Emblematic space of the 25th of April in Santarém receives protest from teachers – Society

The teachers’ strike by district takes place this Monday in Santarém, with a first protest bringing together several dozen teachers at the door of Ginestal Machado Secondary School, in a “warm-up” for the afternoon concentration at the former Cavalry Practice School.

On the eve of the celebration of the Carnation Revolution, teachers from the entire district of Santarém will gather at the place where, in the early hours of April 25, 1974, the military column led by the “captain of April” Salgueiro Maia left, to reaffirm slogans like “We don’t stop” and “Respect”.

Among the banners shown at the end of the morning at the entrance to Escola Secundária Ginestal Machado, dozens of teachers reaffirmed that “Education is not an expense! Education is an investment”, in an appeal to “Value those who are there. Attract those who come”.

Holding the end of the banner of the Ginestal Machado School Group, the former director, Manuel Lourenço, spoke to Lusa about the “lack of hope in those who govern” and the “future of education”, after more than 30 years in the profession.

As an example, he gave his professional group, Mathematics, in which 10 of the 14 teachers in this school will leave for retirement in six years, without any glimpse of how continuity will be guaranteed.

“My daughter even wanted to follow the example of her parents and be a math teacher, but she saw our life and chose to work in a company, where, after a year, she earns as much as we do and turns off the computer at 6 pm and at the end week,” he said.

“There is a lot of wear and tear”, added Margarida Gabriel, recounting the “years without a family” and the families “that are destroyed”, with the example of a colleague, whose daughter has already married, and is still “hundreds of kilometers from home”. , without having had the opportunity to accompany the growth of their children.

José Feliciano Costa, president of the Teachers Union of Greater Lisbon (SPGL), who is accompanying the protest in Santarém together with Mário Nogueira, general secretary of Fenprof, told Lusa that joining the district strike, which started on the 17th in Porto , has been around 80 to 85% in the various places where it has been (Porto, Viseu, Vila Real, Viana, Setúbal).

“The fight cannot stop, because the proposal on the table is zero recovery of service time. The Ministry of Education had the audacity, or the nerve, to present a proposal for ‘correction of asymmetries’, of freezing time , in which, in addition to not recovering anything from service time or unlocking quotas and vacancies (…), it still produces more asymmetries”, he said.

Stressing that the strikes by district will continue until May 12, with the last concentration taking place in Lisbon, Feliciano Costa said that, despite the “natural fatigue” in a struggle that has been going on for several months, teachers “have given a good response” .

According to the SPGL leader, last Thursday’s meeting with the Minister of Education “ended unilaterally”, with João Costa saying that he was going to make “small specific changes”, in a proposal that, he said, teachers do not know in detail, but, as far as they know, it continues to leave “thousands of professors out”.

The district strikes were called by a platform of nine unions that includes the FNPROF, the FNE, the Associação Sindical de Professores Licenciados (APSL), Pró-Ordem dos Professores (Pró-Ordem), Union of Educators and Licensed Teachers (Sepleu), National Union of Education Professionals (Sinape), National and Democratic Union of Teachers (Sindep), Independent Union of Teachers and Educators (SIPE) and National Union of Teachers Licensed by Polytechnics and Universities (Spliu).