves living in a van or sharing a house at 40 years old. “, 50 years old, without any possibility of a life, a connection, a quality life, this endangers education,” regretted.
Last Friday (22), hundreds of teachers and non-teaching workers took to the streets of Lisbon, during a demonstration called by the Union of All Education Professionals (Stop), to demand the resignation of the Minister of Education, João Costa, and ask for solutions to various problems encountered in public schools.
The demonstration, which ended a strike week declared by Stop, was the first by school professionals in the 2023/2024 academic year, with teachers and non-teachers vowing to continue the protest, as they did last year.
The main demand is the restoration of the service period that was frozen (six years, six months and 23 days), in addition to problems such as the lack of teachers, technical and operational assistants.
Source: DN
