There is no turning back. The assessment that the Portuguese have about the current situation of teachers is doubly disastrous for the Government as opposed to the assessment achieved by the unions.
This is what the results of the last survey by Universidade Católica for PÚBLICO, RTP1 and Antena 1 show. Only three questions were asked. Replicating the classification scale in force in secondary education, “what grade from 0 to 20” were asked by respondents to “the performance of the Government” and the performance of the unions. With one average evaluation of 7.7 values, the Government fails in this assessment and, according to secondary school rules, he would not even be entitled to take the exam, since the minimum classification to access these tests is 8.5 out of 20.
Already unions are on positive ground with an average score of 11 values. The Cesop — Center for Studies and Opinion Surveys of the Catholic University of Lisbon presents yet another way of looking at the assessment that respondents make of the protagonists of ongoing negotiations: the Government collects 42% of positive assessments (in this case, equal to or greater than to ten), while unions almost double that amount — 72%.
The inquiries were carried out by telephone between the 9th and the 17th of February, when the strikes called by the Union of All Education Professionals (Stop) were entering their third month and after these stoppages had led to the closure of hundreds of schools, some of them for weeks, leaving thousands of students without classes.
At that time, 18 days of district strikes (16 January to 8 February) called by the National Federation of Teachers (Fenprof) and seven other independent unions had also come to an end. And the teachers had already filled Lisbon four times in protest.
Likewise, the protests of the National Confederation of Parents’ Associations (Confap) against the “intermittent” mode adopted by the Stop strikes were already public, which prevented advance knowledge of the stops and left, especially in January, many families on the verge of a crisis. nervous breakdown between attempts to drop the children off at school and threats from employers due to absences from work. This was, in fact, one of the arguments also used in the first judgment that set minimum services for strikes called by the Stop, imposed from 1 February.
Claims are “fair”
Many teachers counter that many parents have expressed support for their fight. Judging by the Catholic poll, this is also the position of the majority of Portuguese people. When asked about the fairness of the teachers’ claims, 84% classified them as “fair” and only 12% were in the opposite position, classifying them as “unfair” (4% of respondents did not respond, partly because they did not know).
Among the demands of teachers are the recovery of frozen service time for the purposes of career progression, access to the 5th and 7th steps of the teaching career without artificial restrictions, entry into the staff of thousands of teachers who remain on contract , many for ten years or more, being placed in schools that allow them to stay close to their families and restrict their daily journeys of many tens of kilometres.
These last two claims were met by the Ministry of Education in the proposal for a new teacher recruitment model that it presented to the unions. Negotiations have been going on since September, with the two parties still not reaching an agreement. Which is unlikely to happen.
The unions recognize that the Ministry of Education has made “small advances” in relation to some of their demands, but they have already announced that they will not sign an agreement that does not contemplate the recovery of the frozen service time. The Government has already ruled out this possibility.
Unions on the side of the “solution”
In the midst of this struggle, “who has had the best position to reach a solution: Government or unions?” It is the last question in the Catholic poll regarding teachers, with the results showing that, for now, they earn for KO to the Government. This collects only 20% of favorable opinions regarding your search for a solution. Unions account for 57%.
A recent survey by Intercampus for the Morning mail it also placed the majority of Portuguese (60%) on the side of the teaching class. At the beginning of the month, situating the problem in the duality of this “being a substantially lost academic year or not”, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa reminded teachers of the following: “There is a moment when the sympathy that in fact exists in public opinion towards to the cause of the teachers can be turned against them.” For now, and given what the polls show, this alert seems to be still far from materializing.