“We currently have 1,397 schedules missing, of which more than 250 are for the 1st cycle,” stated the secretary-general of Fenprof to Lusa.
According to José Feliciano Costa, the schedules in school recruitment contests correspond to 4,709 classes, thus leading the federation to estimate that around 109,000 students remain without a teacher for at least one subject.
“Last year, around this time, we were talking about 92,000 or 93,000 affected students,” added the union leader, emphasizing the situation has worsened this academic year, which began late last week.
At the beginning of the week, a new Recruitment Reserve regime came into effect, now operating every three days instead of weekly, aiming to accelerate the placement of teachers.
The problem, José Feliciano Costa highlights, is that recruitment pools are already depleted in many subjects, and these are the positions that end up in school recruitment drives.
“They can be released every other day, they can be released every day. (…) There are no teachers, they cannot be placed,” he explains.
On the other hand, the secretary-general reports receiving accounts from school directors about difficulties in submitting schedule requests.
“Today we spoke with two directors; one had three schedules pending activation for several days, and the other had four or five. This number of schedules in school recruitment because they weren’t filled in the recruitment reserve can be significantly higher than what’s actually visible on the platforms,” he states.
In light of the recruitment challenges, Fenprof insists that addressing the teacher shortage issue necessarily involves the appreciation of professionals, as part of the revision of the Teaching Career Statute.
“Teachers do not appear spontaneously, and despite some insignificant contributions, it’s not with small emergency measures that the issue moves towards a true resolution,” the federation argues in a statement.
Last week, Minister Fernando Alexandre emphasized that it’s still not possible to count the number of students without classes, but reiterated that the vast majority of schools have all teachers placed.
Following an external audit completed over the summer on how students without classes were counted, which revealed it was not possible to obtain exact data, the Ministry is working on a new information system to be completed during the academic year.
Without official data available, he criticized the assessments made by unions, considering that “when these numbers are thrown around without explanation, we are damaging the image of public schools.”
