The Ministry of Education has lost the historic battle against the onslaught of COVID-19. Clearly he was wrong in strategy. It focused on the most trivial, according to its officials, the tactical thing was to deliver food to schools, then deliver study guides in the field of Distance Education coverage with the instructional modality, guides that of course, such as the government idiosyncrasyThey arrived late and incomplete to their recipients, who were teachers and students, offering a school health program over the phone and, as we say in a good way, messing up a handful of schools.
Regarding food bags, the analysis of the situation indicates that for a family of five or more members, the aforementioned bag lasts two days, understanding that it is food for the whole family, so it should be called a food bag. family and not school food bag, which leads us to wonder Does this bag really affect the nutrition of the student? Half a dozen eggs, some tomatoes to make a chirmolito, 2 pounds of Maseca, 2 pounds of salt, bananas, 350ml of oil, etc. We infer that in this equation those who really benefit are the intermediaries that distribute the bags.
Talking with several teachers from the capital and from the departments, they told us that study guides arrived several months late in the 2020, 2021 and 2022 school years. According to the teachers, they had two problems with the study guides: one, the guides were never delivered on time and two, they were not curricularly contextualized, which is why many teachers chose to prepare their own guides. This leads us to think that the current administration did not think at all about the educational quality of our students.
However, the Minister of Education pointed out in a television interview at the beginning of this year that the great achievements of her administration are precisely the delivery of family food bags, the school health program and the renovation of schools and that in this 2023 will continue to promote these programs, achieving their extension to the basic and diversified cycle.
In the analysis carried out, it can be noted that the school health program began just when school work was suspended, that is, there were no students in the educational centers, in addition, the adjudication process was questioned due to its opacity. What the Minister of Education said regarding the renovation of school buildings contradicts the reality exposed by the media, by social networks, as well as by the agencies of supranational organizations based in the country.
We can understand that educational quality is not a priority for this government and that is unfortunate. According to data provided by the Ministry of Education itself, the dropout rate in the last three years has been of epic proportions, mainly due to the lack of connectivity, the didactic relationship between students and teachers was broken, the poverty of teaching as indicated by the The latest report from the World Bank is painful, so the quality of education deteriorates irreparably.
In a very personal opinion, now that our students return to face-to-face, MINEDUC should focus all its efforts on the following: a) reestablish the pedagogical-social fabric among the curricular subjects of the educational community, b) use information and communication technology as a strategic tool in the process of learning to learn, c) carry out the pertinent curricular adaptations to address this learning poverty effect of three years of absence from the classroom and d) train teachers to face this complex educational reality.
Educational quality is on the agenda of the media and of the country’s think tanks, as is obvious, we will be waiting to find out which political parties that will participate in the electoral contest will include it in their government plans. It will be a key issue to define our vote.
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