Teachers required to justify absences

Eighty two schools in the province stand to lose a total of €60 million of funding from the European Union from basic vocational training due to the problem of unaccounted absenteeism, with the European Union threatening to cut the funding and salaries of teachers.

The resolution has been communicated by the Ministry of Education to teachers in the public schools where vocational training courses are run. There is now a requirement for teachers to ensure students are present or have acceptable reason for not being so in order to guarantee the funding.

However teacher’s union representatives are complaining that the software provided to keep attendance records does not work correctly, making the task difficult.

Vocational training centres also have to worry about the prospect of the PP losing general elections at the end of this year, since the program Lomce which also provides funding may be scrapped as it is a PP program not supported by other parties.