The Socialist Party (PS) today called for an end to the “number war” regarding students without classes, urging the government to provide solutions and release the full audit report deemed to have covered up the minister’s imprudence.
In statements to the media, PS deputy Porfírio Silva addressed the external audit commissioned by the Ministry of Education and released on Monday. The audit indicates that the current system for determining how many students are without classes due to a lack of teachers “does not provide an accurate count of students without classes.”
“This audit seems only to cover up the imprudence of the Ministry of Education when it presented erroneous figures to exaggerate a false success of its plan. What is needed is progress towards solving the problem,” noted the socialist.
Porfírio Silva argued that it’s time to move past the “number war” and towards “the missing solutions.” He emphasized that the lack of teachers is a real issue, prevalent in many developed countries, with diverse and complex causes that can’t be resolved overnight.
“The audit that finally arrived confirms what the PS has always stated. When the Minister of Education announced a substantial improvement in the numbers of students without a teacher for a subject, there was no data to support this claim. It was yet another chapter in the illusion that complex problems can be solved in a few weeks,” he criticized.
Recognizing the taxpayer money spent on commissioning this audit, the PS will request the Ministry of Education to provide the full report, not just a summary, for a thorough examination of the analysis conducted.
“The truth is we need to move forward; the diagnosis has been established since 2021. Since then, a study commissioned by the Ministry of Education provided figures for teacher needs up to 2030, involving several tens of thousands. It is the essence of this issue we need to address,” he pointed out.
Porfírio Silva stressed the need to “trust schools and move towards fundamental solutions.”
He cited the necessity to increase the capacity of higher education institutions to expand training offerings fully to meet the demand for teaching master’s programs, which are indeed increasing. “It’s these structural solutions we must focus on,” he exemplified.
However, considering what has been disclosed, a point of concern for the PS deputy is that the audit suggests a lack of understanding of school operations, pointing out “suggestions about an automatic model for tallying that doesn’t account for the reality of schools.”
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 ordered an audit. The audit concluded that “the process in place to determine students without classes does not allow for an accurate count of students without classes.”
The audit highlighted “gaps and insufficiencies that undermine the data’s reliability reported by the General Directorate of Schools (DGEstE), regarding the number of students without class for a subject, as well as the possibility of verifying this number for the academic years 2023-2024 and 2024-2025.”
In light of these shortcomings, the auditor KPMG recommends implementing a system that “allows timely and centralized collection, directly from schools,” through methods such as “collecting and compiling lesson summaries available in electronic format.”
