Parents in Faro take their protest to city hall
A small group of parents affected by the closure of an IPSS pre-school centre protested today in Faro against the lack of places in the municipality, claiming they have nowhere to put their children from September onwards.
But as Lusa news agency reveals this is just the tip of the iceberg. There are in fact almost 30,000 3-year-olds who will be considered too old for the creches they are in from September, but who have ‘nowhere else to go’.
“There are no schools, no classrooms, no answers, no places to put these children. The worst thing is that many (of the parents) aren’t even from here, so they have no family support and nowhere to leave their children,” Rita Mendonça, the mother of one of the children affected in Faro, told reporters.
The parents gathered outside Faro city hall to protest against the closure, from August 15, of a pre-school facility taking care of 17 children aged between three and five years old at the Estrela do Mar Children’s Centre, run by the Vítor Reis Morais Foundation, in Faro, and subsidised by Social Security.
The closure of this facility was announced in January. Parents say that they have tried to find alternative places ever since, without success – despite contacts with both Social Security and the Algarve Region Services Directorate of the Directorate-General for School Establishments.
“They told us to register on the public platform at as many schools as possible. That’s what we did (…) We have five-year-olds (refused places), only one four-year-old got a place and all the three-year-olds are waiting. (Basically) nobody got in anywhere, and so far we’ve had no response from private organisations. So we have nowhere to put our children from September,” Rita Mendonça repeated.
Attempts at private establishments have also been unsuccessful. “I’ve applied to nine places, IPSS (private social solidarity institutions) and private ones. So far, none of them have contacted me,” said Aurélie Quintanilha, another affected parent.
The parents stress that the situation was communicated to them as “irreversible” yet there appears to have been no justification, other than funding. Rita Mendonça explains that in the “Crèche Feliz” programme – a project designed by the previous government to guarantee free crèche places for all children born from September 2021 – ” subsidies are higher”.
In other words, the decision has been made to do away with a ‘pre-primary’ (nursery school) space, in favour of a crèche as these elicit more funding.
Faced with this fait-accompli, parents decided to take their protest to local government, displaying placards outside city hall proclaiming “Education is a right” and “No places! We need education”.
The group also placed a series of toys, labelled “No school for children”, near the entrance to the council building.
A source at city hall told Lusa that the council “has no direct knowledge” of this specific case stressing parents need to take the issue to the council themselves, so that it can “assess and help resolve” the problem.
According to the same source, there are around 2,000 children in the municipality’s pre-school network, broken down into 1,000 in the social network, 500 in the public network and 400 in private schools.
As for the public network, there are currently 22 pre-school facilities and the municipality hopes to open 12 more over the next three years.
On June 11, the government revealed that there are almost 20,000 places to go before pre-school education can receive all the children currently enrolled in crèches in September, and has set up a working group to draw up an action plan.
“The previous executive did not take care to create enough pre-school places to accommodate children who had already benefited from free access to daycare,” the press office of the Ministry of Education, Science and Innovation told Lusa, meaning there is actually a “risk of thousands of children and families being left without an answer” from September.
According to government figures, around 29,000 children currently in crèches will be 3 years old in September, and therefore ‘too old’ for the creche, but with no pre-school facility to go to…
LUSA
