Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean 9781474267687, 9781474267717, 9781474267700

Table of contents :
Cover
Half-title
Title
Copyright
Contents
Series Editor’s Foreword
Notes on the Contributors
1. Introduction: Regional Overview C. M. Posner
Part 1: Mexico
2. Mexico: An Introduction to the Contemporary State of Education C. M. Posner, Christopher Martin and Elsa Guzmán
3. Mexico: The Education Reform Project Carlos Ornelas
4. Mexico: Improving Educational Quality through Professional Teacher Development David Turner and María Guadalupe González de Turner
5. Mexico: Obstacles to Educational Reform Bonifacio Barba
6. Mexico: Assessing the Current Educational Reforms Rodolfo Ramírez
7. Mexico: Summary and Conclusions Christopher Martin, Charles Posner and Elsa Guzmán
Part 2: Central America and Panama
8. Costa Rica: Education as a Tool for Social Mobility Luis Carlos Morales Zúñiga
9. El Salvador: Past, Present and Prospects of Education D. Brent Edwards Jr., Pauline Martin and Irene Flores
10. Guatemala: A Failing System C. M. Posner
11. Honduras: Contemporary Education Reform Javier Luque
12. Nicaragua: Education for Sustainable Human Development Cefas Asensio Flórez with the collaboration of Ana Patricia Elvir
13. Panama: An Overview Rolando de la Guardia Wald
Part 3: The Latin Caribbean
14. Cuba: The Impact of the Cuban Revolution Rosi Smith
15. Dominican Republic: An Overview Molly Hamm and Rebeca Martínez
16. Haiti: Education at the Crossroads Pierre Lubin and Roselor FranÇois
Subject Index
People Index

Citation preview

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

Available and forthcoming titles in the Education Around the World series Series Editor: Colin Brock Education Around the World: A Comparative Introduction, Colin Brock and Nafsika Alexiadou Education in Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific, edited by Michael Crossley, Greg Hancock and Terra Sprague Education in East and Central Africa, edited by Charl Wolhuter Education in East Asia, edited by Pei-tseng Jenny Hsieh Education in Eastern Europe and Eurasia, edited by Nadiya Ivanenko Education in Non-EU Countries in Western and Southern Europe, edited by Terra Sprague Education in North America, edited by D. E. Mulcahy, D. G. Mulcahy and Roger Saul Education in South-East Asia, edited by Lorraine Pe Symaco Education in Southern Africa, edited by Clive Harber Education in the Arab World, edited by Serra Kirdar Education in the Commonwealth Caribbean and Netherlands Antilles, edited by Emel Thomas Education in the European Union: Pre-2003 Member States, edited by Trevor Corner Education in the European Union: Post-2003 Member States, edited by Trevor Corner Education in the United Kingdom, edited by Colin Brock Education in South America, edited by Simon Schwartzman Education in West Central Asia, edited by Mah-E-Rukh Ahmed Education in West Africa, edited by Emefa Takyi-Amoako Forthcoming volumes: Education in South Asia and the Indian Ocean Islands, edited by Debotri Dhar and Hema Letchamanan

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean Edited by C. M. Posner, Christopher Martin and Ana Patricia Elvir

BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published 2017 Paperback edition first published 2020 Copyright © C. M. Posner, Christopher Martin, Ana Patricia Elvir and Contributors, 2017 C. M. Posner, Christopher Martin, Ana Patricia Elvir and Contributors have asserted their rights under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Authors of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Posner, Charles, 1950- editor. | Martin, Chris, 1948- editor. | Elvir, Ana Patricia, editor. Title: Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean / edited by C.M. Posner, Christopher Martin and Ana Patricia Elvir. Description: London ; New York : Bloomsbury Academic, 2017. | Series: Education around the world | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017008512 (print) | LCCN 2017032976 (ebook) | ISBN 9781474267694 (epub) | ISBN 9781474267700 (epdf) | ISBN 9781474267687 (hardback) Subjects: LCSH: Education–Mexico. | Education–Central America. | Education–Caribbean Area. | Educational change–Mexico. | Educational change–Central America. | Educational change–Caribbean Area. | Comparative education. | BISAC: EDUCATION / Comparative. | EDUCATION / Reference. Classification: LCC LA422 (ebook) | LCC LA422 .E39 2017 (print) | DDC 370.972–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017008512 ISBN: HB: 978-1-4742-6768-7 PB: 978-1-3501-3394-5 ePDF: 978-1-4742-6770-0 ePub: 978-1-4742-6769-4 Series: Education Around the World Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

This book is dedicated to the memory of the general editor of the series, Professor Colin Brock, scholar, friend, colleague with a passionate commitment to education. Education around the World is his monument.

