Guess who is to blame for the hundreds of children in Lisbon and the surrounding area who started September without a school place. That’s right, us: we came here in large numbers, and on top of that, we submitted our applications late. That is more or less how Education Minister Fernando Alexandre’s explanation sounds when put in our own words.
The minister himself put it more carefully. According to him, nothing new is happening and there are children without school places every year. This year, the “demographic pressure” is somewhat higher: many of the children currently being assigned places are migrants, and applications are arriving late. Applications, he said, will continue to come in until January, mainly from people arriving from Brazil. He also pointed out that school buildings in Greater Lisbon and on the Setúbal Peninsula have gone decades without adequate investment.
The scale of the problem is this: more than 600 children in Lisbon alone were left without a place. The teachers’ union Fenprof puts the figure at more than 700 in Sintra, although the ministry disputes that number.
School principals and parents have a different version of events — and migrants have nothing to do with it. Until recently, school places were handled by the General Directorate for School Establishments (DGEstE). At the end of each summer, it would bring together the heads of schools in each municipality, find out where there were vacancies and redistribute children accordingly. As part of a ministry reform, the directorate was abolished and its functions transferred to a new Agency for Education System Management (AGSE). Parents say that this year, those meetings were not held before the start of the school year.
Teachers who had handled placements at DGEstE returned to their schools. Neither families nor school principals have been able to get through to the new agency.
Rodrigo Queiroz e Melo, head of the association of private schools, told Renascença that there were children without school places every year, so the minister is right on that point. But previously, families would go to DGEstE and the issue was usually resolved almost immediately. According to the radio station, around 1,000 children were still without a school place at the end of summer a year ago, and all of them were assigned places through these meetings. Fenprof and the left-wing parties Livre and BE say the same. Socialist leader José Luís Carneiro has called on the minister to take political responsibility.
The story about migrants arriving late does not fit well with the accounts from the parents we wrote about. Families in Lisbon and the surrounding area submitted their applications on time; some have been waiting for an answer since July, while their children’s applications on the enrolment portal still show the status “not enrolled”. They are now taking the ministry to court, and other families can join the legal action. The details are in that post.
For now, the problem is being dealt with manually. On Monday, the agency brought together Lisbon school principals and assigned places to 405 children. On Wednesday, more than 350 more were placed in Barreiro, Seixal, Loures and Odivelas. The solution was simple: class sizes were increased to 30 pupils. The minister insists this will not affect the quality of education; teachers disagree. He has also ordered the inspectorate to investigate at least two schools that turned children away despite having vacancies. The ministry has not said how many children remain without a school place nationwide.
If your child is still without a school place, the reason is probably not that you arrived too late.
