MECI's 1,406 Permanent Slots for Psychologists, Social Workers and Mediators Carry a Step-One Salary Reset — DGAEP Opinion Wipes Years of Progression for Anyone Already Inside the Public Sector

The Ministério da Educação, Ciência e Inovação (MECI, Ministry of Education, Science and Innovation) advertised its largest single contract round for non-teaching school staff in years on 19 June 2026, opening competitions for 758 psychologists and 648 specialised technicians — a total of 1,406 permanent slots in the country's public school network. Officials presented the move as a historic reinforcement of the quadros, promising long-overdue stability to professionals who have spent years cycling through fixed-term annual contracts.

The fine print, surfaced this week by the Associação para a Gestão e Educação (AGSE, Association for Management and Education) and confirmed by candidate sindicatos, is considerably harsher. Any specialised technician currently working inside the Administração Pública (Public Administration) — school psychologists, social workers, mediators, occupational therapists, speech therapists — who applies to one of the new permanent slots will be placed at the first remuneratory position of the specialised-technician career, regardless of accumulated seniority, prior experience or the salary currently drawn.

The interpretation rests on a formal parecer issued by the Direção-Geral da Administração e do Emprego Público (DGAEP, Directorate-General for Administration and Public Employment), the body that arbitrates pay and career questions across Portuguese state employment. The DGAEP response, requested after candidates flooded MECI with queries about whether their current remuneration would carry over, framed the new positions as a fresh statutory career opened from the bottom of the scale — a position that the body said could not be sidestepped through equity-based discretion.

For a veteran psychologist already drawing six or seven hundred euros more per month under the existing Carreira Técnica Superior (Higher Technical Career) table, accepting a permanent placement at the first specialised-technician step means a direct monthly pay cut that AGSE estimates can reach €1,000 in extreme cases. The career clock also resets: the new contract starts the ten-year triennial-progression timer from zero, so the recovery to the prior salary level could take well over a decade of mandated advancement intervals.

The structure penalises precisely the professionals the Ministry says it wants to retain. School psychologists hired on annual contracts since the post-pandemic mental-health push, social workers anchored inside Territórios Educativos de Intervenção Prioritária (TEIP, Priority Intervention Educational Territories) clusters and inclusion mediators tied to the Direção-Geral da Educação's special-needs frame are all routed through the same trap. The choice — job security against earned salary — comes with no transitional rule bridging the two careers, even though the technicians in question often perform the same daily tasks as the new quadros they are applying to fill.

The Federação Nacional dos Sindicatos da Função Pública (FNSTFPS, National Federation of Public Service Unions) and the União Geral de Trabalhadores (UGT, General Union of Workers) have asked MECI for an emergency clarification. They want a salary safeguard equivalent to the one the Estatuto da Carreira Docente (ECD, Teaching Career Statute) carries when teachers move between school groupings — a portability rule that preserves accumulated scale.

Without it, several hundred current MECI specialists are expected to skip the competition entirely, leaving direções de agrupamento to fill the new slots with first-job applicants who lack school-floor familiarity. A clarification from the Ministry is expected in the days ahead of the candidacy deadline.