The Regional Secretary for Education and Training is discontent with the proposal presented by the Ministry of Education and Science to change the teacher application rules that were recently under discussion during a round of negotiations between the representatives of teachers' unions.

Cláudia Cardoso, who received the representative of the Teachers’ Union of the Azores at an audience, told journalists that the Regional Government is still not pleased with several issues; however "a clearly discriminatory issue has been solved. Hired teachers, who were ranked at 2nd priority, are now able to apply on equal terms with the teachers who have worked at schools from the school network of the Ministry of Education."

The government official highlighted the fact that teachers belonging to the regional school staff will continue to apply ranked at 2nd priority and not at the 1st. "Another serious issue concerns the lack of recognition of teacher assessment in the Azores whenever a teacher working in the archipelago applies for the national application."

In addition, added the government official, "teachers who teach special education in the Region, where "there are specific recruitment groups," cannot apply for the national application as recruitment groups are different."

In this regard, Cláudia Cardoso stressed that the Region was "the first to create recruitment groups for special education teachers," when students with special education needs were integrated into regular schools. The recruitment groups established in the Azores are related to the different school levels. However, the recruitment groups in this specific area were established according to the teacher's speciality in the area of special education and, therefore, teacher mobility is hampered.

In the Azores we are not interested in changing the recruitment groups because we would have a teacher specifically hired to work with deaf students and we might not have students with specific conditions for several years; therefore we would be wasting resources unnecessarily.

This matter may be easily solved if the Ministry of Education recognises the qualifications of teachers during the mobility process. The Regional Secretary also said that "if this technical issue were overcome, the mobility of teachers would be guaranteed," but "right now the mobility is not ensured"; therefore we cannot talk about of "progress or improvement" in the negotiated proposal.
 
According to Cláudia Cardoso, teachers relocated for specific conditions, i.e., teachers who have requested mobility due to an illness or a situation that requires constant monitoring find themselves negatively affected if the Ministry's proposal is "approved" as it is. "The first version contained specific articles regarding the Teachers who were relocated due to specific conditions or who those who apply for a school near their area of residence will be penalised, because these articles were left out in the last version of the legislation proposal for no apparent reason."

When excluding these articles, the Ministry of Education is putting these teachers in "a very difficult situation by depriving them from the possibility of mobility."

This is another of the issues to be addressed as "it does not seem right that these teachers be deprived from exercising their right to mobility between the Region and Mainland Portugal."

Cláudia Cardoso ensured that she will continue to insist in the organisation of a meeting with the Secretary of State for Education and Educational Administration "in order to change what we think it is too harmful for teachers working in the Region and who wish to apply for national application." The government official considered that "these issues need to be overcome," otherwise they will "continue to be detrimental for teachers working in the Region, which is a very serious situation."

One does not understand the satisfaction conveyed by another union when there are various aspects that have yet to be corrected.