Vila Real de Santo António Câmara has raised concerns about 1,000 students who have been attending classes at temporary installations “lacking adequate conditions”, while improvement works to the local secondary school have been stopped for more than six months.
Contacts made by the Câmara to the entity responsible for the work, Parque Escolar, and the Ministry of Education have fallen on deaf ears and “an urgent solution to restore normalcy to the academic year” has failed to arrive.
For this reason, on Monday last week, a group of parliamentary members was invited to visit the temporary classrooms, 30 in total, to see for themselves the lack of conditions.
Mayor Luís Gomes said: “As the right to a quality education is at stake here, we can no longer tolerate this situation. The school has been a building site for far too long and we demand that the Ministry of Education activates all financing mechanisms to ensure conclusion of the work.”
Students have been using the municipal sports complex, at no cost to the school, while works last, but the Câmara admits this has meant an additional expense of €120,000.
Redevelopment of the Vila Real de Santo António Secondary School is included in the ‘Secondary Schools Modernisation Programme’ by the Ministry of Education. The work, which represents an investment of €12 million, should have been concluded at the end of 2011.
