100,000 teachers protest in Lisbon over appraisals

LISBON (Reuters) - More than 100,000 teachers from all over Portugal marched in Lisbon Saturday in one of the country's biggest rallies in a decade to protest against the government's attempts to measure their performance.

Portugal has some of the lowest school achievement levels in western Europe and the Socialist government of Prime Minister Jose Socrates has made boosting education a priority. That includes performance evaluation for teachers.

Protesters, carrying banners reading "Respect for Teaching," demanded that the government cancel the program. They say the appraisals and excessive bureaucracy involved in the process all but paralysed schools, causing stress and lack of motivation among teachers and students.

Unions said as many as 120,000 people took part in the demonstration that clogged Lisbon's main Liberdade avenue and the vast Palace Square facing the Tagus river.

Police officials could not confirm the number, saying it was difficult to calculate "given the size of the protest," but witnesses said the crowd was in excess of 100,000 people.

Some of the banners called for the resignation of Education Minister Maria de Lurdes Rodrigues.

The minister said the evaluation model would continue despite the promise of further protests and a nationwide teachers' strike on January 19.

"We have to guarantee to the country the quality of schooling, which will allow us to distinguish and reward those who are better teachers," Lusa news agency quoted Rodrigues as saying. "Giving up is not a solution ... The improvement of teaching is absolutely essential."

(Reporting by Andrei Khalip and Jose Ribeiro; Editing by Janet Lawrence)