Enough/Azores wants to end digital manuals and recover schools

“ Pwe need a serious plan to recover and maintain the school park. We need a policy of recruiting and fixing teachers, with specific responses to the region's difficulties. We need to ensure sufficient operational assistants ", said the Member of the Arrival Oliveria Santos.

The MP spoke at the plenary session of the Regional Assembly in Horta during the urgent debate requested by the Aquisa on the state of education in the Azores.

Oliveria Santos warned the state of the schools in the region, which have “serious conservation and maintenance problems”, which “result from years of lack of investment, planning and monitoring of the school park”.

“A school cannot work on patchwork. We urgently need a plan that indicates exactly what the needs of each school are, what are the priority works, how much they cost, when they start and when they finish”, he insisted.

She stressed that at the beginning of this school year there were “many complaints” related to the “lack of teachers and operational assistants”, a “problem that has been aggravating”.

“The Azores need an educational response to meet the needs of the region. The current support and incentives for the fixation of teachers due to the worsening of the shortage of professionals in the archipelago have proved insufficient ", highlighted.

The MP defended the supervision of “deceptive lows” and considered that the results of PISA 2025 “force to look at reality without political filters”, since the Azores remain below the national average and the OECD, despite improvements in science, mathematics and reading.

“ We need to change paradigm in the Education of the Azores ", said.

She gave the example of countries that abandoned digital manuals to consider that “the enthusiasm exaggerated by new technologies has clearly failed”, and recalled that the Aquis “has always been against” the end of paper manuals.

“We do not say to destroy or waste computers, tablets or mobile phones, but before a balance is achieved for the good of our entire educational community. Madam secretary, the challenge is great and the path is not easy. But we have to start somewhere”, he said, addressing the director of Education of the Government of the Azores (PSD/CDS-PP/PPM).

The parliament of the Azores is composed of 57 deputies, 23 of whom from the PSD bench, 23 from the PS, five from the Aquida, two from the CDS-PP, one from the IL, one from the PAN, one from the BE and one from the PPM.