[ad_1]
Private schools will be closed for the next two weeks, but unlike public schools, their students will continue to have classes, which will be taught remotely. The Association of Private and Cooperative Education Establishments (AEEP) considers that its condition of autonomy allows it to have a different operating model and choose to continue with the teaching activity.
“We will comply with the closure decision,” the executive director of AEEP, Rodrigo Queirós e Melo, tells the PUBLIC, after a meeting of the association’s board of directors in which the measures announced this Thursday by António Costa were announced, after the Council of Ministers. analyzed. But, despite closing the doors, the schools want to continue with the classes, in a distance education regime.
The statement with the decisions of the Council of Ministers, meanwhile released by the Government, speaks of “the suspension of teaching and non-teaching activities”, that is, everything regardless of whether they are carried out in person or remotely. The measure covers “public, private and cooperative educational establishments”, as well as the social and solidarity sector, from pre-school education to basic and secondary education.
The AEEP, which defended that, at least the youngest students, 1st and 2nd cycle, could continue taking face-to-face classes, is still waiting to know the terms of the Government Decree to understand in what terms it can materialize. your intention. The doubts are “mainly about how things can work from an administrative point of view,” says its CEO. The association of the schools guarantees that you will be able to continue with the academic calendar defined at the beginning of the year and with similar class schedules for the next two weeks.
It is not the first time that PREPA has moved away from public schools, following the decisions made by the Government to combat the pandemic. There were schools that taught distance classes on November 30 and December 7, just before the holidays, so the decree of the state of emergency determined the suspension of all educational activities. At that time, the government warned the private and cooperative sector that it was also covered by the diploma, but the classes did happen, with some private schools maintaining the same teaching schedule, even with students and teachers in their homes.
“The State of Emergency and the fight against the pandemic did not suspend either the Constitution or the Law,” defends Queirós e Melo, justifying that, for AEEP, the private school operating regime grants the sector autonomy to make a decision other than the one that will apply to public schools.
This same autonomy also allows schools to make different decisions within the private sector. The Salesians of Lisbon sent this Thursday afternoon a statement to their parents’ tutors announcing the “interruption of teaching for the next fifteen days”, after “the solution proposed by the Prime Minister.”
The Lisbon school had communicated the day before to the parents that it was preparing the continuation of the classes in the distance education modality, but considers, unlike the AEEP, that the measure announced by the Government “is intended for public schools and private ”The commitments“ totally the plan drawn up for the next few days ”.
Update at 7:36 pm: It adds the content of the statement from the Council of Ministers, which includes private schools among which they have to suspend their activity in the next two weeks.
