Antofagasta. Plan to absorb lack of enrollment, new example of the crisis in public education

The communal and regional authorities implement their “brilliant” emergency plan, which translates into breaking with regulations that control overcrowding in classrooms, the installation of modular rooms and the elimination of the full school day. This plan was inaugurated at the ISCA, an institution that absorbed 300 primary school enrollments by implementing a late day for these students.

This plan fails to cover up the deep and serious crisis in public education, in fact it highlights it. Reality cannot ignore that the Mayor’s Office of Jonathan Velásquez decreased 2 billion pesos in education; Nor can it ignore the fact that more resources were not allocated to carry out maintenance, hire more specialists and teachers, and that precariousness increases.

An exemplary case is what happened during the afternoon school day at the ISCA. The first 11 schools were opened that began their classes the first week of May, students who for various reasons were left without enrollment, change of city, not being selected in their preferred high school, misinformation regarding participation in subsidized high schools, etc. In an age of change, with a pre-adolescence marked by the consequences of confinement in a pandemic and other social problems, young people are more fragmented in the classrooms, and the steps of sociability with those who share an important part of their lives have a great impact. worth.

Regardless of that, a month after this adaptation, the administrative and non-pedagogical work of the CMDS decides to dismantle 2 courses and distribute these students into different courses to create classrooms with 35 students. Instead of taking advantage of courses of 25 to 30 students for more time for the students, this bureaucratic measure was carried out to organize the education of young people in paperwork.

To date, a body of education assistants has not yet been formed, the PIE program is complemented late and is against the clock so that young people can access the pedagogical support they need. The coexistence, social and clinical support departments have not been strengthened with more personnel. It is a reality that is fought with the good will and overload of specialists and officials. A teacher was fired, and the rest of us teachers signed a one-month contract, something unprecedented for the sector.
An endless story, where promises, work tables or union negotiations have been insufficient or failed. The solution does not seem to come from above, but from the unified organization of education workers, parents and students, which installs, fights and organizes for a common program, which manages to wrest direct financing of public education from the State, which communities themselves not only elect their directors but also manage the resources. For many it is a utopia, but the failure of this system is visible, and it is a utopia to believe that with the same decades-old recipes we will get out of the crisis.