The Regional Secretary for Education and Culture defended today that no one can be resigned to school failure, which he considered to be a "scourge."

Avelino Meneses spoke at the 22nd Philosophical Meeting "Pensar (n)as Ilhas" (Thinking about the Islands), an initiative organised by Manuel de Arriaga Secondary School. The government official reiterated the Regional Government's commitment to prepare an Integrated Programme for the Promotion of School Success, designated as ProSucesso, in order to respond to the "most important challenge in the future of the archipelago."

For the Regional Secretary, this challenge, as António da Nóvoa states in the Introductory Note to the plan, is to turn "the Azores into a land of education and a sea of knowledge," because "education and knowledge are the cornerstones of everything in a democratic society, even of freedom."

The Regional Secretary also mentioned that "the methodology of the programme for the promotion of school success is based on the establishment of a consortium of efforts between technicians of the Regional Secretariat for Education , managers, teachers and education experts from regional and national universities."

"The success of this project necessarily requires the involvement of the entire Azorean society," Avelino Meneses defended, adding that a "social and political consensus" should be reached in due course.

In this context, the government official recalled that "the political consensus on the key pillars, with room for different opinions on what is non-essential, was the step towards the progress achieved in education in Portugal since April 25, 1974 and in the Azores since the institutionalisation of Autonomy in 1976."

Moreover, the Regional Secretary for Education and Culture stated that the goal of ProSucesso is to ensure the "academic success of all students" and comply with the goals set by the Strategy 2020; "the latter are still too demanding for the Azores."

According to Avelino Meneses, these goals require the reduction of early school dropout "by 10%" and the "containment of school failure in order to reach a university graduation rate of 40%."