After the government reached an agreement with seven of the 12 teachers' unions for the recovery of the service time frozen during the "Troika" intervention, the social democrats assured today, in the Assembly of the Republic, that the time of devaluing teachers was over.

"Thousands of students without teachers, thousands of young people who do not want to be teachers and thousands of teachers who are exhausted from being teachers. Fortunately, that time is over", said MP Emídio Guerreiro (PSD).

The parliamentary debate set by the PSD on the state of public schools was initially marked by the agreement reached on Tuesday for the recovery of service time, but after the governing party stated that it "wants to return quality and excellence to public schools", the opposition wanted to know how.

"What is the lie that they want to tell, when the truth is that many students will reach the end of the school year without a single class in at least one subject? Who will take responsibility for such disastrous human resources management? Those responsible are all here and have destroyed public schools", accused Chega MP Maria José Aguiar.

For the liberals, the main question asked by Patrícia Gilvaz was "what is the future of public schools" and the MP appealed to the social democrats to "not do as the PS did and go from one conjectural problem to another, forgetting about structural reforms".

The PSD's partner in the executive, the CDS-PP, through Paulo Núncio, accused the socialists of "enormous hypocrisy" for pretending that they did not govern over the last eight years and defending "precisely the opposite of what they did during their governance".

On the left, the former governing party spent much of the debate arguing that the path that the PSD says it is now taking was paved by the socialists, contradicting the arguments that nothing was done in the last eight years.

"You are riding a road that was opened by the PS", said MP Rosário Gambôa regarding the recovery of service time, an argument that was also raised by Isabel Ferreira when it came to free nurseries or the valorisation of vocational education.

On behalf of the BE, Joana Mortágua began by accusing the PSD of having a past of undervaluing the teaching profession that is not worth hiding, recalling when the former Minister of Education Nuno Crato said that there were too many teachers.

Therefore, she said it was "legitimate to ask the PSD where it will direct the negotiations when the time comes" to discuss issues such as the teaching career, the hiring system and compensation mechanisms for displaced teachers with the sector's trade union organisations.

Paulo Muacho, from Livre, also recalled the words of the former social democrat minister, considering that the result was the current lack of teachers, which requires answers, but not only that. "There is much to be done in public schools and we need parliament to be willing to do it", he concluded.

Paula Santos, from the PCP, began by accusing the PSD of being "one of the parties that contributed the most to the disinvestment and underfunding of public schools", expressing concern at not finding a cohesive vision in the government's programme for what it intends for the sector.

However, the executive was absent from the debate and, therefore, the questions remained unanswered and the parties are left waiting for the emergency plan for the lack of teachers that, on Wednesday, the Minister of Education, Science and Innovation, Fernando Alexandre, said would be announced "soon".

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