Contents Series Editor’s Foreword Notes on the Contributors

ix

1

1

Introduction: Regional Overview C. M. Posner

Part 1 2 3 4

5 6 7

x

Mexico

Mexico: An Introduction to the Contemporary State of Education C. M. Posner, Christopher Martin and Elsa Guzmán Mexico: The Education Reform Project Carlos Ornelas Mexico: Improving Educational Quality through Professional Teacher Development David Turner and María Guadalupe González de Turner Mexico: Obstacles to Educational Reform Bonifacio Barba Mexico: Assessing the Current Educational Reforms Rodolfo Ramírez Mexico: Summary and Conclusions Christopher Martin, Charles Posner and Elsa Guzmán

29 41

59 74 88 106

Part 2 Central America and Panama 8 9 10 11 12 13

Costa Rica: Education as a Tool for Social Mobility Luis Carlos Morales Zúñiga El Salvador: Past, Present and Prospects of Education D. Brent Edwards Jr., Pauline Martin and Irene Flores Guatemala: A Failing System C. M. Posner Honduras: Contemporary Education Reform Javier Luque Nicaragua: Education for Sustainable Human Development Cefas Asensio Flórez with the collaboration of Ana Patricia Elvir Panama: An Overview Rolando de la Guardia Wald

119 141 169 191 215 238

viii

Part 3

Contents

The Latin Caribbean

14 Cuba: The Impact of the Cuban Revolution Rosi Smith 15 Dominican Republic: An Overview Molly Hamm and Rebeca Martínez 16 Haiti: Education at the Crossroads Pierre Lubin and Roselor François

265

Subject Index People Index

331

283 306

347

Series Editor’s Foreword This series comprise eighteen volumes, which, between them, will be looking at education in virtually every territory in the world. The initial volume, Education Around the World: A Comparative Introduction, aimed to provide an insight into the field of international and comparative education. It looked at its history and development and then examined a number of major themes at scales from local to regional to global. It is important to bear such scales of observation in mind because the remainder of the series is inevitably regionally and nationally based. The identification of the eighteen regions within which to group countries has sometimes been a very simple task – elsewhere less so. Europe, for example, has four volumes including more than fifty countries. National statistics vary considerably in their availability and accuracy and, in any case, date rapidly. Consequently, the editors of each volume point the reader towards access to regional and international datasets, available online, that are regularly updated. A key purpose of the series is to give some visibility to a large number of countries that, rarely, if ever, have coverage in the literature of this field. For this book, it has not been a simple task to delineate the ‘region’. Mexico is considered by most Latin Americans to be in North America, but it is clearly not part of Anglo-America, but Hispanic America. However, it is in a different league from its Central American neighbours in scale, population, economy and global status. Hence, it’s heading up the title of the book. The Latin Caribbean comprises not only Hispanic components, Cuba and The Dominican Republic, but also Haiti, which, unlike other former French colonies in the region, has been independent for two centuries and remains so. All other Caribbean states and territories are covered in other books in the series. I would like to express my sincere thanks to Dr Charles Posner for picking up the editorship of this book at a time when it seemed no progress could be made. His expert knowledge of the region and committed determination to overcome numerous obstacles has been remarkable. With his two fellow editors, Dr Christopher Martin and Dr Ana Patricia Elvir, we now have a most valuable addition to the sparse literature in education in this region in English. Colin Brock University of Durham, UK

Notes on the Contributors Cefas Asensio Flórez is a Nicaraguan specialist in education. He worked in Nicaragua’s Ministry of Education from 1980 to 1992. Since then, he has acted as a long-term education and development consultant at UNICEF, UNFPA, BID and the World Bank. Currently, he is member of the Nicaraguan Forum for Education (EDUQUEMOS). He is involved in educational research and the development on proposals based on education as key factor in development. J. Bonifacio Barba has been full-time professor of education in the Department of Education in the Autonomous University of Aguascalientes, Mexico, since 1978. He is a member of the National System of Researchers, the National Council of Educational Research, the Mexican Network of Educational and Values Research and the Association of Moral Education. He currently researches the values of the Mexican legislative processes in education as the judicial basis for the moral development of students. His many publications reflect these interests and experience. Rolando de la Guardia Wald has taught and advised universities in Europe and the Americas. He is an adviser to the Panama government in science, technology and innovation. He has recently served as an adviser to the Faculty of Humanities of the Universidad Católica Santa María la Antigua, Panama. Dr De la Guardia’s latest publication is ‘Escritoras, Política de Educación y la Creación de la Identidad Panameña’ (‘Women Writers, Education Policy and the Creation of Panamanian Identity’), Societas. Revista de Ciencias Sociales y Humanas. D. Brent Edwards Jr is assistant professor specialized in educational policy and the political economy of educational reform at the University of Hawaii, United States. His publications cover global educational policy, decentralization, community empowerment and education in Latin America. Ana Patricia Elvir is a co-founder and senior researcher at the Centre for Educational Research and Social Action (CIASES), Nicaragua. She holds a doctorate in education from Harvard University, United States, and has over twenty years of experience in the field of education and international relations. Her research interests lie in teacher development and early childhood education.

