No one would dare to affirm that the problems facing the Argentine educational system started with the pandemic. This one just dramatically put the magnifying glass on everything that needed to be corrected. Taking just one topic from a very long list, Argentina exhibits one of the highest school dropout rates in the Third World, with a peak of between 13% and 15% reached during 2020, which is accentuated among the lowest-income sectors. We are talking about 1.5 million students who disassociated themselves from their studies in the pandemic; too many still without reintegration and some 360,000 students who interrupt their school career every year. How many more will we see walk away from the development of their potentialities before something changes?
From the Observatory Do Education, the perceptions of Argentines about the quality of education their children receive were analyzed, and the diagnosis of the severity of the crisis is highly shared. Almost miraculously, without going into details, we would all be in broad agreement on this matter, but it is not enough. The secondary level barely reaches 30% approval compared to 40% for primary and 60/70% for both the initial and university levels. Most agreed that teacher education and training were the main problem, followed by issues related to the lack of investment, which, although it should be 6% of GDP, is not met.
We are aware of statistics, reports, evaluation results and public opinion polls on the state of education in Argentina almost daily. The diagnoses may differ on minor issues, but they all agree on the broad strokes that urgently need to be corrected. For example, the number of school days per year for the primary level is a core issue. While in Japan there are 203, in Argentina we hardly reach 168 –when union conflicts allow it–, even below Brazil (192).. The lack of continuity continues to punish the most vulnerable to a greater extent.
Con almost half of the Argentine students who do not reach the minimum level of reading comprehension in primary school today, reaching more than 6 out of ten in the tercile with the lowest socioeconomic level, State literacy policies cannot continue to wait. the NGO Argentines for Education rightly insists that education must be at the center of public debate.
There are 38 Argentine organizations working to place education as a national priority (www.primeroeducacion.org.ar/), articulating coordinated objectives, projects and interventions. But it’s not enough either.
In 2020, crossed by the pandemic and with schools closed, the then deputy Brenda Austin (UCR) stated that education is an essential activity and presented a project to declare an educational emergency. The same did the deputies of Pro Mary Eugenia Vidalin 2021, and Martín Maquieyra, in 2022; none of these initiatives came out of the respective commission in the chamber of origin. The presentations and paths of the projects in Congress are repeated without obtaining approvals. Much less those as urgent as they are ambitious advances that they propose.
The senator for Córdoba Carmen Rivero (Pro) presented a new bill days ago for the declaration of an educational emergency in Argentina, in order to guarantee that all children learn to read and write in a timely manner, with the accompaniment of their peers. alfredo cornejo, Louis Judge y Carolina Losada.
Recognizing the emergence of the national educational system at all levels and modalities is the first step, but a simple series of first steps repeated over time does not bring us closer to the goal.
Parliamentary work must be understood not only as the presentation of projects of all types and colors –some of which are beyond criticism, given their insignificance when the urgencies are so enormous–, but fundamentally as the ability to install debates and build consensus around the initiatives to give them real course.
If we Argentines definitely fail to make education a priority, we can expect little from our already uncertain future. We are going through a true emergency, and advancing with the law will only be a first step that many others will have to follow. Disregarding this very serious situation as a society and allowing our politicians and officials to continue distracting us without demanding their attention to the problems that truly concern the citizen is to seize the future. An ominous future without education.
THE NATION
