The Minister of Education revealed this Wednesday, October 15, that last week there were still around a thousand schedules to be filled in schools, stressing that the lack of teachers “does not mean that students are without classes”.
“Last week we had around a thousand schedules to fill, but not all of them are complete schedules”, 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 timetable is 35 hours a week, divided between classes and non-teaching components, but according to Fernando Alexandre only half of the timetables are complete. The rest are few hours, but are also “often more difficult to fill because it is difficult to hire someone to work such few hours”, he acknowledged.
However, according to the minister, this situation “does not mean that students are without classes”, especially because “overtime often allows the problem to be resolved”.
“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, ensuring that school directors often ask teachers to use their overtime to fill shorter hours.
The lack of teachers in schools has been a problem that schools have experienced for several years, largely due to the aging of the teaching population, which retires and is not replaced at the same rate.