Notes on the Contributors

xi

Irene G. Flores is professor at the Educational Policy and Evaluation Master's programme at the Central American University, San Salvador, El Salvador. Flores is academic director of Programa ¡Supérate! She received her doctorate in educational administration and policy studies for university with specialization in comparative and international education for university at Albany, New York, United States. Roselor François has worked for many years as a schoolteacher, university professor and administrator in Haiti. He is a former professor and dean at the Université Adventiste d’Haiti, Haiti, in the Faculty of Education and Science. Also, he worked for FONHEP as chief administrator for Quality Schools in Portau-Prince, Haiti. Today, he is a PhD candidate in educational studies at McGill University, Canada. He holds a BS in science education from the Université Adventiste d’Haiti, Haiti, a master’s degree in educational administration from the Universidad Montemorelos, Mexico, and a master’s degree in educational leadership from McGill University, Canada. Elsa Guzmán has taught and researched at universities in Europe and Mexico and served as a political adviser to the British embassy in Mexico for six years. Her publications have largely been in the area of educational evaluation in innovation. Her latest publication in collaboration with David Scott, Christopher Martin and Charles Posner is Interventions in Education Systems: Reform and Development (Bloomsbury, 2015). Molly Hamm is the associate director of The DREAM Project in the Dominican Republic, where she manages the organization’s monitoring and evaluation systems and oversees external research projects. She is currently a member of the Teacher Motivation Working Group (sponsored by UNESCO’s International Task Force on Teachers for EFA) and has recently served as a working group member and representative of the Caribbean for the Brookings Institution Learning Metrics Task Force. She is actively involved in the Comparative and International Education Society and American Evaluation Association. Hamm holds a master’s degree in international educational development from Teachers College, Columbia University, United States. Pierre M. Lubin is a comparative educationalist specialist in organizational psychology. At Columbia University, United States, he has been conducting research on Haitian education since 1997 and has considerable experience working with Haitian teachers having worked in special education and as a school administrator. He also consults and provides workshops and professional

xii

Notes on the Contributors

development in the following areas: organizational development and change, curriculum design and development, classroom behaviour management, culturally responsive teaching and hip hop/urban education. Javier Luque is a senior education specialist at the World Bank and is currently working in the Bank’s field office in Honduras, where he also serves as focal point for the Central American region. Previously, he was an economic adviser to the government of Perú and the International Monetary Fund. Dr Luque has written widely in the fields of economics and economics of education. Among his many publications are the following books: Achieving a World-Class Education in Brazil: The Pending Agenda (with Barbara Bruns and David Evans, 2012) and Teaching Policies in Latin America (with Barbara Bruns, in press). Christopher Martin is currently visiting professor at the UCL Institute of Education, UK, having taught and researched in a number of countries, principally Mexico, and having been the head of education for the British Council and Ford Foundation in that country. Among his many publications are: La educación primária en tiempos de austeridad (2004) and, in collaboration with David Scott, Christopher Martin and Elsa Guzmán, Interventions in Education Systems: Reform and Development (Bloomsbury, 2015). Pauline Martin is professor in the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities of the Universidad Centroamericana of El Salvador, El Salvador. She is the author of works concerned with educational policy formation and educational reforms in that country. Recently, she has published with Julián Antonio Victoria Libreros, La educación prometid. Retos educativos para le periodo 2014–2019; with D. Brent Edwards Jr and Julián Antonio Victoria Libreros, The geometry of policy implementation: Lessons from the political economy of three education reforms in El Salvador during 1990–2005, in the International Journal of Education Development and ‘Different policies, distinct processes: Three case studies of international influence in education policy formation in El Salvador’. Rebeca Martínez is the academic director of the Dominican Republic Education and Mentoring (DREAM) Project, where she oversees teacher training and literacy programmes and develops curriculum for the organization’s educational programmes. She began her teaching career as an English teacher in Bogoduhkiv, Ukraine, where she served as a Peace Corps volunteer. From there she went to work as a third grade public school teacher in Denver, and an instructional supervisor in an after-school programme in New York City. She

