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“One of the most serious problems is the lack of teachers,” the minister of education, science and innovation, Fernando Alexandre, recognised today in his opening speech to the parliamentary committee that this morning began its special examination of the proposed State Budget for 2026.
Fernando Alexandre chose the lack of teachers and the number of schedules without teachers to begin his presentation of the proposed State Budget for 2025, which foresees a “6% increase” for the areas of education, higher education and science, i.e. “€621 million more” than the amount the government plans to spend this year.
“On 24 October, we had 1,240 unfilled timetables, we had 480 groups where there was at least one unfilled timetable and we had 12 groups that had 10 or more unfilled timetables,” Fernando Alexandre acknowledged, admitting that the figure may already be out of date.
The 1,240 timetables without teachers “are all concentrated” in the Greater Lisbon area, the Setúbal Peninsula and some areas of the Alentejo and Algarve, with the proposal for the next State Budget “spending a further €118 million” on measures to combat the lack of teachers.
To attract teachers to schools, the minister recalled some measures already underway, such as support for travel for those posted far from home, and a new extraordinary external competition for schools with greater difficulty in hiring teachers.
Paying for extraordinary teaching service and allowing teachers to extend their careers beyond retirement age were other measures Fernando Alexandre mentioned this morning.
The minister recognised that, in a universe of “more than 128,000 teachers (in schools), it is natural that there will always be unfilled timetables, the question is how quickly [each timetable] is filled”. The minister emphasised again today that the number of empty timetables doesn’t indicate how many pupils are actually without lessons.
“Many of us would like to know the answer to the number of pupils without lessons. The system is not yet set up to answer that. It will be. We need to have absolutely accurate information,” said Fernando Alexandre.
Platform with Lusa