Aljezur International School – an establishment that follows the British Cambridge curriculum (accepted by the Ministry of Education, Science and Innovation), and is currently educating 85 children – was ‘compulsorily closed’ down last Friday, without notice.
As teachers and children in Halloween costumes were enjoying a final day before the mid-term break, five GNR agents suddenly arrived in the company of a representative of the General Inspectorate of Education and one of the Algarve directorate of regional services to demand that the school be closed immediately.
“We told them that this would not be possible, because of the superior interests of the children”, co-director Sílvia Catarino has explained to CNN Portugal. “Many have parents who would have been working and could not collect them; others come by bus, which was not available at that moment. They said they would come back at the end of the day to ensure the school was closed”.
And this is exactly what happened. The school that has educated the grandchildren of a former Portuguese prime minister, the children of judges, film producers and even of a Nobel chemist, is now encircled by crime tape, fellow director Karen Whitten tells us. “It is beyond ridiculous…”
“Monstruous”, is how Sílvia Catarino described it to CNN.
The drama stems from a lapse no one seems able to explain. Eleven years ago, the school received its licence to function as an educational establishment, and then, somewhere between that date and 2018, the licence was revoked, although the school was never informed.
In 2022 when all this became horribly clear, there was a closure attempt, circumvented by the school’s own legal arguments. And up until last Friday, that is where things remained: waiting for a higher decision, while the school remained steadfast over its right to exist.
Now, the school’s legal team is lodging a ‘providência cautelar’ to ensure that all 85 children are back in their classrooms by Monday – and that this closure is reversed.
The tragedy is the form in which the children’s situations are being handled. As CNN’s article explains, all the children’s information is now with the Aljezur School Grouping (the public school system), which has no places available for them, and was not the choice of the children’s parents in the first place.
“It is too bizarre to try and comprehend”, says Karen Whitten. “We just have to work towards getting everyone back in the classroom by next Monday” when the midterm-break comes to an end.
source: CNN Portugal/ Algarve International School
