“The lack of teachers this year will be a more serious problem than in previous years”, warned the general secretary of Fenprof, Mário Nogueira, arguing that this school year, which starts in approximately two weeks, “will increase non-professionalized teachers and the number of students without all teachers”.

Speaking to journalists, Mário Nogueira explained that it is still too early to do the maths and understand how many students will be short of teachers because recruitment reserves that allow schools to hire to fill empty timetables are still ongoing.

However, he warned, “there are 20,800 teachers in the recruitment reserves for about 30 to 35 thousand hires that will be needed.”

Furthermore, more and more teachers are retiring: This year, by the end of September, there will be 2,493 retired teachers, who will be joined by “more than 300 per month until the end of December, which is more than a thousand".

Mário Nogueira added that teachers who retire after the start of the school year continue to have assigned classes, that is, “at the beginning of the year they are teaching, but then they leave, leaving the students without a teacher”.

Mário Nogueira recalled that this year around 1,300 students entered higher education who want to be teachers, but these will only reach schools within five years.

This year, educational establishments will be able to count on those who entered universities in 2018, “there were 600 or so”, he recalled.