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The Minister of Education said this Wednesday that the measures of the learning recovery plan were extended according to the needs of schools, justifying the end of teacher reinforcement as only 60% of schools had applied.
“We had almost unanimity on the relevance of the role of technicians, a great consensus around tutorials and the need to reinforce multidisciplinary teams and monitoring the financial dimension showed that additional credit hours were only mobilized in around 60% of schools” , said João Costa.
This Wednesday, the Minister of Education was heard by the parliamentary committee on Education and Science, in a hearing requested by the Liberal Initiative on the 23|24 Escola+ Plan, which extends some of the measures of the plan that have been in force since 2021 for this academic year, to recover learning deficits resulting from the covid-19 pandemic.
The new plan maintains, for example, the reinforcement of up to four weekly teaching hours intended exclusively for the multidisciplinary team supporting inclusive education, as well as the possibility for schools to hire technicians within the scope of personal, social and community development plans, but eliminates the extraordinary reinforcement of teachers through school credit hours.
The change was, this Wednesday, criticized and questioned by some deputies, but the minister responded that, in addition to the measure no longer being supported by euro funds, the level of adherence of schools did not justify its extension, with the exception that schools They continue, however, to have access to additional time credit.
“It is something that is foreseen in the organization of the school year and has been applied, particularly this year, when the needs may be greater”, he added, noting that the Ministry of Education received around 30 requests from schools, “almost all of which were granted ”.
In his initial intervention, João Costa also said that the new learning recovery plan is “more focused on the most effective measures and, above all, on the subjects and years most resistant to recovery”.
Based on the comparison between internal scores and external evaluation, the minister explained that if, on the one hand, the results point to a general stagnation “which allows us to anticipate the return of the pre-pandemic trajectory”, on the other hand they reveal differentiated results depending on years of schooling.
The worst results, he added, were recorded among students who, during the confinement period, attended the years of consolidation of the 1st cycle, that is, 3rd and 4th years, and the transition from the second to the third cycle.
During the hearing, the Minister of Education was also confronted by the opposition with the conclusions of an audit carried out by the Court of Auditors, which considered that the initial plan had few resources and that the evaluation and monitoring carried out were insufficient, also pointing out the lack of budget transparency.
“Many of the fears that we had demonstrated were rightly confirmed”, began by highlighting deputy Carla Castro, from the Liberal Initiative, questioning whether the guardianship took into account the court's recommendations for the preparation of the new plan.
“This is a school plan and there was an entity that the auditors never heard from. The difference between the audit by the Court of Auditors and the 17 studies that are ignored in this hearing is that the studies we have listen to those who developed the plan”, stated the minister, devaluing the document.
Regarding the issue of budgetary transparency, João Costa said that “the financial effort is public and transparent”, but specified: “In human resources, the plan allocates around 230 million euros, in educational resources 290 million euros, in teacher training 21 million euros, in the modernization and component of digital and infrastructural resources around 480 million euros”.