The Minister of Education stated this Wednesday (1) in Parliament that the number of timetables to be filled in schools is 448a value updated on March 26th and which, according to Fernando Alexandre, represents a significant drop compared to the 1,208 registered two months earlier, on January 26, 2026. The reduction, he explained, results not only from the placements made in the meantime, but also from the correction of administrative errors that inflated the initial numbers.
During the sectoral debate in plenary, the government official directly contested the data released by unions and other entities, which have pointed to a worsening of the lack of teachers, as reported by Fenprof in DN earlier this week. According to the minister, these estimates are based on information “out of touch with reality” and with “great weaknesses”, “overestimating” the number of students without classes.
“On January 26, 2026, 1,208 slots were identified as unoccupied. However, these slots brought together many repeated needs. For example, a school on the Setúbal Peninsula identified 23 timetables, which effectively corresponded to one. In another school, 10 Moral Education times effectively corresponded to one timetable. These cases are multiplying across the country”, he told the deputies.
According to the Minister of Education, Science and Innovation, “the process of reviewing and consolidating the identification of teacher needs has allowed the elimination of these duplications”, reducing the number of effectively missing timetables by more than half in just two months. Even so, the minister acknowledged that the work “is not completed”, admitting that inconsistencies persist in the Ministry’s information systems.
To solve the problem, the Government “is developing a new digital system that will make it possible to identify with greater rigor both the real needs of teachers and students without classes”. This system should also reveal situations of imbalance, namely schools with an excess of teachers, “because there are those too”, added the minister.
Fernando Alexandre framed these measures within a broader reform of the Ministry of Education, Science and Innovation (MECI), highlighting the dimension of the structure it oversees. The government official highlighted that MECI is the largest national employercounting “with a number of professionals five times higher than that of the largest private employer, Pingo Doce”, in a network of 809 groups with over 5,200 schools.
“MECI’s teachers and specialized technicians represent around 20% of employees and an expenditure of around R$6 billion, that is, 2% of the national GDP”, he added.
Faced with this dimension, the governor defended the need for more rigorous and efficient management of human resources, criticizing the current system for generating inefficiencies that harm both students, “who are left without classes for prolonged periods”, and the teachers themselves, subject “to an excessive bureaucratic burden”.
Leave a Reply