"If, globally, we have retirement prospects of around 18%, there are some groups that are even more worrying (...) The recruitment group for Portuguese in the 2nd cycle has a retirement prospect of 40%", advanced the regional secretary of Education, Culture and Sports, Sofia Ribeiro.

The government official was speaking, in Angra do Heroísmo, on the island of Terceira, at the presentation of the Azores Education Strategy 2030, which foresees the implementation of 34 measures related to the skills of Azoreans and the structure of the regional education system.

According to the study carried out for the preparation of the strategy, in the 2022/23 school year, there were 4,893 teachers in the staff of Azorean schools, 15.82% of whom were over 60 years old and 3.06% were under 40 years old.

"If, at this moment, we are already having difficulties in recruiting duly qualified teachers, if nothing is done to reverse this process, in 10, 15 years, the situation will be much more worrying because we have a large group of teachers between 40 and 60 years old", stressed Sofia Ribeiro.

According to the government official, nationwide, the retirement prospects for teachers reach 40%, double the number calculated in the region.

As for educational action staff, the retirement prospects in the Azores are, in general, 22.37% until 2031.

Between 2015 (the last data recorded) and 2021, the number of employees in public schools increased from 2,443 to 2,785, of which 2,150 (77.2%) are on staff.

According to Sofia Ribeiro, in this school year alone, over 200 employees joined the staff and the use of occupational programs dropped by half.

"At the same time that there has been a substantial reinforcement in the last six years of educational action staff in our schools, we have been witnessing a substantial decrease in the number of students. In this reference period, there are about four to five thousand fewer students", she pointed out.

The study also indicates that the average number of students per class dropped from 19.2 in 2011 to 15.7 in 2021.

The strategy has as goals an increase to 90% of the allocation of professionalized teachers on staff and to 85% of the ratio of permanent employment contracts for educational action staff.

Among the proposed measures are the maintenance of the regime that "determines the creation of a staff position [for teachers] for every three full years of fixed-term contracts, by recruitment group and organic unit" and the "revision of the regulations for teaching staff competitions, promoting mechanisms for placement on school staff".

It is also planned to "award master's scholarships in teaching to underprivileged groups" and to "apply incentives to fix teachers on the islands, organic units and recruitment groups that are more underprivileged".

The executive commits to equipping the entire space of school buildings with network access points and Wi-Fi and to investing 1.5 million euros in providing specialized equipment for classrooms.

It proposes to carry out a "survey, by organic unit and listening to its middle management bodies, of unnecessary bureaucracy procedures" and to amend the Student Statute, "updating it in light of the various regulations in force and reviewing discipline regulation and control mechanisms".

The indicators established in the Azores Education Strategy 2030 will be monitored annually, and there may be an adjustment of the actions in progress.

An interim evaluation is scheduled for 2027 and a final evaluation for 2030.

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