Fenprof warns that 4,000 primary school students may start classes without a teacher

"At this moment, when hiring schools, schedules without teachers affect around 276 thousand children or even more, which reveals a significant worsening of schedules compared to last year when, at this time, there were the equivalent of around 232 thousand students without classes", the secretary-general of the National Federation of Teachers ( Fenprof ) told Lusa.

Feliciano Costa highlighted the serious problem of the first cycle: "there are 184 timetables without anyone", which could mean around 4,500 children without a teacher in a school cycle in which non-professional teachers cannot be used.

"An engineer might be able to figure things out and teach math, but in the primary school years, only a teacher can teach children to read and write. The miracle of reading begins there, and there are methods for teaching it," he emphasized.

The leader anticipated that the solution would involve dividing the children without a teacher among the remaining classes at the school.

On Monday, September 8, Fenprof analyzed the time slots that remained unfilled and found "2,758 school time slots being contracted, that is, 700 more than last year," said Feliciano Costa.

According to Fenprof's calculations, teacher-free hours are equivalent to around 50,000 hours of classes per week in schools located mainly in the Lisbon, Alentejo and Algarve areas.

In addition to the failures in the first cycle, there are also significant shortages of preschool teachers, technology teachers, or special education teachers, added Feliciano Costa.

"These are the most complicated groups, but there are gaps in all groups," ranging from Portuguese, History, Mathematics or Natural Sciences in the second cycle, but also Mathematics or Geography in secondary education.

By contracting schools, principals can recruit non-professional teachers, but Feliciano Costa says there are now fewer options: "we have 2,566 fewer candidates."

The schools with the greatest shortages are concentrated in the Lisbon area, where there are approximately 300 vacancies, but also in Setúbal, with nearly 200 vacancies, and in the Alentejo and Algarve regions. In Faro, for example, "there are 122 vacancies," the union leader explained.

Classes begin between September 11th and 15th for approximately 1.3 million students from 1st to 12th grade.

Among the new features for this new academic year is the ban on smartphone use for students in the 1st and 2nd cycles of education, and the measure may be extended to students in the 3rd cycle.

Photo: Fenprof.