O STOP coordinator, André Pestana, said that the strike is justified by the fact that “education professionals continue without a fair and transparent assessment, which maintains quotas, and the many classes that students missed last year to take assessment tests, which overloaded a lot of education professionals.”
At a press conference in Coimbra, the union leader highlighted that the strike “is a way of putting pressure on the Government to pay attention to what is happening in public schools”, considering that there must be a discussion with teachers to determine whether they do sense of the assessment tests.
“Parents and grandparents realize that assessment tests, particularly in digital format, have created a lot of anxiety and unnecessary stress, because we are talking about children in the second year, aged 7”, he highlighted.
On the other hand, André Pestana stressed that there is “a great disparity when dealing with technologies and also disparity between schools regarding platforms and access to portable computers”.
“Students are missing classes, because the assessment tests imply the loss of many classes of normal learning teaching and also overload education professionals who are already very overworked and, therefore, it is poor management of human resources”, he stated.
According to the Stop coordinator, the strike aims for the Government to change these models and channel “energy into teaching and learning”, preventing students from “missing so many classes” and the evaluation of teachers not being “a farce, with quotas completely artificial”.
“There must be a special evaluation and remuneration model, not just for school directors, but for all education professionals”, demanded André Pestana.
Pre-strike notices addressed to all teaching staff and teaching staff were issued until the end of May. Between May 2nd and 13th, schools can carry out assessment tests for the 2nd year of Physical Education and Artistic Education, which marked the beginning of another year of national tests and exams.
Then, between May 16th and 27th, it’s time for 5th year students to show their knowledge in Music Education and 8th year students to take tests in the English oral production and interaction component.
