The National Union of Higher Education is “very concerned” about the “mastodontic structure” of the new Ministry of Education, which has “very complex” portfolios and will require government officials to be willing and able to engage in dialog.
The composition of the Ministry of Education, Science and Innovation was announced on Thursday and the absence of a Higher Education secretariat worries the president of the National Higher Education Union (SNESup), José Moreira, who sees a “mastodontic structure”.
The Ministry of Education, Science and Innovation of the XXIV Constitutional Government will have two Secretaries of State for Education and one for Science, but none dedicated exclusively to Higher Education.
“From a symbolic point of view, it immediately worries me that there is no Secretary of State for Higher Education, because even when there was no Ministry of Higher Education, as there was under Nuno Crato, there was a Secretary of State,” José Moreira recalled.
The teachers’ and researchers’ representative fears that the merger of two ministries – education and higher education and science – will create “a ministry that is quite difficult to manage”.
“In a ministry of this complexity, this will be a Herculean task,” he warned, criticizing the government for having opted to create a “behemoth structure”.
“We are concerned about whether this new ministry will have the capacity for dialogue,” he said, stressing that there are urgent issues, such as the precariousness in the sector, which “affects 90% of researchers”.
The Minister of Education, Science and Innovation, Fernando Alexandre, clarified that Higher Education, for which he has not been appointed Secretary of State, will remain under his remit.
The new Ministry will bring education, higher education and science back under the same umbrella, areas that were split between two ministries in previous Socialist governments.
The new team includes three Secretaries of State: the political scientist and education specialist Alexandre Homem Cristo will be Assistant Secretary of State for Education; Pedro Cunha, currently Director General of Education, will be Secretary of State for Education and the researcher Ana Paiva will hold the Science portfolio.