Notes on the Contributors

xiii

holds a master’s degree in international educational development from Teachers College, Columbia University, United States. Luis Carlos Morales Zúñiga of the University of Costa Rica, Costa Rica, and FLACSO is a sociologist specializing in education and its relation to development. Among other works, he is the author of the following: Educación y democracia en Centroamérica: qué democracia se enseña en la region? El pensamiento crítico en la teoría educative contemporánea, Sherlock Holmes y la enseñanza de la investigación socioeducativa. Carlos Ornelas is professor of education and communication in the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Mexico. Among his many academic and research posts in Mexico and on five countries are the following: visiting professor, Harvard University, United States; visiting professor in comparative and international education University of Columbia, United States. He has authored thirteen books on education, thirty-six chapters in joint publications and twenty articles in specialist educational journals in Spanish, English and French. His 1995 book El sistema educativo Mexican: la transición de fin de siglo is in its twelfth edition. His most recent book is Educación, colonización y rebeldía: la herencia del pacto Calderón-Gordillo (2011). C. M. Posner of the UCL Institute of Education, UK, and adviser to several international organizations was founding director of the Instituto de Investigación y Desarrollo Educativo de Nayarit (IIDENAY) and has taught in Britain, Mexico, France and a number of Latin American countries. The latest of his numerous publications is a collaboration with David Scott, Christopher Martin and Elsa Guzmán Interventions in Education Systems: Reform and Development (Bloomsbury, 2015). Rodolfo Ramírez Raymundo was the head of research for the federal Secretariat of Education between 1997 and 2003; director of the educational journal Cero en Conducta up to the present time. His publications include La evaluación de los programas compensatorios. Notas para una política de equidad educativa (2006) and La reforma constitucional en materia educativa: alcances y desafíos (2013). He is currently researcher in equity and social rights in the Institute Belisario Dominguez of the Senate of the Mexican Republic, Mexico. Rosi Smith is Leverhulme early career research fellow at the University of Nottingham, UK. She works on education, especially radical education and access for marginalized groups, with an emphasis on Cuba, drawing on her

xiv

Notes on the Contributors

experience of working in secondary and further education in the UK. Her first book is Education, Citizenship, and Cuban Identity. David A. Turner is professor emeritus of the University of South Wales, UK, and visiting professor at the Beijing Normal University, PRC. He is the author of many books and other publications, many of which are concerned with the development of education in Mexico. María Guadalupe González de Turner is an education consultant and the general secretary of the World Education Fellowship, an NGO with consultative status at the UN and a UK-registered charity. She was a science teacher in Mexico before undertaking her MEd (science education) at Kings College London, UK, and teaching at several universities in the UK. Their joint publications include a report of an evaluation of the post-primary rural education project undertaken on behalf of CONAFE in 2000.

1

Introduction: Regional Overview C. M. Posner

The purpose of this book is to provide the novice and the specialist with an encyclopaedic resource comprising an up-to-date panorama of the current educational institutions, practices and problems of the very different countries in the large geographical area encompassing Mexico, the Central American countries of Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua as well as Panama and the Spanish- and French-independent countries of the Caribbean. Each contribution consists of a presentation of current educational institutions, ideas and practices. The authors also provide us with an understanding of the forces that have moulded the systems of social apprenticeship that have developed in these countries. By doing so, the reader will hopefully have access to basic descriptive information as well – in more general terms, an analysis that will contribute to the understanding of the complex relationship between education and social forces. Finally, while it is clear that each country seeks to identify, overcome and solve the many problems related to competence, performance and equity, the proposed solutions are not necessarily country specific. They can inspire others to find creative solutions to their problems. That is, an underlying theme of this book is to provide material to help us understand the very complex national and international social, cultural and economic relationships that have led to the adoption of the prevailing systems of social apprenticeship. The interplay between these endogamous and exogenous factors is explored. Guiding our presentation is the observation that education is a very complex and evolving relationship between its two components: selection and control (Bernstein 1975, 1990). ‘Selection’ refers to the intricate systems of curriculum, pedagogy and evaluation that have been developed to site people within the social division of labour. ‘Control’ refers to the creation, propagation and maintenance of the central value system, that is, the system of national identity

