“I believe this is simple to achieve,” stated Pedro Barreiro, suggesting that a teacher’s card should, for example, provide access to museums and other cultural and educational services.
Barreiro also proposes “tax reductions on the acquisition of everything teachers feel compelled to purchase, not only for commuting and housing, but also for acquiring materials and goods necessary for their profession.”
“We could determine what limit should be set,” but the goal is for teachers to “have exceptional conditions to enhance their role” to encourage more young people into the profession, as without teachers “we will have a very serious problem in the future. We already face it today.”
The Secretary-General of the FNE argued that it is necessary “to provide all conditions to teachers and those who work in schools, who are also partners in the daily routine.”
“In this case, I am speaking as a teacher, but our colleagues, all those in schools, together we are essential to achieving what society asks and demands, which is quality,” he said.
Barreiro believes that to have quality public schools, it is necessary “to adopt necessary and appropriate conditions” for that quality, instead of “comparing rankings of public schools with private schools every year.”
“Indeed, public schools do not have identical conditions to private schools, and it is normal that the rankings then reflect something that does not correspond to reality, because while quality exists in private schools, there is also much quality in public schools,” he argued.
Pedro Barreiro was speaking to journalists on the sidelines of a press conference to present the results of a national survey on the teaching career and the conditions of professional practice, conducted by the National Federation of Education (FNE) and the Association for Training and Research in Education and Work (AFIET) between July 13 and 27, involving 4,638 teachers from preschool to secondary education.
