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The Government wants to hire retired teachers from subjects where there are fewer teachers to combat the shortage of teachers in schools in areas where the greatest shortages have been identified, the Minister of Education, Fernando Alexandre, announced this Friday . The minister was speaking at the end of the Council of Ministers meeting, where a package of measures was approved to respond to the shortage of teachers and the thousands of students who, as a result, are left without classes.

These teachers should be hired in the areas where there is the greatest shortage — Lisbon and Tagus Valley, Algarve and some municipalities in Alentejo — and will be entitled to an extra salary equivalent to index 167 (1657.53 euros gross). The Government expects that 200 teachers can be hired and that this measure will have a budgetary impact of 3.28 million euros.

Teachers who reach retirement age and want to continue teaching will have a additional remuneration of up to 750 euros gross per month. It is estimated that the measure will cover 1000 teachers and has a budgetary impact of nine million euros. Another of the planned changes is the extension of the period of replacement of teachers with sick leave scheduled for the entire academic year. However, This measure will only be for schools that the Ministry of Education will flag as having a greater shortage of teachers. In these schools, the Government also plans to authorize teachers over 50 years old who have already have reduced working hours and increase the limit to 10 hours extraordinary weeks to be allocated to each teacher, whenever it is "impossible to meet the needs using contracting mechanisms".