Two hours of debate in which only one point was agreed: the recovery of learning. After 120 minutes in which criticism of the current government was given priority and accusations were exchanged between the PS and the PSD, the factions only agreed on two resolutions (recommendations without legal force) proposed by the PSD and the Liberal Initiative.
The Assembly of the Republic was again the scene of a heated discussion about the main problems of the education sector. Of the recommendations to the government submitted to parliament by the PSD, IL and Livre, only two were adopted (albeit with an abstention from the PS), namely the proposals to strengthen the effectiveness of leather restoration measures and to strengthen and extension of the 21/23 School+ subscription.
On the eve of the 6th negotiation meeting between the guardianship and the unions, the PSD and IL bills to reintroduce assessment tests at the end of 4th and 6th grades were rejected in parliament, leaving the current ones in 2nd grade grade were eliminated. 5th and 8th grade.
With only votes against from the majority of the PS, the project law proposed by Livre, which was intended to establish a maximum number of pupils in classes at different levels of education, depending on the grade, was also rejected.
During the debate, there was much criticism of the current government, as well as of the Prime Minister António Costa and the Minister of Education, João Costa – “the main person responsible for the critical period affecting the public school”, said António Cunha, deputy of the psd.
“The absolute majority of António Costa continues to abandon students and teachers,” said the deputy, emphasizing that “no measure has been taken in seven years” to improve the profession.
Liberal initiative deputy Carla Castro also pointed to the missteps of the government “abandoning children, teaching and non-teaching staff and buildings”.
“At school and in education, the minimums are not being met, while we should be reaching the maximums,” said the deputy. “It is necessary to reform education, but it is also necessary to reform government,” she concluded.
On the other hand, the Socialist deputies accused the opposition of not presenting concrete solutions to solve the problems of the schools.
Socialist Tiago Estêvão Martins stressed the “distance between what the PSD said it was coming to discuss and what it presented” and criticized previous positions of the party defending that “there were too many teachers” – an argument also used by the deputy of the Left Bloc, Joana Mortágua. “There wasn’t a PSD leader who didn’t say there were too many teachers in Portugal,” said the BE deputy.
Incidentally, the exchange of accusations went through all parliamentary groups, which by their majority described as “vague” the five PSD proposals that had been taken up for discussion in the Assembly of the Republic and recommended “structural and urgent measures”, without however the need ones.
In turn, Socialist MEP Porfírio Silva recalled the evolution of education in Portugal over the past 30 years, where school dropout rates are at an all-time low and thousands of young people are currently accessing higher education – an intervention strongly criticized by Chega. “If we have teachers with pitiful salaries, the school is slowly deteriorating and the Ministry of Education is being destroyed in a harmful management that needs to be identified, the blame lies with the name of a man born in the 20th century whose name is António Costa,” Andre Ventura said.
The debate was also marked by the protest of a group of six teachers, who broke up the session with shouts and put up posters with the word “justice” on the back, after being removed from the parliamentary stands by PSP agents at the request of the President of the Assembly of the Republic
Negotiations will resume on Thursday
After five months of negotiations, the Ministry of Education and teachers’ representatives will meet again this Thursday for the sixth round of negotiations, which will begin at 10 a.m. The Secretary of State for Education, António Leite, will chair the meeting with the 12 trade union organizations to discuss a new teacher recruitment and hiring system, after João Costa has guaranteed “full availability” to discuss the improvement of educational careers. The unions will be able to request additional meetings, as there are still matters for which no agreement is in sight.
Source: DN
