This week, the new school year brings more than 18,000 students back to schools in the municipality of Vila Nova de Famalicão, which enters the new school year with the usual calm of recent years and with the biggest budget ever for education: more than 47 million euros. 

The main figures and news for the 24/25 school year were announced this Thursday, 12 September, at a meeting that brought together the mayor Mário Passos, the Councillor for Education Augusto Lima and the main educational agents in the municipality, including school headmasters, teachers, parents' associations, among others.

The lion's share of this budget - 23 million - will go towards ongoing or planned work on the municipality's school estate. Mário Passos talks about ‘a series of structural interventions to guarantee an increasingly high-quality education in Vila Nova de Famalicão’. 

This is the case with the much-demanded refurbishment and extension of the Padre Benjamim Salgado Secondary School in Joane, which is due to start at the end of the first term, as well as the extension and remodelling of the Senador Sousa Fernandes Primary School, the construction of the new Delães Primary School and the new Brufe School Centre and the refurbishment of the Seide Primary School. In addition to these, there are a number of projects that began at the end of the last school year and are still on the ground. This is the case with the extension of the Requião primary school, the Gavião primary school and the Boca do Monte primary school in Mogege, the refurbishment of the Castelões primary school and the refurbishment and extension of the Quintão primary school in Arnoso Santa Eulália, among other smaller projects that are equally important in the process of improving the conditions of the municipality's schools. With the future in mind, the municipality will also start work this year on drawing up the architectural plans for the works to be carried out at EB 2,3 D. Maria II, Júlio Brandão, Nuno Simões and Gondifelos and at the Cavalões and Sapugal EBs.

In terms of numbers, Famalicão enters the new school year with more than 18,000 students, spread across 775 classes in 139 schools. At this level, we highlight the opening of two new pre-school classrooms and 7 new classes in the 1st Cycle, which this year has 165 more students. ‘These numbers have remained stable, but with an upward trend, especially in pre-school and primary school, which has led the City Council to bring forward to this school year the revision of the ‘Educa 20.30’ Education Charter, initially planned for 2025/2026,’ said the Councillor for Education yesterday. 

In terms of Human Resources - an area for which more than 13 million euros have been earmarked - the municipality is once again guaranteeing a reinforcement of the staff assigned to the municipality's schools with the hiring of 50 new Operational Assistants, for 626. At this level, there is also something new in Curricular Enrichment Activities, with the municipality ensuring this year the hiring, under a fixed-term contract, of around a hundred senior technicians who will ensure the implementation of a set of curricular enrichment activities after school activities.

In school meals, where the municipal investment is around 4.3 million euros, the big news is the daily provision of a second vegetarian dish for all students, from pre-school to secondary school. 

In terms of transport, the highlight is a set of services, free of charge for families, for all students with special health needs, as well as the special transport circuits operated by the municipality to ensure, for example, free transport for articulated education students in the fields of music, dance and theatre. 

Among the various supports for families, we should also highlight the offer of vouchers worth 24 and 12 euros to 1st cycle students in classes A, B and C for the purchase of school supplies and the offer of activity books for Portuguese, Maths, Environmental Studies and English to 1st cycle students. 

The focus on vocational education - with 1,865 students enrolled and the construction of a new generation of vocational schools, the Specialised Technological Centres - and adult qualifications, through the Qualifica Centre and the university offer, were some of the topics also covered in yesterday's presentation.

‘In Famalicão we have a serious commitment to the education of our children and young people, to the qualification of our population, and the budget we are presenting today is the portrait of a municipality and an entire community that sees this area as a priority and knows that this is the only way forward for an increasingly empowered territory,’ said Mário Passos yesterday, wishing the entire educational community “a happy and successful school year”.