After resigning from the position of Presidency of the ANEP to carry out his pre-candidacy for the Presidency of the Republic, Dr. Robert Silva abandons the process of developing educational transformation, which as we will see is immersed in a climate of high conflict.
After this and having completed the parliamentary treatment of accountability, we can reach some conclusions about the course of one of the main policies of this government: educational transformation.
The government chose to carry out this policy under its strong leadership and with the slogan “The educational transformation has begun and will not stop.” To achieve this, a climate of confrontation was generated with the teaching unions and student unions, which he understood as the main opponents of educational change.
This confrontation began with the summary with dismissal and withholding of 50% of the salaries of 14 teachers from high school No. 1 of San José, after the unfiling of a complaint made in 2019. Then the “Investigative Commission” was formed at the parliamentary level. with the task of investigating the extension and justification of irregular licenses to the members of the National Federation of Secondary Education Teachers (Fenapes) by the Council of Secondary Education in the period 2015-2020” and a long list of actions in this same line, which includes the removal of the director of the IAVA from his position. This context of confrontation generated, in addition to fear, a feeling of discomfort and anger throughout the educational community.
In this environment of confrontation and tension, with the still very recent effects of the pandemic, with a special impact on educational communities, the first steps of educational transformation, in addition to not having participatory spaces for collective construction or legitimation, were very doubtful and hermetic, to the point that the plans and curricula were not made known until the time selections for the different subjects had advanced.
This process was accumulating dissent as it passed due to the very characteristics of its implementation and content that we have been describing. Thus, academic associations of teachers and self-convened rooms of the different subjects emerged in the public debate, which saw how their subjects were resigned or transformed into the new curriculum.
Other voices that were moving away from the official position on the implementation of the transformation from within the government and in the conduct of education, a situation which began to be noticed from the statements of the Undersecretary of Education and Culture, Ana Ribeiro, who expressed on the subject: “I had no participation and I have nothing to say.”
Robert Silva is leaving the ANEP Presidency with several unfulfilled campaign promises and with his flagship adrift.
Added to this is the resignation of the deputy director of the General Directorate of Secondary Education (DGES), who considered that if an educational change that involves collaborative work is being “promoted”, the fact that there is “partiality of data” and “hermeticism in the environment of some management direction” leave him “in a very compromised situation.”
Counselor Juan Gabito, who was president of the ANEP Codicen during the presidency of Luis Alberto Lacalle Herrera, has also publicly shown his differences. Gabito expressed that in the second stage of construction of the curricular reform it is necessary to “invite the ATD from the beginning”, something that later did not happen.
The icing on the cake of this process of distancing the government from the educational transformation was the zero budget allocation that was granted to it in this last rendering of accounts. The ANEP has the possibility of presenting its own message in each accountability report, requesting the budget it believes is necessary for the development of its management. In this case, it made an order for $2,412,607,092, which represents just over 2.5 percent of the entity’s total budget. This request was not included in the message from the Executive Branch.
Then, in dealing with this accountability, government legislators proposed a budget reallocation within the entity itself, which consisted of withdrawing from the ANEP infrastructure fund (a fund that dedicates its budget to the repair and construction of new educational centers). , among other things) $240,000,000 for 2024 and 2025 respectively, to be used in the hiring of the figures who will carry out the educational transformation in each center, the much-questioned mentors. Doing a quick calculation of the amount withdrawn from infrastructure, we can say that these end up costing the equivalent of six new educational centers. In addition to the zero budget allocation to the ANEP, government legislators decided not to give rise to a request from the entity that did not require a budget amount. This request referred to the modification of article 69 of the General Education Law that was previously changed by the LUC in its article 163.
In short, educational transformation is a public policy that began with great fanfare and with clear support from the Executive Branch, but by not taking into account the opinions of the different actors in educational work, it lost support first in public opinion, and then do it within the government actors themselves. Robert Silva, who has already been proclaimed as one of the Colorado Party’s pre-candidates for the Presidency of the Republic, is leaving the Presidency of the ANEP with several unfulfilled campaign promises and with his flagship adrift.
Agustín Mazzini is a deputy of the Popular Participation Movement, Frente Amplio.
2023-11-13 03:19:14
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