The Regional Secretariat for Education, Science and Culture and the Ministry of Education and Science have established a cooperation agreement based on the "principle of reciprocity" in order to "address the current constraints" with the applications from special education teachers.

The agreement was signed by Luiz Fagundes Duarte and the Secretary of State for Education and School Administration, João Casanova de Almeida. According to its provisions, from now onwards the recruitment group of special education teachers in Mainland Portugal and the Azores as well as the respective group designation, except that adopted for the special education group in the Azores, "will be the same throughout the national territory."

Under the terms of this agreement, the National Government is committed to "accept the applications from special education teachers attached to the teaching staff of the Autonomous Region of the Azores for the recruitment groups listed in table 5 of the annex to Decree-Law no. 27/2006 of February 10 at the same priority rank of teachers from Mainland Portugal in the internal application in accordance to paragraph b of section no.1, article 10, of Decree-Law no.132/2012."

In turn, the Region is committed to "accept applications from teachers from the special education recruitment groups in Mainland Portugal listed in table 5 of the annex to Decree-Law no. 27/2006 of February 10 for the special education recruitment groups of the Autonomous Region of the Azores at the same priority rank of teachers from the Region in the internal application."

According to the protocol, teachers eligible for applying to special education groups in regional and national schools "must have specialised training in special education and should hold professional qualifications for the levels of education they are applying to; supporting documents must be submitted under the terms of the opening notice of the internal application."