This Wednesday, the PSD is taking five initiatives to a vote in parliament targeting the “key issues” in education, including a recommendation for the government to negotiate with unions to reinstate teachers’ service time, and refuses to mix this process.
“The PSD is concerned about what is happening to the education sector and to the future of public schools. (…) After seven years of PS administration, none of the fundamental issues affecting education have been resolved, we can only but conclude that education is not a priority for the government,” deputy António Cunha, PSD coordinator in the parliamentary committee for education and science, said in statements to Lusa.
The Social Democratic deputy believed that in the last seven years “nothing had happened about career restructuring, about hiring teachers or reducing bureaucracy in careers, about the initial training of teachers or about how to make this career more attractive to youth”.
“It is frightening that in our country hardly anyone wants to become a teacher. We are concerned, and in what way, the time bomb that will be the brutal lack of teachers in the coming years,” he said, referring to that, in the past two years there are already “thousands of students” who spend an entire year in a subject without a teacher.
On the other hand, the deputy highlighted the PSD’s concerns about the recovery of learning after the covid-19 pandemic.
“No one knows how things are going, are the students learning or not? There are no results that can be compared to 2016, the whole wealth of information that the country had at the end of bicycle testing, the government put an end to it, everything,” he criticized.
For this reason, one of the five diplomas that the PSD is voting on today – and the only one in the form of a bill – intends to reintroduce, at the end of the 4th and 6th, the measurement tests, of universal and compulsory application . editions º years of education (the achieved classifications can be used to weight the final ranking, at the choice of the school or school group) and eliminating those that currently exist in 2nd, 5th, and 8th grades.
On the reinstatement of teachers’ service time, an issue that continues to divide the government and unions, the Social Democrats are taking up the issue in a resolution (without the force of law), recommending to the executive a series of urgent measures in the education sector. , including a negotiation process with teachers “to reclaim the missing service time” and to create conditions “to eliminate vacancies for entry into 5th and 7th grades, a tourniquet that does not exist in other grades”.
“We do not interfere in the negotiations between the unions and the government, but we believe that a negotiation process should be started with the structures, so that opportunities to regain the missed service are seen,” justified António Cunha.
For the PSD deputy, the most recent statements by the Minister of Education, João Costa, open to “career improvements”, show that this position of the PSD, as well as the demonstrations and strikes in the sector, “will force the government to sit with the unions”.
“The public school cannot continue to live in this state of siege,” he said, arguing that these measures should include valuing early-career salaries for teachers to make them more attractive.
The PSD also makes recommendations to the government to “strengthen the effectiveness, duration and funding of learning recovery measures”, to reduce the bureaucratic burden currently entrusted to teachers and to increase the allocation for school social action in the state budget for 2024.
“Life is not easy for the Portuguese and the main goal of Ação Social Escolar is to fight social exclusion. The PSD recommends greater coverage of the number of students,” he said, illustrating that currently a couple with a child whose two elements are paid the minimum wage “not entitled to any contribution”.
In addition to the five PSD diplomas, Iniciativa Liberal (IL) and Livre are today also bringing their own education projects to the debate, a total of 12 initiatives between the three banks.
Like the PSD, the IL proposes reintroducing assessment tests in the last years of each cycle of primary education, and reintroducing them in years 4 and 6, and recommends that the government expand the learning recovery plan.
Among the resolutions, the Liberals also want a reassessment of the decision to digitize 9th grade cycle final exams, verify compliance with the school building intervention program, and give greater autonomy to private and cooperative education for hiring teachers.
The Free Party is debating a bill that sets the maximum number of pupils in pre-school classes and at different levels of education – between 18 and 20 pupils, depending on the year of study (but could be even lower due to special circumstances) – and a resolution for the government to to guarantee all teachers posted more than 60 kilometers from their place of residence “the equitable payment of housing and transportation allowances”.
Source: DN
