The education reform is one step away from becoming law, but the Historical Pact bench, its main defender, is not calm.
What happened?
This week the reform was debated in the third debate in the First Committee of the Senate. There the text had been stalled for several days because the government did not have the votes to approve it. As it is a statutory law, it requires qualified majorities. There are 21 senators on that commission, so the majority is 11.
To get the votes, the government had to give in on the articles. Thus, they sat down to make consensus with Cambio Radical, La U, Conservadores and the Democratic Center. The document that came out after that negotiation table modified aspects of the original project that was defended by Petrism. One of the main changes is on the principle of democracy and governance in universities.
The government’s proposal was to encourage “direct government”, that is, that, for example, the rectors were elected directly by the vote of teachers and students. This was contemplated in articles 5 and 12 of the presentation of the third debate. However, as experts from the La Silla Education Network said, the change could imply setbacks in university governance.
The Covenant’s Complaints
The Pact bench and independent congressmen like Jennifer Pedraza did not like the text that was agreed upon in the First Committee and that will go to the Senate Plenary.
The Pact says that the “project has been abandoning its spirit” and is regressive. They point out, for example, that there is talk of tertiary education, that the concept of democracy has been modified and that there is talk of new points for teacher evaluation.
In any case, says the Pact statement, they say they are open to reviewing their concerns so as not to jeopardize approval as long as it preserves “the progressive and guaranteeing perspective of the project.”
The Senate plenary session is scheduled to debate the education reform on June 17.
