“Last week we had about a thousand schedules to fill, but not all of them are full-time,” said the Minister of Education, Science, and Innovation, Fernando Alexandre, speaking to journalists on the sidelines of the 4th edition of the Teaming Club Conference, which brings together the Centers of Excellence of the European Union’s “Teaming for Excellence” program.
A full-time schedule is 35 hours per week, divided between teaching and non-teaching components, but according to Fernando Alexandre, only half of the schedules are full-time. The rest are for fewer hours, which are also “often more difficult to fill because it is hard to hire someone to work so few hours,” he acknowledged.
However, according to the minister, this situation “does not mean that students are without classes,” as “overtime often solves the problem.”
“Contrary to what Fenprof (National Federation of Teachers) is systematically doing, the fact that we have a shortage of teachers does not mean that we have students without classes,” criticized Fernando Alexandre, assuring that school directors often ask teachers to use their overtime to cover the smaller schedules.
The shortage of teachers in schools has been a problem felt by schools for several years, largely due to the aging of the teaching workforce, which retires and is not replaced at the same rate.
