The Regional Secretary for Education and Culture restated in Flores the Government's commitment in the fight against school failure, considered to be the "main scourge" of the Regional Education System, and the need to establish a pact of Education.
 
"School failure is and remains the main scourge of the Regional Education System because we start from very low levels, given the isolation and abandonment of decades and, perhaps, of centuries" to which Azores were subject. Moreover, there is also "the fact that the Portuguese education system is characterised by great instability" that often denies "the opportunity that a good theoretical system becomes a good educational practice," stated Avelino Meneses.
 
The Regional Secretary spoke at the end of a visit to Flores Basic Education and Secondary School under the Regional Government's statutory visit. In this regard, the government official recalled that these were the reasons that led to the creation of ProSucesso - Azores for Education, an integrated programme for the promotion of school success. Its action is mainly focused on early school level, preschool and elementary school, with "the aim of preventing early learning disabilities that may become irrecoverable at a later stage."
 
This programme, which started in the ongoing school year, has led to the hiring of another 266 teachers. Its scope also comprises junior high school and secondary school, but with a "different strategy," added the government official.
 
In advanced school levels, according to the Regional Secretary, the programme aims to "diversify educational paths since the student population is increasingly heterogeneous and we must provide them with different options so that may continue to progress towards their professional life or even towards a subsequent transition to higher education."
 
For Avelino Meneses, the results of ProSucesso "can be only measured over time," because "teaching time is longer than political time." However, he stressed that, "without necessarily being an achievement of the integrated programme for the promotion of school success," the Azores have registered a "remarkable" regression in student retention in basic education levels over the last school years.
 
For all these reasons, "the establishment of a sort of pact of Education is increasingly necessary in the Azores since this cannot subject to continuous changes and disruptions," said the Regional Secretary for Education.
 
In this visit to Flores Secondary School, Avelino Meneses had the opportunity to attend an exhibition and an elementary school math class, accompanied by a teacher specialising in learning disabilities, which took place under one of ProSucesso actions.
 
During the current school year, the Azores have 50 elementary school teachers involved in the programme "Math Step by Step: Strategies for Overcoming Difficulties," an initiative guided by a professor of the University of the Azores whose approach begins from the concrete and the pictorial and, then, goes to the abstract.