2

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

necessary to secure social order. It can be argued that education enjoys a relative autonomy in the setting of objectives and aims, developing adequate practices and undertaking meaningful reforms. However, the weight of existing de jure and de facto institutions plays an important conditioning role. This is as true of both those countries where systems of education are new and those where it has more longevity. In both cases there are significant internal shifts in the balances of power between and within stakeholding groups as well as a complex interplay between internal and external factors that need to be considered. Moreover, changes in the social division of labour within an entity and its relationship to what is usually called ‘globalization’ are also conditioning factors. Hence, each country’s study deals with the following: 1. The salient features of each system of education, including their systems of evaluation and feedback as well as descriptions of how the current de jure and, more importantly, the de facto structures and practices. 2. The history and development of each educational system paying attention to the elements mentioned above. 3. A description of the present organization of the curriculum, curriculum standards, pedagogy and evaluation, pre-service and in-service teacher training, school organization, parental and stakeholder involvement, etc., the socio–economic–cultural background of the students as well as a consideration of gender and ethnicity. 4. Included in each presentation are an analysis of systems and practices of accountability; impediments to delivery and implementation; as well as sustainability and viability of reforms. 5. Their challenges, accomplishments and failures. In summary, the book covers a large and disparate geographical area consisting of countries that vary enormously in size, population, ethnicity and history. Despite the fact that their socio-economic and cultural backgrounds are largely dissimilar, we will see that there are striking similarities in their educational systems, practices and aims. Our presentation is encyclopaedic, that is, both ‘factual’ and ‘instructive’ in the sense that we are interested in teasing out what educational reforms and processes of implementation can be of help in inspiring and composing reforms for other entities. We devote six chapters to Mexico. The reason is that Mexico is by far the largest country in the region with the longest unbroken history of educational institutions with a long tradition of research and reform. Successive Mexican

Introduction: Regional Overview

3

governments, at least on paper, have attempted to balance equity with neo-liberalism as well as promoting multiculturalism usually through a series of peripatetic top-down programmes. We should add that with the exception of Costa Rica there was no movement towards national systems of education in the other Central American countries until well into the twentieth century because of the continuous and constant political upheavals that were characteristic of them. This, combined with the lack of interest of the multinational companies that dominated their economies, militated against the formation of truly national systems of education. Schools did exist, but they were very much restricted to the élites and the need to produce what we call today ‘middle management’. We start with a brief sociohistorical introduction to each of the countries that figure in this book to set the stage for the analyses of their educational systems.

I Country background 1 Mexico The population of Mexico has grown from about 20,000,000 in 1940 to well over 125,000,000 today, twice that of all of the countries of Central America and the Latin Caribbean put together. Mexico’s economy is being integrated with the other two countries occupying the continent of North America: Canada and the United States. Its economy, social structure and cultural markers are increasing in tandem with the United States, in part, because a growing number of Mexican families have relatives in that country and the movement between the two countries is frequent. Mexico’s relations with the Central American countries are much less important and in educational terms almost non-existent. It has largely been accepted by the current generation of historians and educationalists that the movement towards something approaching a national system of education has its roots in the endeavours of the generation of ‘technocrats’ who first pronounced the need for a national system. They flourished under the long dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz, who saw his mission as of one of modernizing Mexico, and his chief agent in the field of education was Justo Sierra. Ironically the creation of the apparatus of the Mexican version of a modern state led to the creation and almost immediate expansion of a new middle class of administrators, managers and cadres dependent on the state and in personal terms on

4

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

accumulating the cultural capital they required. Because the authoritarian nature of the state conflicted with their perceived needs and their ideology, they provided the ideas and the force that initiated the Mexican Revolution that began in 1910 and culminated in terms of education with José Vasconcelos in 1919 establishing a national system of education. There were two segments to the system: (i) the training of the administrative elite that was achieved by greatly expanding the system of preparatorias and the refounding of the national university to serve those purposes; (ii) the creation of a system of schooling whose main purpose was to incorporate the then-vast rural society and ethnic minorities into a system that guaranteed that there would be no civil strife. Hence, for the elite, the preparatorias (upper-secondary schools) and the university were designed to increase the cultural capital they required to occupy lifetime positions in government and administration, while the primary schools which emphasized social control were designed to provide limited training for work and maximum training to accept the system that soon became known as the ‘philanthropic ogre’ (Posner 2002). The system worked well until the late 1960s when it became apparent that at the upper levels of education there was an overproduction of students for the professions. This led to a largely student revolt led by the sons and daughters of the nomenklatura that shook, but did not open, fatal fissures in the prevailing system. What was a greater challenge to the system was that by the 1980s Mexico was increasingly becoming an urban society with new demands for technical training and expertise. The harmony that existed between the political system and industry was shaken by the advent of Mexico’s entry into the world economy. The system could no longer absorb the produce of the preparatorias and of the greatly expanded higher education. Its implosion partially hid the contradiction in education between the need for social control that in itself impedes creative and imaginative thinking and productive needs that required imagination and creativity. The advent of the so-called ‘war on drugs’ in which over 100,000 have died so far and the growing unmasking of the corruption at the heart of the political system and government agencies heightened the tension. The problem is that a move away from social control weakens the agencies of the political system and could cause their demise. It almost occurred in 2000 with the election of the first non-government party president since the revolution. Restored to power in 2012 the dominant party quickly moved to a system and practice of education that contradicts the perceived economic and social needs of the society. In the articles on Mexico we discuss the nature of these contradictions and their effect on education.

