The shock enforced closure of Aljezur International School was meant to have been reversed by now: an injunction lodged by the school was expected to have received an answer earlier this week. But still nothing has come through. Thus today, the parents of the 85 pupils left high and dry – apparently all because their school building has ceilings that do not comply with the requirements of the ministry of education – have lodged their own injunction.
“This is a hellish situation for the children”, explained one. “They just want to get back into the classroom and be with their friends again”.
This parent said he had been to the local state secondary school, to see how it measured up, but was horrified to see children piling out of containers at breaktime straight into the rain. “There was nowhere for them to go… We simply cannot understand how our school has been closed for reasons so unclear, and the alternatives offered by the state system are so grim – and infinitely inferior to what our children have been enjoying”.
The agony of waiting for a decision from Loulé Fiscal and Administrative court is compounded by the fact that tomorrow there will be (yet another) public sector union strike, apparently affecting courts as much as everything else – and fiscal and administrative courts are in a state of ‘chaos’ anyway, due to the introduction of a new computer software system.
Every day that goes by sees Aljezur International School’s 85 pupils suffering from a situation brought about in the most brutal fashion, because, as the minister of education said in an interview with Observador afterwards, the school was deemed to have “disobeyed the determinations of the state”.
