“We are going to launch a tender for 237 schools very soon,” revealed the Minister of Education, Science and Innovation, Fernando Alexandre, speaking to journalists on the sidelines of the 4th edition of the Teaming Club Conference, which brings together the Centres of Excellence of the European Union’s “Teaming for Excellence” programme.

The cost of these projects is estimated at 850 million euros, and 40% of the schools are located in the Lisbon region, “a region with a huge deficit in human resources and infrastructure”, the minister explained.

According to Fernando Alexandre, in some cases, the work will force “the closure of schools”, which has already happened all over the country, but also the transfer of students to monoblocks.

There are schools that have not had any work done “for 40 or 50 years” and, for this reason, there are cases where having classes in monoblocks is better than being in a classroom: “It will always be a temporary situation, but often the monoblocks have better conditions than the classrooms where the students were”.

This new tender is part of an investment plan “worth one billion euros to be realised by the end of the decade”, added the minister, explaining that the idea is to have “dozens of schools being refurbished every year”.