Fernando Alexandre was today the guest at the dinner-conference of the PSD Summer University, a training initiative for young leaders that runs until Sunday in Castelo de Vide (Portalegre).
The minister focused his speech on equal opportunities, highlighting the importance of preschool access for all students to achieve it, stating that the Government is attempting to contract more places, now through the municipalities.
“The main municipalities – main in terms of vacancy shortages – have already received our protocol proposal. Next week, I will start speaking personally with each of the 30 mayors to whom we sent our proposals. If we can achieve the goal, we will be discussing 6 to 7 thousand vacancies. Let’s see what we can accomplish,” he said.
At the end, when asked by the media how he will achieve with the municipalities what he could not with the private sector and what value will be proposed per child, the minister said the Government is “negotiating.”
“We have an estimate of the costs of opening per room, depending on the model, whether they are monoblocks or whether it’s an opening or rehabilitation of a room, and it will be negotiated municipality by municipality, because each case will be unique,” he stated.
Fernando Alexandre mentioned that “the spaces are identified” and, in the protocol proposal sent to the municipalities, the Government expresses its willingness to “finance the contracting of these monoblocks, or the rehabilitation of rooms.”
Asked if these involve containers, the minister replied that “monoblocks are temporary infrastructures but have good conditions” and “are widely used in school rehabilitation processes, where students temporarily attend classes in these conditions.”
When asked if he believes the 6,000 vacancies can be achieved this year through these protocols, the minister said it depends on the municipalities’ response, detailing that it primarily concerns municipalities in Greater Lisbon, Margem Sul, Península de Setúbal, and Algarve, where the need is greater.
“They will be contracted with the municipalities that agree, it’s important to understand that these are competencies belonging to the municipalities. The Government has the responsibility to provide resources, that’s what we’ve been doing and will do with these proposals; the speed will depend on the municipalities, but I am confident the municipalities have every interest in resolving families’ issues,” he asserted.
Alongside this proposal, the minister stated that the Government has been expanding the public preschool network and has contracted rooms with private and social sectors but admitted that these did not provide “a response up to the executive’s expectations.”
At the end of July, it was revealed that private schools applied for just over 1,200 vacancies in the tender for association contracts launched to address more than 12,000 missing places in the preschool education network.
The number of vacancies desired by the schools falls far short of the objectives of the Ministry of Education, Science and Innovation (MECI), which had put 12,475 vacancies to tender, distributed across 65 municipalities.
