There are 500 students from the Algarve who continue to go to school

About 500 students from the Algarve continue to go to school, spread across the 29 host schools, in the region, for children of essential service workers.

This Monday, February 8, the minister of Education visited one of these schools, in São Brás de Alportel, on the day that distance learning returned, stressing that «we have to make a collective effort to reopen schools” for everyone “as soon as possible”.

School EB1/Jardim de Infancy nº3 in São Brás de Alportel currently receives 15 children from the 1st and 2nd cycles. The number is not fixed, it can vary, but most are children of essential workers (such as health professionals).

Ao Sul Informação, Nídia Amaro, director of the José Belchior Viegas Schools Group, explained that there are also cases of children that the school has identified as being ineffective at home, due to shortages, or students with special educational needs.

In addition to the cafeteria, where around 120 meals are prepared daily, distributed in takeaway, Tiago Brandão Rodrigues visited some of the rooms where the children attended online classes, but with an assistant providing the necessary support. Is that, despite being at school, teaching is at a distance for all students and monitored through the computer.

Little Manuel, 6th grade, was one of those cases, while preparing for a physical education class, in front of the screen.

Tiago Brandão Rodrigues, Vítor Guerreiro, Mayor of São Brás, and Alexandre Lima, Regional Delegate for Education of the Algarve – Photo: Pedro Lemos | Sul Informação

Early yesterday, he confessed, he had been talking to his class director to fine-tune what these days of distance classes will be.

For the Minister of Education, this return to online education must have a horizon: (re)opening schools, as soon as possible.

«We had the opportunity to have this break because we believe that nothing replaces classroom lessons. Just now I was talking to the director who told me that it is very important to get back as soon as possible. We all have the understanding, the people who work at the school, the families, that going back to school is necessarily an urgent matter,” he told reporters.

For now, "we still can't do it", but for the governor "it is important to see what happens here today in this school: the work that is being done".

"It is important that this idea is very appropriate for the direction of schools that, whenever they understand that the student is at risk of dropping out of school or if online teaching is ineffective, the conditions can be created to bring students who cannot afford it to schools" , considered.

Even because, he insisted on stressing, "nothing replaces face-to-face teaching, what happens in our schools, and socialization."

“Each child at home, with their families, will have their constraints. We know that physical and mental health is also necessarily affected. If it was difficult to close the schools, we must have a collective effort to create the necessary conditions to reopen them as quickly as possible, always safely, starting, probably, with the smallest”, said the Minister of Education.

Even so, asked by journalists about when the schools could open, Tiago Brandão Rodrigues did not want to "advance" any forecast, not least because "experts will still be heard".

Finally, in relation to the computers given by the Government, the minister said that there are already «100 thousand in the hands of our students», but, as for those that still have to be delivered, he did not comment.

Photos: Pedro Lemos | Sul Informação