The announcement was made to journalists by the IL leader, Mariana Leitão, at the end of a visit to the Eduardo Claparède College in Lisbon—one of the institutions recently highlighting the underfunding of special education, which enrolls 80 students and whose cooperation contract for the 2025/26 academic year has yet to be signed.
Mariana Leitão pointed out that after “14 years without any update,” the funding per student in cooperation contracts was increased in 2023 to 651.26 euros per month, “and since then, nothing has changed, but, be aware, because that small adjustment in 2023 fell far short of actual needs.”
“We are going to propose an update in the funding per student for association contracts and cooperation contracts,” declared the IL leader, arguing that “otherwise, the institutions cannot function, they often cannot maintain the dignity they require.”
Regarding the content of the proposal to be presented by IL, Mariana Leitão did not specify values. “At the moment, there is a fundamental problem because the way metrics are calculated does not allow for an objective assessment of the cost per student. What we want to do is work on that,” she explained.
IL aims to understand “what metrics the Government uses” to ensure their proposal “allows all institutions to meet the needs of every student they have,” she added.
“The college in question was, not long ago, about three years ago, in a vulnerable position, at risk of insolvency, precisely because it couldn’t meet its obligations, and obviously, we cannot allow the State to fail these children,” she asserted.
Mariana Leitão praised the “extraordinary work” done by the Eduardo Claparède College, acknowledging the dedication of its management and everyone working there with students from regular education.
“These are students who, for all intents and purposes, are under the State’s care, and the truth is that the State has not sufficiently valued such institutions, which do work that reference schools cannot do, often due to significant limitations in terms of human resources and even specialized technicians,” she stated, urging the State to “truly value these institutions.”
On this occasion, Mariana Leitão again criticized the PSD/CDS-PP Government for being “directionless,” deeming it unacceptable that there continues to be a lack of data on students without teachers in at least one subject in the new school year.
“It’s been 100 days of governance, but the truth is that it is a Government without: a Government without health data, without education data, without data on public employees, without data on vacant properties. So, it has no data, no direction,” she accused.