Introduction: Regional Overview

5

With the Mexican experience we meet for the first time a phenomenon that is characteristic of all the countries discussed in this book. The defence of the existing social order has been prioritized over the provision of educational institutions and practices that can enhance the life chances of the young people and hopefully lead to the development of less elitist and more productive societies. This prioritizing of ‘social control’ over ‘selection’, as we will see, largely determines education policy and conditions the implementation of any attempts to change the system.

2 Countries of Central America and the Isthmus Before introducing the countries of Central America and the Isthmus, it is important to note that after the demise of the Spanish Empire and its Mexican successor what were to become the states of Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua were part of a federation that broke up in 1838. With the exception of Costa Rica, the states that emerged were less than socially homogeneous and were subject to civil unrest and periodic American intervention if not occupation. Sufficient stability to establish national systems of education did not occur in most cases until well into the twentieth century. The educational statistics in this section are taken from UNICEF’s very helpful ‘at a glance’ country reports found at, for example, www.uniceforg/ infobycountry/costarica_statistics.html.

Costa Rica Aside from two episodes of civil strife, the period between 1917 and 1919 and the bloody forty-four-day civil war in 1949 that laid the basis for a welfare state, Costa Rica has been spared the violence that has plagued other Central American societies. Like them, until the 1970s it, too, depended on the export of agricultural products but thanks to the foundations of the welfare state and the provision of widespread education coverage from 1949, it avoided the disruption characteristic of the other Central American countries. In statistical terms in 2012, the population was 4.9 million with a population density of ninety-three people per square kilometre. The gross national per capita income was US$8,740. Sixty-five per cent of the population lived in urban areas. The literacy rate was 95 per cent. Four per cent of the relevant age group was not enrolled in primary schools. Ninety-one per cent of those who entered primary school completed the final year. Secondary school net attendance was 62 per cent, but in 2012 just under 14 per cent graduated. The respective

6

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

completion figures for the lowest-income quintile was about 23 per cent and for the highest-income quintile was just over 72 per cent. Costa Ricans on average had six years of education. In 2011, private schools accounted for about 9 per cent of enrolments at the primary level and 10 per cent at the secondary level. Since the economic crisis of the late 1970s Costa Rica has demonstrated both the will and the capacity to mobilize its physical and human resources to improve the educational system and its delivery. Given the vicissitudes of the so-called globalization and the need to satisfy home demand, the extension of educational cover up to and including the secondary level became the sine qua non for the authorities if not the panacea for solving the persistent educational deficit. For that reason Morales maintains that it is important to understand how a country whose system of education has the longest continuing history in all of Latin America has failed to provide a meaningful education for individuals, the society and the economy. Preschool education is still restricted to a minority of the population and there are as of yet no concrete proposals for extending cover for secondary education. At the same time, there are serious problems about the quality of the curriculum, appropriate pedagogies and educational delivery. Good school management is still a pipe dream because schools do not have explicit aims to be attained, lack sufficient resources and a viable and reliable system of accountability. Teacher recruitment is poor and existing teachers are not provided with a system of incentives and in-service training to achieve the required ends. At the same time, Morales maintains that the commitment to an education to provide social promotion and greater equity has gone into reverse, and this affects not only the life chances of those who can boost the economy but also the social harmony for which the country has been called the ‘Switzerland of Latin America’.

El Salvador As Edwards, Martin and Flores have written, the unstable and tempestuous history of El Salvador, the result of a heritage of colonialism, totalitarianism, military control interspersed by civil war, meant that education was largely restricted to training an elite. The peace accords signed in 1992 offered a hope of change. Hence, El Salvador arrived late at the implementation of a truly national system of education that is seen as an instrument to forge national unity, but once this became the leitmotif of the country, coverage expanded rapidly.

