The leader of the PCP parliamentary group expressed strong criticism of the Ministry of Education and the Government’s inability to identify the specific needs of students. “We consider it truly indescribable that the Ministry of Education and the Government cannot identify what the students’ deficiencies are. We have thousands of students who finished the academic year without having had a teacher for at least one subject, and therefore, this is extremely serious,” she stated.
Paula Santos made these remarks to journalists at the Assembly of the Republic following a meeting with the Minister of Education, Science, and Innovation, Fernando Alexandre. This comes after the release of an external audit commissioned by the Ministry of Education, which noted that the current system “does not allow for accurate determination of the number of students without classes” due to a lack of teachers.
The communist deputy accused the Government of deceit when, in November of the previous year, it claimed to have reduced by 90% the number of students without classes compared to the previous academic year. She insisted that the Education Minister must provide explanations in parliament.
The PCP parliamentary leader argued that the measures implemented by the previous PSD/CDS-PP Government “did not solve the problem” and asserted the necessity of “quickly advancing in valuing the teaching career, because this is the structural measure to ensure that all students indeed have teachers for all subjects.”
Following the meeting with the Education Minister, the BE’s sole deputy indicated the party’s intention to access the full audit to “understand whether there is truly no way to account for the number of students without a teacher or whether there is no will to do so.”
“If there is no way to account, we want to know why the Ministry of Education and the Minister of Education provided figures claiming to have solved a problem that they don’t know how to account for,” she stated.
Mariana Mortágua expressed her desire to “confront the minister” Fernando Alexandre, after reviewing the audit, as well as other entities like school principals and teachers, “to determine if it is indeed impossible to quantify” the number of students without classes.
The BE coordinator accused the Government of lacking “a response to this problem” and of resorting to “propaganda,” preferring “to claim it is impossible to count the number of students without a teacher rather than admitting the issue is unresolved.”
The sole deputy of the PAN remarked that it was “a bit complex for the Government to claim it is unable to ascertain the outcome.”
“The number of students is known, as is the number of teachers; how the Government fails to cross-reference these elements seems, in some way, extraordinary,” added Inês de Sousa Real.
Following the controversy surrounding the data on students without classes released last year by the Ministry of Education, Science, and Innovation (MECI), Minister Fernando Alexandre requested an audit that concluded, “the current process of determining students without classes does not allow for the accurate determination of the number of students without classes.”
According to the audit, there are “gaps and deficiencies that undermine the robustness of the data reported by the Directorate-General of School Establishments (DGEstE), regarding the number of students without a class in a subject, as well as the ability to verify this number for the academic years 2023-2024 and 2024-2025.”
In light of these shortcomings, the auditing firm KPMG recommends implementing a system that “enables timely and centralized collection of this information directly from schools,” for example, “by collecting and compiling class summaries” available in electronic format.
