en 
“The conditions that are required for the opening of schools have not been created”, said the secretary general of Fenprof, Mário Nogueira.
For Mário Nogueira, “face-to-face education is essential” to restore some normality to schools, since “remote education, again, would be tragic” for students, teachers and auxiliary staff.
In view of the Covid-19 pandemic and the risk of people being infected by the new coronavirus, the beginning of school activities, which has been scheduled for between 14 and 17 September, should be accompanied by “strict measures that guarantee that the possibility of infection is reduced as much as possible”, he added.
“The Government have wasted two months, July and August, when they had the opportunity to improve” the sanitary measures, complying with the guidelines of the Directorate-General for Health (DGS), criticised the union leader.
Mário Nogueira again defended that the Ministry of Education should have carried out “Covid-19 screenings for the entire school community” before reopening the schools across Portugal.
He believes that screenings should take place “prior to the beginning of the academic activities” and that it would be up to the Government “to articulate with the municipalities on how to make this happen”, according to the “Plan for the safe opening of the 2020-2021 academic year in person”, proposed by the national secretariat of Fenprof, on 30 July.
“There have been no screenings, there are no social distancing measures in place and there is also a lack of personnel. The Ministry of Education has been sleeping for two months,” he concluded.
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It is interesting that mostly state employees with guaranteed income are tose that are voting for measures that continue the shut down of society. Looks like teachers - not only in Portugal - are comfortable with not going to work and still being paid.
By John Dough from Lisbon on 04 Sep 2020, 08:26
Let's move to more online education and get rid of teachers (giving a person a guaranteed income no matter what he does is never a good idea). If children can game for hours they can also spend time on online education.
By Pedro from Lisbon on 04 Sep 2020, 09:25
As a teacher in Portugal who worked through the pandemic to ensure continued education and support of all my students, I can verify that these comments from Pedro and John Dough are, to put in language that even they may understand, total BS.
Your basless accusations of freeloading for a paycheck couldn't be further from the truth.
Every single collegue of mine worked for more hours than ever during the previous lockdown period, and to be told by ignorant hate-slingers such as yourselves that we are simply out for a free ride is not only insulting, but also indicative of a society that by and large is too busy spreading hate and over-generalised misinformation to actually think critically and constructively in these challenging times.
I sometimes wonder why some of us that work in thankless essential jobs and services actually stay around for this, and then I am reminded of the sad fact that despite the efforts of others that have educated the previous generations, people like you two still exist in this world, and that if it were left to you we would all just be given a web page or text book to copy out and claim to have been educated by the end of it.
Good luck with that future society of yours.
By Bemused Teacher from Porto on 15 Oct 2020, 07:51