Introduction: Regional Overview

7

El Salvador, the authors tell us, is generally considered to be a lower-middleincome country but with about 30 per cent of the population living in poverty. Undeniably, education has suffered as a result of the long and brutal civil war and its aftermath that severely affected the population. While education is high on the current list of priorities, coverage is poor. In principle, primary education is provided free of cost, but despite it being compulsory and despite the fact that much progress has been made in very recent years, only 82 per cent of the relevant age group arrive at primary school. Only one-third of the eligible age group attend secondary schools, and in 2010 only 14.5 per cent completed a secondary school education. On average an adult would have attended a school for 5.2 years. Coverage is uneven with rural areas that are particularly deprived of schools, and where they exist, the schools are undermanned and lack essential materials and services like electricity and connectivity. Those with the means enter the private system of schooling. In 2011, 10 per cent of primary school pupils attended a private school and 14 per cent of secondary school pupils were enrolled in private institutions. The authors maintain that the educational system is highly centralized with little real quality control. The national curriculum is characterized by its uniformity and lack of flexibility. However, in more recent years, more attention has been paid to quality and decentralization with schools now being instructed, as the authors write, to promote more school autonomy and establish their own school identity. However, until recently, teacher training and placement responded largely to political interests and no real attempts were made at assessment until 2011. Teachers, as in other countries where education has not conformed to aspirations, have become the scapegoats of the system and have had to endure both low professional prestige and social regard. On the whole, the lack of political will, technical capacity, infrastructure and badly organized finances tend to override attempts to respond to the diverse needs of a developing society. Schools, the authors maintain, tend to perpetuate social conditions and social positions. In their view, El Salvador faces three major challenges in education: poor educational quality, resulting in a growing number of youth leaving school without basic skills; limited access and inequity for disadvantaged groups such as indigenous girls, the urban and rural poor, and minorities; and unemployed youth who are highly susceptible to gangs, crime (El Salvador has the second highest crime rate in the world) and poverty. They conclude with an examination of programmes designed to overcome these problems.

8

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

Guatemala Guatemala is another country that has suffered from dictatorships, dominance by multinational corporations and later internecine civil war and violence. The last round started in 1954 with the overthrow of the democratically elected agrarian reforming regime headed by Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán. The made-inthe-US coup sparked off a civil war that lasted until 1996 when representative government was restored. Nonetheless, the institutional destruction was such that Guatemala continues to suffer from a high rate of crime, extrajudicial killings and the activities of security forces. The Comisión para el Esclarecimiento Histórico (Truth Commission) created in 1994 established that over 200,000 were killed and many more were tortured and displaced from their homes, the vast majority being indigenous civilians. The Commission established that the state was responsible for 93 per cent of human rights violations and that 85 per cent of all registered crimes were attributable to the army. They also established successive governments that were responsible for acts of genocide. Under these conditions education obviously suffered, and, as Otto Rivera writes, it needs to be reinvented. In statistical terms in 2012, the total population was 16 million with a population density of 149 people per square kilometre. The gross national per capita income was US$3,120. More than half of the population lived below the poverty line. Fifty per cent of the population lived in urban areas. The literacy rate was calculated to be 76 per cent but less than 40 per cent for the indigenous population. Sixty-eight per cent of those enrolled completed primary education. Net secondary school attendance was 46 per cent, but in 2011, only 7.5 per cent actually finished secondary education. The respective completion figures for the lowest-income quintile was less than 4 per cent and for the highest-income quintile was just under 55 per cent. The situation has hardly improved from a World Bank report prepared by John Edwards in 2002. Rural schools where they exist are inadequate, and poor urban and rural children do not receive funding for books, supplies, transport and school uniforms. This means many will not attend school. Guatemalans on average have 3.5 years of education. Girls, in particular suffer. The vast majority of those who do not attend school are indigenous girls living in rural areas. Families that cannot afford the costs prefer to send sons rather than daughters to receive an education. In 2011, private schooling accounted for about 10 per cent of enrolments at the primary level and 54 per cent at the secondary level. From the advent of 1996 an educational reform was enacted as part of a peace process that ended many years of struggle between the regular army and the

Introduction: Regional Overview

9

Guatemalan guerrilla movements. Although great efforts were made to make up the educational deficit and achieve wider educational coverage schools continued to be underfunded and underachieved. Reconstructing the social fabric that includes a national system of education is a difficult task encountering many obstacles left by the aftermath of the thirtyyear-long civil war. The author asks: How can one extend educational coverage and at the same time raise the quality of learning of boys and girls? How can one set up adequate and professional pre-service and in-service training for teachers? To begin to understand these many problems, the author examines the social context of education, official commitments and the many obstacles and challenges that exist in the implementation of a system and the practice of education based on universal coverage, quality, relevance, social inclusion and responsibility. To compound the litany of problems mentioned above, adequate recognition and attention has not been given to the ethnic, linguistic and cultural diversity of the country in school activities. More than half of its population are under eighteen years of age. The majority are women who live and work in marginal rural communities and denied education, and despite the fact that there is a new curriculum, its theoretical–methodological foundations, Rivera maintains, are out of date.

