Negotiations on teacher recruitment and placement start today

The Ministry of Education and the teachers’ unions are starting today to negotiate models for recruiting and placing teachers, with the tutelage defending autonomy for schools to choose part of their team.

Over the next two days, officials from the Ministry of Education and representatives of teachers’ unions will once again sit down at the table to start a negotiation process on a new model for recruiting and placing teachers, a matter that had already come from the previous legislature, when the current minister, João Costa, was Assistant Secretary of State and Education.

One of the measures conceived by the Ministry of Education is to give autonomy to the directors so that they can select part of the teachers, taking into account the profile of the teachers and the educational projects of the school, revealed in an interview with Lusa, at the opening of the school year, the minister of Education.

“It is not completely decentralizing the competition of teachers, but also giving some autonomy to schools so that, at least, part of the teaching staff can be selected according to local criteria and their own criteria”, explained João Costa.

Another of the changes planned by the tutelage is to integrate teachers by School Board and not by Boards of Pedagogical Zone (QZP), since the latter corresponds to much wider regions (the country is divided into only 10 QZP).

In addition, the Ministry also wants to reduce the size of the current QZPs.

Both the tutelage and the unions have defended that the review of the recruitment and placement model should translate into a fight against precariousness, providing greater stability and job security.

Both also agree that it is necessary to stabilize the teaching staff, but unions, such as Fenprof, have already defended that the placement of teachers should be done through national competitions and based on professional graduation, demonstrating against the possibility of schools hire directly taking into account the profile of teachers and educational projects.

On the part of the unions, another demand is the linking of teachers in sufficient numbers to ensure that schools are able to respond to their permanent needs and that they are preferably integrated into the school framework.

Similar to the Ministry of Education, teachers’ representatives also advocate increasing the number of QZPs and reducing their size.

Recently, and following the change in the requirements for qualifications for the academic year 2022-2023, unions have also defended that schools should no longer be able to hire teachers without professional qualifications, which currently require a master’s degree in teaching.