The letters, which reached Lusa, were addressed to directors, teachers, and non-teaching staff, and began being sent to all schools on Wednesday, on the eve of the 2025/2026 academic year.
As he did last year, Fernando Alexandre reaffirmed his commitment to valuing professionals, recalling the challenges faced in education and the path he started to forge as a minister in the previous administration.
To teachers, he expressed a desire for them to have “an increasingly stable and predictable professional life that makes the teaching profession compatible with family life.”
The anticipation of placement competitions and an extraordinary tenure competition are some of the responses to this goal, says Fernando Alexandre, who also mentions the beginning, shortly, of the review of the Teaching Career Statute.
The objective, he anticipates, is “to value and recognize the profession, but also to improve working conditions.”
On another note, the minister also promised to assess and revise the transfer of competencies to municipalities, to review the diploma regulating school autonomy, administration, and management, and to advance the proposal for creating the Director’s Statute.
In the letter sent to school leaders, Fernando Alexandre emphasized that “their leadership, dedication, and commitment support the schools, inspiring and motivating teachers and students.”
Addressing non-teachers, he highlighted the role of specialized technicians, assistants, and auxiliaries in ensuring a “healthy school environment that allows for the integral development of students,” and pledged to value those professionals with “greater attention to the qualification needs for performing non-teaching educational functions.”
The 2025/2026 school year begins with several changes in the organization of the Ministry of Education, Science, and Innovation, which will consist of fewer structures.
In the non-higher education system, two entities are being created — the Agency for the Management of the Educational System and the Institute of Education, Quality and Evaluation — replacing eight structures that will be abolished.
This change is also addressed in the letters sent to teachers and directors, to whom the minister assures that the new organization will allow for streamlining processes, interaction with the Ministry, and ensure the consistency of educational policies.
“In the future, schools, management, and teachers will be able to focus on what truly matters and what truly motivates you: the noble mission of teaching, improving the learning of all students, and the quality of the educational process,” one of the letters states.
Once again, the shortage of teachers marks the return to classes and the beginning of a school year in which schools will continue to lose hundreds of teachers to retirement.
Taking the opportunity to thank these professionals, the minister also appeals to them to use the last years of their career “to support younger teachers, sharing their deep knowledge of the educational process.”
“I know the path is not always easy, but I am sure that together, with your commitment and dedication, we will overcome today’s and tomorrow’s challenges and thus achieve better and better results,” he concludes.
