Former Education Minister João Costa today accused the Government of inflating the number of students without classes at the beginning of the school year, citing official data that points to 72 thousand and not 324 thousand.
«The current Ministry of Education, Science and Innovation (MECI) has repeated a number that allegedly amounts to 324.228 students without a teacher and which, objectively, does not correspond to the truth», said João Costa, in a hearing at the parliamentary committee for Education and Science, at the request of Chega regarding alleged irregularities in the placement of teachers within the scope of internal and external competitions.
Citing official data from the Directorate-General for School Establishments (DGEstE), the former minister disputed the number released by the current executive of 324.228 students without classes in a subject at the beginning of the school year.
“At the end of the second recruitment reserve, there were 72.894 students without a teacher for at least one subject,” said João Costa.
A week later, after the third recruitment reserve, there were around 144 thousand students without classes, an increase justified by the need to replace teachers who had gone on sick leave, he added.
“What worries me is whether this number is not being inflated so that a reduction based on a number that is not real can then be presented as a major result,” he said.
The Government's objective is to reduce by 90% the number of students without classes in at least one subject during the 1st period compared to 2023/2024, which, according to MECI, was around 21 thousand.
These numbers are also inflated, accused João Costa, who again cited data from DGEstE according to which there were a shortage of teachers for around 15 thousand students at the end of the 1st school term and only two thousand reached December without having had classes in at least one subject.
"The achievement of the objective, if it is in relation to the students who were lacking teachers at the end of the 1st period, will mean that the number will be only 1.500; if it is in relation to the students who had no classes since the beginning of the 1st period, if there are more than 200 students, the Government will not have achieved its goal, and I deeply hope that the Government achieves the goal for the good of the students", said the former head of the Education portfolio.
Lusa asked MECI about the source of the data released this week by Minister Fernando Alexandre regarding the last academic year, with no response so far.
The former Minister of Education was heard today in the Assembly of the Republic on the day the school year begins, once again marked by a lack of teachers.
According to the current minister, Fernando Alexandre, at the beginning of the week, the results of the second recruitment reserve left 1.091 time slots to be filled, to which are added the time slots made available daily through school hiring, the last resource available for recruiting teachers.
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