Ministry delay leaves Orchestra Generation without half the teachers

A Generation Orchestra, created to combat social exclusion, is operating with only half of teachers because the Ministry of Education continues without allowing the hiring of other teachers, harming about 1,350 children and young people.

The complaint is made to the Lusa Agency by the orchestra director, Helena Lima, who recognized that “without the support of the ministry over the last few years the project would not have grown as it has grown”.

However, two months after starting school, the Generation Orchestra is working with only half the necessary teachers. This is because the ministry has not yet given permission to open the competitions to hire the missing teachers.

There are many students without instrument classes and schools where only “two teachers are trying to teach 100 students,” Lusa Helena Lima told.

“ Even in cases where students have a teacher, they also end up being harmed in orchestra class, because it is not possible to teach an orchestra class when many of the students are not having an instrument class”, he explained.

Result: The approximately 1,350 children and young people who should be participating in the Generation Orchestra this year are all harmed.

Helena Lima fears that the delay in the opening of the competitions will call into question the availability of sufficient teachers to ensure the operation of the project.

There have been other years when the process has been delayed. Last year, for example, the authorization of guardianship arrived only on October 12.

“It is very difficult to work in these conditions,” the teacher said, saying that they launched a public petition this week asking for “the urgent issue of the authorization required to hire the missing teachers, allowing the full functioning of the Generation Orchestra”.

The undersigned, which today at the end of the afternoon had 2,650 signatures, also calls for a “lasting solution” and for the recommendation approved by the Assembly of the Republic to be implemented in 2021.

At the time, MEPs agreed to create a multi-annual support model to ensure the stability of the project and its teachers as well as the continuity of activities.

However, after five years, the project continues to survive in a situation of great instability.

Lusa questioned the ministry as to why it has not yet given permission to hire teachers, because a model based on annual commitments is still in place and whether it is to be replaced by a multi-annual funding mechanism, but has not yet received any response.

The Generation Orchestra began at Amadora to help the most disadvantaged students through music and orchestral practice. Today, it is present in 16 groups of schools – 14 in the Lisbon region and two in Coimbra – mostly located in poorer neighborhoods.

The project “has demonstrated, over 19 years, that music can transform lives and create opportunities,” reads the undersigned, which recalls that the Orchestra has allowed access to music to thousands of children and young people in need who would hardly have this opportunity.

This is a project with pedagogical coordination of the Artistic School of Music of the National Conservatory and administrative management of the Association of Youth Symphony Orchestras System Portugal and the impact of this work has been awarded with national and international distinctions, such as the 50-year Commemorative Gold Medal of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, awarded by the Assembly of the Republic.