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At least 800 teachers for whom they are still at fault refused to be placed in a school because they would earn between 555 and 750 euros net for teaching between 8 and 14 hours of class a week, to which are added all the others destined to accompany the students, by being present in meetings and other tasks included in the so-called non-teaching component and that make up a schedule of 35 hours a week.
This was the situation a week ago, when about 1600 places were to be filled, and now there is a group of hired teachers who will be heard this Tuesday in Parliament.
This hearing of the Parliamentary Education Commission is part of the examination procedures of a petition, signed by 4,703 patients, with a view to modifying the regulations governing teacher placement competitions.
More precisely, what these teachers complain about is the change in the time intervals (number of hours of class per week) that are tendered for hired teachers and that, they claim, are one of the reasons for the shortage of teachers who have been getting worse in recent years.
“For many teachers, it is more advantageous economically, and also on a family level, to work close to home in an unskilled job than to accept a placement miles from home, to move away from family and to have expenses often unaffordable with the salary they earn. ”, They underline in a statement released on Tuesday’s hearing.
This is one of the reasons also pointed out by directors and unions, in particular the lack of teachers in Greater Lisbon and the Algarve, the most affected regions, which has been aggravated by the increase in rents in these regions. To get a placement, hired teachers often have to agree to be placed hundreds of miles from home.
The Ministry of Education (ME) still does not present figures of teachers that remain to be published. Speaking to the press on Monday, Minister Tiago Brandão Rodrigues considered that the current pandemic situation has led many teachers not to accept being placed in Greater Lisbon and the Algarve.
He also pointed out, among the reasons for the current shortage, the fact that 500 board teachers were at home because they belonged to risk groups. Situation that you can only enjoy for a month. On the other hand, the ME also indicated in responses to the PUBLIC, this academic year there are more than 1100 teachers who were assigned mobility due to illness, the vast majority of whom moved from Greater Lisbon to the North region.
Returning to the content of the petition, it should be noted that in national competitions, hired teachers must express preference for one or all of the following intervals: full schedule (22 hours of classes per week); between 15 and 21 hours and between 8 and 14 hours. Generally, the latter are reserved for those contracted in national tenders.
Booking and cancellation reservations
Of these, the so-called hiring reserves remain open, which are destined to cover the vacant positions at the beginning of the academic year and others that are missing due mainly to the dismissal of teachers in the board.
Only when contest results are released will contractors know exactly how many class hours they have been allocated. A problem that is also raised in the petition: “In any job offer, a candidate has the right to know the salary to be earned and the workload to which he is applying. In the specific case of teachers, they are subject to uncertainty, a true ‘lottery’ in working conditions, due to the imposition of these time intervals ”.
In the petition, the signatories demand that the hours “whose salary is lower than the national minimum wage” be no longer included in the job offers, and also that the “amplitude” of the hours offered for competition be reduced. They admit that “the increase in the number of intervals does not, in itself, eliminate the arbitrariness of the tender”, but they argue that this change would be a good way to reduce also by counting the duration of service and the working days declared to Social Security , with future impacts in retirement and beyond.
