“The return to school will be done safely”, said Prime Minister António Costa, at the end of a visit to Dom Pedro V Secondary School, in Lisbon. “On the 18th we will continue the learning process of this school year, until the end of the third term, now also with classroom teaching in some of the subjects of the 11th and 12th years”, he added.
The Prime Minister, who was accompanied by the Minister of Education, Tiago Brandão Rodrigues, became aware of how this school was reorganized to receive students, applying procedures and security measures.
António Costa thanked “the whole educational community for the extraordinary effort he made to adapt the school in a short period to welcome the students and all those who work here safely”.
This meant creating safe routes, removal measures, having means of cleaning and, in particular, hand washing, and masks, which will be mandatory for everyone within the 500 schools that will reopen face-to-face classes in secondary education from Monday market.
Four million masks
“It was an immense effort, more than four million masks have already been distributed to all schools that will reopen on the 18th,” he said, adding that “it will be a continuous effort, until the end of the school year, so that nothing is missing. everything necessary for the school to function safely ».
The Prime Minister stated that “in addition to the classroom teaching activity of the subjects in which there is an exam, learning continues at a distance, at home”, remaining totally at a distance “for students from risk groups” and “for teachers risk groups’.
«What will happen in face-to-face education in schools, does not replace what will continue to be done at a distance, either in the subjects that are part of the curriculum and are not taught in person, or to complement the teaching activity, which is not limited to face dimension ”, he said.
Different school
António Costa stated that “it will be a different school, this one for the end of the third term, but these weeks will be very important, not only to finish this school year well, but, above all, to train the next school year”, because «we will having to live with the virus in the next school year ».
The return to face-to-face classes «is also a way for schools, teachers, students, operational assistants, families, to test methodologies, to learn how to do better next year, to learn to live with the proper discipline that Covid-19 imposes on us ».
However, with “the capacity for invention that teachers had in these months, and with the learning that we will have until June 26, we will be able to face the next school year without the shock with which we live these weeks”, he concluded.
Everyone’s effort
The Minister of Education, Tiago Brandão Rodrigues, highlighted the effort of “all those who work in the educational system – public schools and private and cooperative education – to understand how they can now work, always with a sense of mission”.
Referring to the need to maintain hygiene, and physical distance, the Minister highlighted the role of operational assistants, for whom “students have a very special affection”, so that “these good practices, that day-to-day of the new normal can be accomplished within schools’.
This will be an effort “for teaching and learning to happen, and if they happen in this one, which is one of the great schools, they can happen throughout the country”, he said.