Latest news and stories about public schools in work in Portugal for expats and residents.
Schools are now authorized to open tenders for 1,406 new technical staff positions, including psychologists and IT specialists, aiming to improve student support ratios and address staffing gaps in 249 school clusters.
The government will introduce compulsory Physical Education for 1st‑cycle pupils in public schools from the next school year, affecting around 330,000 children. The Budget Law commits to hiring the teachers needed to deliver the measure but does not specify how much will be invested or the number of weekly hours to be allocated. The lack of detail raises implementation questions — recruitment timelines, teacher training, regional distribution, and fiscal impact — and creates uncertainty about curriculum time and equity of provision across schools.
No reform makes sense without three pillars: recognized pedagogical authority; serious and contextualized professional development; and a career structure with ten pay scales and decent remuneration.
The ongoing reform at the Ministry of Education is transferring new responsibilities to school administrators.
With the national recruitment list failing to meet school staffing needs, principals are resorting to direct outreach to former staff and social media appeals to fill vacancies. Experts and union representatives warn that the situation is worsening, citing low salaries, excessive bureaucracy, and a lack of career incentives as the primary drivers of the crisis, which now affects the entire country.
This is the result of a survey of public school teachers across the country, conducted by the Movement of Teachers in Single-Subject Teaching and the Metaprof platform.
In the special recruitment round, the majority of teachers assigned to positions were already working in the education system and had been teaching prior to the placements.
Only 24.1% of the placements represent new hires for schools — a figure of fewer than 400 teachers.
Fenprof and Missão Escola Pública outraged by a ministry's official letter that fuels 'suspicions' about the teaching profession. Keeping records of lesson summaries is a practice long established in schools.
General Secretary Francisco Gonçalves holds the Ministry of Education responsible for failing to move forward with 'concrete measures'.
