The General Council of the Group of Schools Alberto Sampaio, from Braga, released on Thursday a statement in which it is against the return to the face-to-face classes of students of the 11th and 12th years, also opposing the realization of national exams .
In the note published through social networks, the organization highlights the “risks” that “parents, students and their families” run “before which the security guarantees given by guardianship are manifestly insufficient”.
The entity met on May 12th, reaching this resolution unanimously, pointing out “serious doubts about the existence of sufficient physical and human resources for the necessary disinfection of school spaces”, with special emphasis on bathrooms, “ few and even fewer hand wash basins ”.
It accounts for the composition of the classes with 28 to 30 students, a number that hinders the recommended social distance, highlighting two points that, says the council, “will not bring any benefit” to anyone, although they are the only solutions found to guarantee the distance.
One of the ways found is to occupy a “large space” in order to spread the students, but this will bring acoustic problems in relation to the “projection of the teacher’s voice” so that “it is heard”. In this case, with a mask and without the possibility of circulating through space, the council believes that it could be a problem.
The other solution is to divide the class at least into two shifts, which may cause major limitations on the schedules of students and teachers, taking into account the time defined by the government (10:00 am to 5:00 pm), students “with half the workload for each subject”.
The council also points out that, in case of infection, which he says is “predictable”, “there will be no equity, as some classes will be quarantined, while others will continue in person”. “If teachers are common, all of their classes are quarantined,” they add.
They also point out that there is no “an equitable solution for the cases of students with serious illnesses that prevent them from attending the face-to-face classes, much less for those who, in a situation of infection or quarantine, are prevented from taking the national exam, calling into question , particularly in the case of the 12th year, access to Higher Education in the first phase, as well as the work developed over the 3 years ”.
The general council concludes the communiqué by pointing out less explicit pedagogical arguments to the tutelage, whom it accuses of only instituting measures of lack of definition.
“The insistence on maintaining exams, when the Secondary Education Diploma will be awarded with the Final Internal Classification, makes it even more clear that national exams are nothing more than placing Secondary Education at the service of Higher Education, since they will serve exclusively for access it ”, conclude.
The Government, through Resolution of the Council of Ministers no. 33-C / 2020, of April 30, approved a gradual strategy for lifting containment measures in the context of combating the pandemic.
He defined as the first step in the lack of definition of the educational system, “the return of students from the 11th and 12th years and the 2nd and 3rd years of double certification courses in secondary education to classroom teaching activities”, starting from of May 18, 2020.
It was defined that all measures are accompanied by specific operating conditions, including stocking rules, use of personal protective equipment, scheduling and physical distance that add to the general conditions for lifting confinement measures.
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