Seven out of every 10 teachers in the state network in SC are temporary, study shows

Seven out of every 10 teachers in the Santa Catarina state network are temporary. This means that 71% of professionals who work in the classroom have an employment contract of at most one year, as the contract lasts 365 days. The survey is from Todos pela Educação and shows that the State is the fifth in the country with the lowest concentration of permanent professionals.

Join NSC Total’s exclusive community of columnists

The failure to hold public competitions in the state of Santa Catarina has been one of the main issues in the category and has generated mobilizations in recent years. On Tuesday (23), the educators went on strike and, according to the Education Workers Union (Sinte-SC), 30% of workers joined the strike. The State Department of Education (SED), however, has not yet released a balance with the number of strikers.

Evandro Accadrolli, coordinator of Sinte, says that there are 39,144 active teachers and, of these, around 32 thousand are employed on a temporary basis, the so-called ACTs.

— The last public competition that called for education workers was in 2004. The competition was held in 2017, but as the pandemic period began shortly after, it ended up calling very few workers. So it was not considered a public contest that called people — he highlighted in interview with NSC Total.

Short contracts and unemployment

Diego de Souza Manoel, secretary of legal affairs at Sinte-SC, reinforces that contracts for temporary teachers last a maximum of one year, for the academic period that runs from February to December, therefore, they do not last 12 months.

Every two years, ACTs go through a selection process in order to choose classes in schools. Diego explains, however, that depending on the educator’s classification in the test, there is a possibility that he will not be called by the State in February and, while waiting for the vacancy, he will be unemployed.

When December arrives, those who were called are fired and have to go through the selection process again and wait to be called.

— These teachers experience instability. They don’t know where they will work next year, they don’t create a bond with the school community. It is extremely precarious, because there are teachers who can take two classes at one school and four classes at another. Generally, the course load is not completed in just one school and [o professor] take several classes so that you have the maximum load to earn a little more — points out the Sinte secretary.

In addition to the lack of guaranteed employment, Diego also cites the risk of this professional moving from one school to another and the lack of appreciation for the curriculum, since, even if he has specializations, as he is temporary, he earns the same salary as those who are at the beginning of their career.

Exception that became the rule

According to law 16,861 from Santa Catarina, As of December 2015, the hiring of temporary employees is only permitted in four cases: replacement of a full professor removed from his/her position; service to projects with a certain duration; absence of a teacher holding a permanent position in the school unit; and to meet the needs of the Santa Catarina Foundation for Special Education (FCEE).

Santa Catarina is the fifth state in the country with the lowest number of permanent professionals, behind only Minas Gerais, with 80% of the workforce made up of ACTs, Tocantins (79%), Acre (75%) and Espirito Santo (73%).

From 2013 to 2023, SC reduced its permanent staff by 11% and increased its temporary staff by 55%. In other words, there are 1,147 fewer candidates and 7,740 more ACTs. The same situation repeats itself across the country. The data shows that, in ten years, the number of certified professionals fell from 505 thousand to 321 thousand last year.

What the state government says

The State Department of Education took a position on the situation of ACTs in Santa Catarina and the holding of a public competition in the area of ​​education through a note. Read in full:

“OFFICIAL NOTE – SED

The mismatch between permanent and temporary teachers is a historical problem in Santa Catarina, inherited from previous administrations.

In 2023, after a diagnosis that showed its viability, the new management of the State Government announced and began working on implementing the largest public competition in the history of Santa Catarina, with 10 thousand new permanent professionals for the State Department of Education. We are just waiting to hire a company to carry out the competition.

The notice, which is under construction to be launched in June this year, foresees 8 thousand new teachers hired and 2 thousand professionals for the administrative and pedagogical areas of the schools, totaling 10 thousand new employees to serve the more than a thousand schools in SC.

This effort carried out by the government since last year is a way of correcting this imbalance, providing more security for the day-to-day work of schools in Santa Catarina.

ACTs

The hiring of teachers on a temporary basis – ACTs – are carried out in compliance with Law No. 16,861/2015 or in response to the demands of each region, to meet the various situations of temporary absences of regular employees (Health Treatment License, Premium License, Waiting Retirement, Bonus Function, Readaptation, Pregnancy Leave, Family Accompaniment Leave, etc.). Also to meet vacancies in positions (Retirement and Exoneration) and other detailed cases (Indigenous School Education, Quilombola School Education, Education in Spaces of Deprivation of Freedom, Rural Education, Special Education, Youth and Adult Education, Innovative Secondary Education, Teaching Full-Time High School – EMITI, High School Integrated with Professional Education – EMIEP, Professional Education, Excess Classes, Execution of Programs offered by the MEC, among others).”

Read too

Teachers’ strike: salary reduction goes beyond the limit of fiscal responsibility, says secretary

Government of SC estimates R$53 billion in revenue and expenses in LDO and lists priorities for 2025