For students in the 4th year of elementary school, Friday had on the agenda the test-exam for the Mathematics subject. However, the civil service strike ended up leading to the closure of schools across the country and many students did not take the test. Filinto Lima, president of the National Association of Directors of Groups and Public Schools (ANDAEP), says that this puts the principle of equity among students is at stake.
DN knows that, in a 1st cycle school, in Maia, the establishment allowed only 4th year students to enter, instructing parents to pick up their children at lunch time. “Not all 4th year students, from the same classes, were able to stay. There were parents who couldn’t come back at lunchtime and so they had to take them home.”said a person in charge of education, who did not want to be identified.
This father also says that, already working, he received instructions from the school that, after all, he would have to pick up his son at the end of the test and not at lunchtime due to lack of staff. And he asks: “if there were no safety conditions after the test, how could they exist before?” “What worries me, despite being against the tests, is that there were students who didn’t take it because their parents couldn’t pick them up at lunch time. Priority was given to the test and some boys were deprived of taking it. Then there was the urgent notice to pick up the children and parents who had to leave work in a hurry when things were already organized”, he says.
A situation that, as the DN knows, was not a unique case and is understood by this education officer to be illegal for “violating the principle of strike”.
Filinto Lima, ANDAEP president, confirms the non-application of the test test in many schools. Regarding the case reported to DN, he warns that “the person who decides these situations is the director and he is the one who has to understand whether there are safety conditions to keep the school open”. “It’s a management issue and the school does not need to be closed to all classes. There were also schools that only opened in the morning because of the closure of the canteens”, he adds.
Admitting greater consequences of Friday’s strike for pre-school and 1st cycle students, he recalls that there is already a strike just for this type of service, in force until the end of the ‘rehearsal exams’. “This test-test strike is from STOP and has not had much impact, but yesterday’s strike had a lot of impact and even more so for 4th year students”, he admits. For the person responsible, the fact that not all students took the Mathematics “test” calls into question the principle of equity among students.
The president of ANDAEP reiterates his fear that this 3rd academic period will be marked by protests and strikes and asks for openness on the part of the unions and the Government for the ongoing negotiations, in which the new Teaching Career Statute (ECD) is being debated.
According to FENPROF, more than a thousand teachers, educators and researchers participated, on Friday, in the national demonstration against the government’s labor package, promoted by CGTP, in Lisbon. This Monday, the 20th, during the ECD review negotiation meeting, there will be a protest gathering in front of the Ministry of Education, Science and Innovation.
On May 16th, teachers, educators and researchers return to the streets in a new demonstration to ask for career advancement.
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