Why haven’t around 25,000 students enrolled? There are several factors to take into account

EL NUEVO DÍA spoke with some actors who are familiar with the educational sphere with the aim of shedding light on this panorama of reduction in the number of enrollees.

Although connoisseurs of the matter assure that talking about school dropout at this time of the year could be “adventurous” and, perhaps, hasty, it should not be overlooked that, according to figures from the Tolima Ministry of Education, it has not yet been around 25,000 students have enrolled for the 2023 term.

And it is that according to the portfolio, last Monday 116 thousand girls, boys and young people started the calendar in the official institutions of 46 municipalities in the region, however, it is still estimated to reach the goal of 141,143 enrolled students, a number with which it closed the year before.

For his part, Juan Carlos Acero, director of Educational Coverage, stressed that reference is made to desertion when the student arrives in the system and later withdraws, and reiterated the invitation to parents to formalize the process in the Integrated Enrollment System , Simat, with the aim of guaranteeing coverage for school transport, the School Meals Program, PAE, and the teaching staff.

Given the reduction in the number of enrolled schoolchildren, he said that: “The highest point of enrollment is between May and June because by custom in some municipalities in remote areas, parents do not enroll their children in December but in January, for so when we started the academic calendar the enrollment movement began”.

And just as he stated that they carry out a follow-up on the minors of the homes of the Colombian Institute of Family Well-being, Icbf, at the moment of making the transition from preschool to school, he also spoke about what the number of students represents with respect to the teaching staff.

“The indicator for assigning teachers is the number of students, we hope it will regularize a bit, the first weeks attendance is slow,” said Acero, who estimates that by mid-February they will begin to measure the indicators to establish or not movements of plant.

What is behind the reduction in the number of enrolled?

To put the puzzle together and try to understand this phenomenon, a first exercise is to know the pieces that make it up. In this sense, Ernesto Cañas, prosecutor of the Tolima Teachers Union, Simatol, expressed that one of them consists of the lack of opportunities, which forces families to look for new airs.

Ernesto Cañas, Simatol prosecutor.

In the same way, he mentioned that the interruption or non-compliance in the provision of school transport and the precarious conditions in the infrastructure of some schools, also affects these cases.

Along the same lines, Álvaro Vargas, a member of the Confederation of Tolima Workers, and who is knowledgeable about educational issues, not only when considering the state of the physical plant, but also when warning about the family environment, spoke out.

In his view, there are homes where education is not seen as a factor to reconfigure or improve the quality of life. In addition, he assured that it is necessary to talk about the floating population, since there are “those who dedicate themselves to field work, and who by their nature are from harvest to harvest and after the food crops, among others that occur in the region.”

“There are also entities that validate the two-in-one baccalaureate, and it has become recurrent for young people to go to that system, another factor is that the type of education does not meet the expectations of the students,” Vargas added.

Still to work

In turn, Luis Eduardo Chamorro Rodríguez, a professor at the University of Tolima, asserted that there is indeed an “abandonment” of the system and specified that there is both interannual and intraannual desertion.

That is, the first occurs when the student finishes the school year but does not enroll in the next grade, while the other corresponds to when the students, after being enrolled, give up continuing their learning process before finishing. the school year.

Based on this clarification, he warns that there is a serious problem in terms of school permanence, which is due to multiple factors and that, in his opinion, is not yet guaranteed by the State,

However, he was expectant when bringing up that according to the first version of the National Development Plan that the Petro government will present to Congress on February 7, in the topic of education, 31% of the proposals would be aimed at achieving a longer school stay.

On the other hand, he noted that although the health emergency caused by Covid -19 is already behind us, the figures corresponding to enrollments decrease as if it were a “permanent phenomenon.”

Aspects to consider

Regarding factors that affect the reduction in student enrollment, he pointed out that the registration process itself, which is executed through a platform, represents in some cases a challenge for parents, especially in matters of access.

Likewise, he indicated that, given the school failure, another element to take into account in the situation, the Government should, in his opinion, make changes in the school evaluation system.

“Students, according to Dane’s statistics, do not feel interested in what they are taught and how they are taught, this is the task of teachers,” Chamorro Rodríguez said regarding curricular and educational relevance.

In addition to this, the conditions of the schools that, in certain territories, do not guarantee a favorable environment for the teaching process, a situation that could be exemplified with the drama that thousands of students from Ibagué are going through due to delays in the works of Single Day schools run by the School Infrastructure Financing Fund (Ffie) are another point to add to the list.

And it is that to these circumstances are added, among others, the conjunctures raised in terms of poverty, unemployment, inflation and complex socioeconomic episodes.

“We are not offering interpersonal relationships, teacher – student or teacher – parent, we are not offering affection, that is, there is a cold relationship between one another, as if the student were alone to be in the classroom, but little he is interested in the emotional aspects of the students”, concluded Chamorro Rodríguez.