Portuguese teachers abroad may have valued wages

Florbela Paraíba reported that the two parties have a common goal, “the appreciation of careers and remuneration of teachers of Portuguese Teaching in Foreign” (EPE), which described as “a very important resource”.

“ Teachers are irreplaceable, as well as what one learns in the classroom, even we do not want to replace it by digital means, which serve only to complement”, said the career diplomat.

The CI is under the supervision of the Portuguese Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MNE).

At the end of July, the trade unions recognized a “positive evolution” in the negotiations with the MNE on the new EPE legal regime, awaiting the proposal of the new wage scales.

In statements to Lusa, the Deputy Secretary-General of the National Federation of Education (FNE), Paulo Fernandes, considered that “there has been an evolution in the proposals that the ministry has presented”, stressing that there is a relaxation of the commissions of service and guarantee of counting the time of service for EPE teachers who want to return to career in Portugal.

A vision shared by the president of the Union of Foreign Teachers (SPE), Bruno Silva, who confirmed that the amendments tabled by the Government “have already accommodated some proposals” of its structure.

Among the advances, the head of the SPE highlighted the clarification of the count of the service time “for the purposes of competition and career progression for teachers who have no connection in public functions”.

In order to pressure the executive and demand that the pay tables reflect the real cost of living in their respective countries, EPE teachers submitted a petition, which until today had 8,852 signatures.

Florbela Paraíba spoke at an event in Macau, Chinese territory, where Portuguese is an official language and described it as “a platform for the projection of Portuguese language teaching in Asia”.

The president of the CI pointed out the Asian region as a priority for the Portuguese language and revealed that the institution wants to create a second chair of Portuguese in Japan, in addition to that already existing at the University of Foreign Studies in Kyoto.

“ We are working, but we do not know yet where it might be, let us hope it can be [at a university] in Tokyo”, said Paraíba.

The leader also pointed out as priorities Timor-Leste, where the Portuguese language has “an identity factor”, and Angola, where Portuguese “has grown immense, during and after the [civil] war, also by political will, of aggregation”.