Categories: General
      Date: Apr 15, 2009
     Title:  Portugal seeks Spanish teachers 

The growing interest in learning Spanish by Portugal's public school students has left the country in serious need for qualified teachers.



The Portguese Ministry of Education found itself with no choice but to implement a controversial solution to this problem: to award 220 people (for now) with a Spanish teaching post until 2013 by means of a contest.

Participants do not necesarily have to be degree-holders in Spanish - those who have degrees in any language closely related to Spanish, or who have obtained the Diploma Español de Lengua Extranjera (DELE) level C2 from the Instituto Cervantes are eligible to apply.

This teacher shortage is due to the unexpected increase in Spanish learning among portuguese students. For the 2004/2005 year, only a little over 5 thousand portuguese students studied Spanish - a small number compared to this year's almost 50 thousand.