Due to a pandemic, educational lag in infants could reach up to four years

This is worrisome, he warned, because many children learned little or nothing and forgot numerous contents that they had already assimilated before the health emergency.

In the Latin American region, 55 percent of 15-year-olds are unaware of the minimum educational content that they should handle according to their age. It is estimated that the problem increased by at least 15 percent to exceed 70 percent. In other words, more than two out of three students in the first year of secondary school do not have the knowledge that they would have to master at that educational level.

This is due to the fact that in Mexico, as in most countries, we were locked up for close to two years without face-to-face classes. The television program “Aprende en casa” was established, in addition to radio programming, the distribution of textbooks and the use of the Internet, although not in a general way.

Higher-ranked children took advantage of these solutions, especially online classes, while marginalized students had to turn to television and radio, without any interaction with teachers.

The academic opined that this problem puts a generation of students at risk, since on the one hand they did not acquire sufficient knowledge and, on the other, many dropped out of school. There are no exact figures, although the study carried out by the National Institute of Statistics and Geography refers to how many students did not enroll due to the pandemic or poverty: 5.2 million people in Mexico, from three to 29 years old, for the 2020 school year -2021.

“We are talking about millions of students who did not study and who probably work, are ‘ninis’ or are at risk of entering the drug market. Unfortunately they are the options for the most marginalized people,” she stated.

He also indicated that, unlike other nations in the region, in Mexico the damage has not been compensated through preparatory programs and diagnostic tests to determine, room by room, the degree of lag in schoolchildren and what to do with it. For example, in Chile, remedial programs were implemented to strengthen educational content, particularly in mathematics.

He considered that the government should make a great effort to increase the budget allocated to education and direct a part to carry out evaluations, in order to determine how the students are doing, what their needs are, and then design and implement these programs to fill these gaps. educational gaps they have.

Lloyd said: “It’s important to identify the children who are struggling the most and why. In some countries they have implemented strategies to contact students who have dropped out of school, and it is the teachers, even the school principals, who go directly to the homes of those students, talk to the families, and in some cases offer incentives to the students. children to return to the classroom. It is necessary to attack the problem with a national plan, but applied in each state, in each school and in each classroom”.

The design of specific strategies for each circumstance is required: it is not the same school situation for children in Los Altos de Chiapas as that of those in Lomas de Chapultepec, in Mexico City, he considered.

In an interview, the university student stressed that in some entities, especially in the south of the Mexican Republic, the digital divide is greater; that is, a kind of mirror effect is presented.

Latin America is the region of the world where children missed the most days of school. This may be due to the fact that it has been one of the hardest hit in terms of deaths, but there were also countries that, despite the health situation, decided to continue with face-to-face classes, he commented.

The educational gap affects the economy of nations, because a minor who lacks basic skills will hardly be an adult who produces profits.

To improve this situation, a State policy is required that transcends six-year terms; that is, the national and social consensus that education is an urgent and indispensable issue. “Anyway, we are talking about programs that take decades; An educational gap of the magnitude of the one we have in Mexico cannot be made up for in a few years.”

The IISUE researcher specified that a positive result of the pandemic is that we are paying attention, for the first time seriously, to these problems of educational inequality and solutions are being sought. Studies have been carried out that are discussed at the national level.

“The fact that the media is talking about it gives me hope that something can be achieved, that’s one of the few positive things. We know the seriousness of the problem and we are trying to solve it; it will take decades, but it is not impossible,” he stated.

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