Portugal's Socialist PM BANS private schools from teaching pupils on Zoom during two-week Covid classroom closure – so state-educated students don't fall behind | Mail Online - Chris Jewers:
January 26, 2021 - "Portugal's socialist Prime Minister has banned private schools from teaching pupils remotely during a two-week classroom closure. The minority Socialist-led government of Antonio Costa said that allowing private institutions to teach remotely would put state school pupils at a disadvantage. The Portuguese government ordered all schools closed for two weeks last Thursday to slow contagion rates as hospitals faced record numbers of Covid-19 patients.
"The performance of state schools was patchy during Portugal's first lockdown, with many schools coming under fire for poor provision of online schooling.
"Portugal's ban on private schools teaching remotely also includes international schools, meaning British children living in the country doing GCSEs, A Levels or the International Baccalaureate cannot by law be taught for the next two weeks. Learning time lost during the imposed holiday, and any additional time lost from the school closure, would be compensated at a later data in the school year, the government said.
"'Banning digital classes in private education is a totalitarian and Marxist-style measure,' Rui Rio, the leader of the centre-right opposition party said. '[The measure] has nothing to do with the public interest or with the defence of public health. It is the left at its worst.' A petition against the ban set up by a Portuguese parent has already gathered over 13,000 signatures, The Times reported. The Association of Private Schools in Portugal said the measure preventing students from learning was unconstitutional.
"Parents from Portugal's estimated 50,000 British community expressed their outrage at the ban to the newspaper, with one mother saying how her daughter had been turned away by police when she went to take an exam at her school....
Sarah Hosford, an interior designed with two daughters who are set to take their GCSEs and International Baccalaureate, said that their school had set up a 'brilliant online system,' and that they were shocked about the ban. 'We are followed a completely different education system to the Portuguese one,' she told The Times. 'The idea of disadvantaging everybody as a solution for the few kids who haven't got computers is crazy. Keeping up education is of paramount importance,' she said."
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