The government’s questionable choice of the 13th anniversary of 9/ 11’s terrorist attack to reopen Portugal’s schools resulted in a total fiasco.
“From Faro to Coimbra”, it was “a country with no school bags in sight”, remarked RTP’s lunchtime news on Thursday.
“This was a ‘start’ that was almost completely still”, continued the report. “No pupils, no teachers and none of the habitual activity at the school gates”.
As always, the government has signalled a period of days over which it hoped the nation’s schools would re-open for business after their three-month-long summer break.
This year, the period was September 11-15, but with over 3000 teaching slots still to fill, and thousands of applicants facing a(nother) year without work, most schools were leaving it to the very last moment to get started.
In some areas, RTP reports that parents are still in the dark as to what class their child will be in and what timetable he/ she will have
In the Algarve, many children will not be even called for the beginning-of-term “presentation” until the last day of the callback – and that will mean they will then return home, within less than a couple of hours.
But as anyone might imagine, few pupils were complaining. The sea was warm, the sun was still shining, “long live confusion”.
And on Friday, facing angry protests outside a school in Sernancelhe, prime minister Passos Coelho admitted the start of the school year had not been “perfect” but that the government still had to “hope” that things would improve by Monday.
It was a hesitant speech which persuaded very few chanting anti-government slogans and waving placards at the school gates.
“This government has to go”, a protester told SIC TV. “It is dismantling the whole education system. It is a government that does not serve the Portuguese”.
Fenprof teachers union representative Fernando Nogueira told the news channel that the whole placement system of teachers this year is in chaos – while 8000 teaches have been summarily blocked from even applying for a post due to what he called an “illegal test” – the controversial teachers test that the government introduced this year.
