Marcela Cubillos was the first Minister of Education of the second government of Sebastián Piñera. In that position, she was responsible for leading the educational reforms that had been implemented in the previous administration, Michelle Bachelet’s second. In this sense, the Inclusion Law, which put an end to selection in schools, and the New Public Education that demunicipalizes education through the Local Public Education Services (SLEP), were the main ones.
However, for the now candidate for mayor of Las Condes, These reforms have not meant improvements in quality nor have they solved the problems that existed. That is what she says she has seen as Secretary of State and, what’s more, she assures that they have generated new difficulties, such as the non-assessment of merit to apply to high schools of excellence, the SLEP crisis or the lack of available enrollments.
Cubillos, together with nine other academics from the San Sebastián University, four of whom had stints in the Ministry of Education, present such opinions in the book “Educational reform: a failed experiment”, which will be presented next Monday at the Bellavista campus of the aforementioned study house.
“The educational reform of Bachelet II is leaking and it is essential to push for a counter-reform without expecting that more generations of children and young people will be harmed. For this it is essential to do it with the representatives and without slogans. This book seeks to be a contribution to that path,” says Cubillos.
The invitation to such a launch says that it is the Faculty of Law and Social Sciences of the institution that invites the presentation of a book that, it adds, was coordinated by the former minister, who states in the text that the aforementioned laws have caused “serious injustices and serious damage to the quality of education.”
“Has the time come for an educational counter-reform? That is the question that ten academics, from different perspectives, address in these pages” reads, in turn, on the back cover.
But who are the other nine academics?
Five of the analyzes are written by people who were linked to Mineduc: José Pablo Núñez, Fernando Peña, Macarena Bravo and Jorge Barrera; two by former students of the National Institute – the former minister Julio Isamit and Jose Francisco Lagos-; and two others by the former dean of Education of the USS and today a member of the National Council of Education, Ana Luz Duránand Victor Ruizthe current dean of Education, along with Felipe Alegría.
Isamit, for example, addresses the decline that emblematic high schools have suffered, while Bravo, former candidate for constituent and pro-secretary of the Republican Party, delves into the “error that has been weakening subsidized private education as a pretext to make education more attractive.” municipal”, stating that one is destroyed and the other is not improved. In turn, Lagos, today executive director of Res Pública, supports the Inclusion Law and assures that the limits on the creation of new schools by civil society have restricted the possibilities that families have to choose a project for the training of their children.
Likewise, Ana Luz Durán tries to explain in the book how the effects of structural reforms have translated into “gray zones” as a result of the installation of public policies based on ideas and beliefs that clash with educational reality.
“The educational debate has been marked by an extreme ideology against merit and effort. Bad reforms have harmed quality and have blurred our focus on what is important. For this reason, together with a group of professors from the San Sebastián University, we decided to write this book to open the discussion and serve as a basis to promote reforms that allow us to value merit, recover freedom and promote quality in education,” he closes. , for his part, Isamit.
