João Costa secretary of Education compared the situation in education with the results of the Second World War and remembered that this is one of the pillars of democracy.
According to the secretary “It’s not just that they don’t have a computer, or the Internet, it is not having a space alone at home, having a noisy context, sometimes violent, having no one to accompany them, who has to get them out of bed to turn on the computer, having no one to solve these questions”.
For the government, it is necessary to see school “not only as a space for learning, but as a space for social protection”, where “situations of abuse are often identified by the student's attitude”.
Citing the Portuguese Society of Pediatrics, João Costa recalled that some children had “profound regressions in terms of development” during the spring.
And he warned that "there are children who do not eat when the school is closed", reiterating previous intervention in the debate of the deputy in the Legislative Assembly of Madeira and representative of Ana Gomes' candidacy in that autonomous region, Elisa Seixas.