Portugal has agreed to send some of its teaching staff to schools in Luxembourg as part of the latter's phased lockdown strategy.
Following the declaration of the state of emergency linked to the coronavirus pandemic, all schools and childcare facilities in Luxembourg were closed from March to May 2020. Given the decision to begin phasing out deconfinement, all of Luxembourg's schools and childcare facilities reopened from 25 May 2020, albeit with children attending school classes on alternate weeks. This new adapted school model requires additional teaching and supervisory staff.
Within the framework of the excellent bilateral relations between Luxembourg and Portugal, and at the request of the Luxembourg government, fifteen teachers from the Portuguese education network abroad will work in Luxembourg's primary schools for a maximum of fifteen hours per week. This agreement will run until the end of the 2019/20 school year.
In the context of cooperation in the field of education between the two countries, the Luxembourgish and Portuguese governments have stressed the importance of Portuguese lessons and classes taught in the Portuguese language. At this stage, these courses are provided through distance education. When classroom teaching resumes, scheduled for the start of the school year in September 2020, integrated, parallel and complementary courses will again be offered in Luxembourgish schools. A Luso-Luxembourg steering group is also developing other projects.