The 180 days of effective classes per year is the floor that the country’s school calendars must contemplate, according to law 25,864, of 2003.
In 2022, to mitigate the atrocious consequences in education due to the lack of in-person classes caused by the pandemic, the Federal Council of Education resolved that this number be expanded to 190.
As the Observatory of Argentines for Education explains, in Argentina there is no public data on the number of days and effective hours of class that children have, on presenteeism or information on closures due to building problems or teaching strikes.
However, it states that the interruption of school continuity is greater in state schools – where 75.8% of families reported interruptions – than in privately managed schools – where the figure is less than half – and that in addition In public institutions the main reason is teacher strikes (32%).
Non-compliance
The Ministry of Education of our province announces its school calendar year after year, in strict compliance with both provisions. However, the scheduled class days were rarely fulfilled: in the last 20 years, only in four periods were 180 effective class days reached (2004, 2005, 2010 and 2022).
Although there are several reasons for missing school days – teacher training days, building problems, insecurity, absenteeism, lack of appointment and coverage of teaching licenses, disinfections carried out on business days, etc. – , a home survey allows us to confirm the results given by the Observatory: in our province, the biggest reason why children miss school days are the strikes promoted by the teaching union.
From 2003 to 2018, there was an average of 10 days of unemployment per year. In 2020, when schools were closed due to the pandemic, only 177 days of “classes” were completed (remember that virtuality left those students without a computer, internet, money for photocopies or support for study on the sidelines of learning). home). In 2023 there were seven days of strikes and another 15 days of classes interrupted by assemblies.
Almost halfway through this school year, the kids have already lost five days of school due to strikes. Most of them obeyed national forceful measures whose visible face, as general secretary of Suteba and deputy of CTA, is Roberto Baradel. All-powerful Buenos Aires union member and political partner of Kirchnerism who is not thinking about the right to education or the salaries of teachers; political leader who was missing from the claims of his representatives during the government of Alberto Fernández and who has already harangued three strikes so far this year; protector of the Buenos Aires teacher filmed at an intersection with a student with eloquent phrases aimed at indoctrination; detractor of the extension of the post-closing day of schools due to Covid. Fervent defender and activist of keeping schools closed during a pandemic and open opponent of declaring education as an essential service, like our local union, UEPC.
Essential human right
The teaching union, not the teachers, but the union leadership that, worth clarifying, is putting public education in check and its weakening by whatever means, represents an erosion of the right to education.
Defending public education means modernizing it, training teachers, improving their salaries, supporting the need for appropriate attention to students with special educational needs, fighting for decent building conditions, evaluating, weighing merit, and involving families. And all of this is achieved from the classroom, inside the school, with all the actors in the educational community working together.
Although quantity does not guarantee quality, it is the first element and a highly influential factor in better learning.
As parents, as the voice of the children that no one else represents, we are obliged to say this: education, as an essential human right, is also an essential public service. And, therefore, its suspension, even by virtue of a legitimate claim such as the recomposition of teaching salaries, is in itself a violation of the same right that the claim claims to protect.
A serious, honest, responsible and committed political will is necessary, both from the Government and from the union, to focus their efforts on the search for a consensus that puts the students at the center of interest, and at the top of the priorities the right to an equal and quality education.
* President of the Civil Association Families for Education Córdoba
