The Minister of Education, Science and Innovation announced this Friday, December 12, that the Government will pay teachers 30 million euros for overtime accumulated since 2018, which, mistakenly, had not been paid.
“We are now going to make a correction of overtime since 2018 and the only correction is 30 million euros that should have been paid to teachers and were not”Fernando Alexandre told journalists, at the end of the inauguration of the INNOV2CARE laboratories at the Escola Superior de Tecnologia da Saúde de Coimbra.
The government official also said that the guardianship will pay more than 20 million euros in overtime this year.
The Minister of Education, Science and Innovation explained in this way that the fact that there are unfilled timetables in Portuguese schools does not mean that students are without classes.
“The fact that there is an unfilled schedule does not mean, in most cases, that students are out of classes. Many schedules that are not filled are being occupied and guaranteeing classes through overtime”he clarified.
Fernando Alexandre said that the ministry is preparing an information system, which is not yet available, “to know which students are missing classes, in which subjects and for how long”.
The governor lamented that, systematically, public schools are denigrated in the public square and that “it is unfair for the directors, who make a huge effort to guarantee classes for all students, to mix up unfilled schedules with students without classes”.
Regarding this Friday’s civil service strike, the Minister of Education said that eight percent of schools were closed and that Thursday’s general strike led to the closure of half of national schools.
In statements to journalists, Fernando Alexandre said that the Government has a proposal for non-teaching staff that will be discussed with the new management of the National Association of Portuguese Municipalities, which will be elected this weekend.
“We will carry out this negotiation in January. We have just received the study we commissioned on the decentralization of education, which includes the costs and ratios of non-teaching staff”he said.
The Higher School of Health Technology of the Polytechnic of Coimbra (ESTeSC-IPC) inaugurated this afternoon the INNOV2CARE laboratories, dedicated to the Medical Imaging and Radiotherapy and Clinical Physiology courses, equipped with state-of-the-art simulators and ultrasound machines, which represent an investment of over 600 thousand euros, financed by the Recovery and Resilience Plan (PRR).
Among the new equipment are advanced ultrasound simulation tools, advanced simulators for computed tomography, magnetic resonance imaging, conventional radiology, fluoroscopy-guided procedures, PET and SPECT-CT, and an advanced medical image processing system with virtual reality, which make the establishment the first national higher education institution to make state-of-the-art technology available to its students.
The INNOV2CARE project is part of a consortium of eight higher education institutions – University of Coimbra (project leader), Polytechnic Institute of Coimbra, University of Beira Interior, University of the Azores, Escola Superior de Enfermagem de Coimbra, Instituto Politécnico de Castelo Branco, Instituto Politécnico da Guarda, Instituto Politécnico de Viseu – to readjust teaching and learning in the areas of health.