2023-10-31 15:20:48
This day, the director of the Directorate of Public Education, Jaime Veas, addressed on Radio ADN the complex educational crisis that is being experienced in the Atacama Region, since exactly 58 days ago the teaching union of the Local Public Education Service (SLEP) began a strike of activities after accusing serious problems of infrastructure and supplies in schools, which has 46 educational establishments and 30 thousand students without classes.
The Ministry of Education presented a plan for the return and recovery of classes in public establishments in the area that teachers do not accept and on Sunday night the Minister of Education, Nicolás Cataldo, called on teachers to resume classes this Thursday, November 2, pointing out that he saw “no reason” to maintain the strike, to which the president of the regional College of Teachers, Carlos Rodríguez, responded that they will not return, since “the minimum enabling conditions are not in place.”
Regarding this situation, Veas first pointed out that a distinction should be made, since the Atacama Region has two local services and along those lines, the Huasco Local Service, which has been operating since 2018, has “an outstanding performance.” .
Therefore, he maintained, the situation of the SLEP of Atacama – made up of five communes in the region: Copiapó, Caldera, Tierra Amarilla, Chañaral and Diego de Almagro – “cannot be extrapolated, not even to the local public education service that is under south of the province of Copiapó.”
Regarding the reasons why this situation has happened in the region, Veas maintains that there are two objective facts, which are the two audits, the one in 2022 and another in 2023, “that explain what is happening to us with this local service.”
“He soon loses his leadership, in this case the executive director, as a result of a first summary implemented by the ministry, in 2022. Once the administration of President (Gabriel) Boric takes over, authorities that are known are already detected, place to this summary; and secondly, this year we also do a second audit, and this allows us to detect that there are low competencies in our workers and officials,” he expressed.
“What is happening to us, we have an issue of capabilities in our officials, effectively, of knowledge of public rules, and actions that today we are going to discern with respect to personal responsibilities, whether administrative, civil, or possibly criminal, that already the State bodies are acting,” he added. “Here there is an issue of, I would say, a poor installation of the service, and of events that, indeed, had a strong impact on its performance.”
The story continues below
More about Education
Regarding infrastructure problems, Veas maintained that they have shortened the deadlines as much as possible with technical assistance, already today, Tuesday, he indicated, “we are already intervening in 23 educational establishments, which will be completed this Friday with a projected investment of 357 million pesos, to be used, for example, in fire extinguishers, light bulbs, glass, basic conditions of establishments.”
“But be careful, these are not all establishments. Today there are 14 establishments in class, the kindergartens are also in class. (…) where it is needed, we are there, we have entered with the local service, mining companies are also entering that have become part of the solution and the Municipality of Copiapó is also entering, which has also become part of the solution,” continuous.
Thus, said the director, “we are confident that once our teachers, parents, see that the tasks are actually being carried out, they can effectively evaluate and eventually return to class in a plan that the ministry has proposed, which is a plan varied, that has online classes, that has, for example, works in the afternoon, students in the morning. In other cases there is no problem, they can return full day. This combination of educational strategies that are even projected forward.” This, he added, is projected even until next year so that the learning can be recovered.
Regarding what he responds to the parliamentarians and mayors who ask to paralyze this transfer to the SLEP, Veas indicated that “he does not agree.”
“We must continue to act at double speed, repair what we have to urgently repair, and for that with our Minister of Education we are going to modify a bill that is currently in Parliament: today it is in the Senate Education Commission Since May of this year, a motion, a message to the executive to perfect Law 21,040 based on the information from the New Public Education Evaluation Council generated in 2021. From that, and from a diagnosis in 2022, We entered this bill,” he reported.
In this way, he explained, “there will be an environment in which we will be able to perfect a reform that was defined as gradual, a reform that was defined with an External Evaluation Council that reports to the presidency of the Republic, which is the broader arc, the six academics who are evaluating us there, a reform that the country defined and is going to be a complex reform.”
“The situation in Atacama is very complex and very unfortunate, and we are there working to move forward with the Ministry of Education, but that cannot be extrapolated to other services or to the rest of the country, the good experiences are there, they are very nice (. ..) stopping is not possible, we are not convinced that it is necessary, but we do have to significantly improve the way in which we are creating and the design of the Public Education System,” he concluded.
#Directorate #Public #Education #crisis #Atacama