Honduras The boundaries of Honduras, like those of most Central American states, were artificial. Those in power were faced with the need to create a nation out of a very disparate population. They had to develop institutions and mechanisms to secure and maintain order. Ordinarily, this could be accomplished by instilling a sense of nationalism and obedience in the various groups that composed it but, as elsewhere, this was delayed because the maintenance of territorial integrity and the welding of the élites into a group that respected a peaceful and orderly transfer of power among them were a slow and painful process. Hence, in common with most other Central American countries, Honduras experienced a large measure of political and social instability from its establishment in 1838 until well into the twentieth century. There were also frequent interventions by surrounding countries and, as Robert MacCameron (1983) wrote, the United States often sent troops on behalf of the United Fruit Company. From early 1981 the country was involved in activities to undermine the Sandinista government in Nicaragua and was subsidized by the United States

10

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

to the tune of $282 million per annum. As Donald and Deborah Schulz (1994) point out, these actions severely undermined Honduran society, and control by the military caused much damage. During the 1990s, civilian rule was gradually restored, but the military continued to intervene. At one point the country was suspended from the Organization of American States. To the present day, despite new government programmes, Honduras is subject to much social and civil strife and continues to have the highest murder rate in the world. Recent attempts to create a free-trade zone have failed. In statistical terms in 2012, the total population was eight million with a population density of seventy-one people per square kilometre. The gross national per capita income was US$2,270. Growth proved to be evasive. Fifty-three per cent of the population lived in urban areas. The literacy rate was 85 per cent. Just over 8 per cent of the relevant age group was not enrolled in primary schools. Seventy-five per cent of those on the rolls completed primary education. Net attendance at secondary school level was 47 per cent, but in 2011 only just under 11 per cent completed a secondary school education. The respective completion figures for the lowest-income quintile was just over 8 per  cent and for the highest-income quintile was just over 63.5 per cent. Hondurans on average had 5.5 years of education. In recent times the authorities have come to recognize that the low level of human capital is behind the low growth of the country. In terms of secondary education enrolment, Honduras has one of the lowest enrolment rates in Central America, and registers the largest drop in enrolment between primary and secondary education. In 2012, private schooling accounted for about 9 per cent of enrolments at the primary level and also 9 per cent at the secondary level. Despite the handicap and the high rates of population growth, the author points out, Honduras made important progress in terms of its education indicators. Education attainment grew from 1.6 to 5.5 years of schooling, while the population increased more than threefold. The country achieved almost universal primary education. To achieve this goal fully, they have to innovate beyond the traditional school, employing multigrade classrooms and other strategies supposedly suited for rural conditions as an important share of students live in remote rural areas. However, the focus on results and accountability was low, with a very high percentage of students graduating from primary education lacking basic mathematics and reading skills. It is important to notice that these challenges exist despite having one of the highest expenditure levels in terms of gross domestic product (GDP) in the region, reflecting according to the author, high levels of inefficiency in

Introduction: Regional Overview

11

the system. Recent efforts of the government are focused on improving the efficiency levels by introducing accountability in the education sector through the introduction of a culture of evaluation, improvement of governance through an aggressive use of information and communications technology (ICT), and raising the bar to become a teacher. Additional actions are in place to expand coverage in secondary education, from grade seven to twelve, particularly in rural areas. However, the author maintains that closing the secondary enrolment gap due to the lack of supply of schools will require additional gains on resource efficiency and additional fresh resources into the sector.

Nicaragua Nicaragua’s history is one of civil war, American occupations and military and autocratic rule, culminating in the Somoza family dictatorship that lasted for over forty years. The Somoza years were hallmarked by the expulsion of peasants from their lands, ecological destruction on a massive scale leading to a civil war that began in 1978. The rebels called Sandinistas triumphed in 1979. They inherited a country plagued by malnutrition, disease, pesticide contamination and the bare bones of an education system. They effected a rapid change in the political, social, economic and cultural structure in which education for both children and adults played a key role. Despite significant obstacles they were able to reduce illiteracy significantly through an innovative programme run by local groups. The process of education was linked to the establishment and consolidation of democratic institutions and the establishment of a more equitable system of education. When a non-Sandinista coalition triumphed at the polls in 1990, many of these innovations were kept in place. From 1996 a regime riddled with corruption tried to reverse many of the programmes but ultimately failed because by that time a critical mass of stakeholders existed to resist their efforts. The concept of ‘popular education’ was so deeply rooted in the culture, as Juan Bautista Arríen, UNESCO’s permanent representative in Nicaragua, points out, that the reforms could not be jettisoned. The non-Sandinista government starting with that of Violeta Chamorro began a programme to decentralize education that, according to Magdalena Rivarola and Bruce Fuller (2010), had the opposite effect of undermining poor and rural schools. According to Robert Arnove (1995), these governments had a tendency to throw out the baby with the bathwater and well-functioning programmes in curriculum, materials and methods were jettisoned, as well as programmes designed to integrate theory and practice and the role of parents in educational decision making. In 2006, the

12

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

Sandinistas returned to power and continued with education reforms that went well beyond a movement towards universal coverage at the primary and, in part, secondary level. The author describes these processes in detail starting with the successful literacy campaign of 1980 that in only five months reduced the rate of illiteracy to 13 per cent from over half. These actions were accompanied by the development of a system of health care and land reform. The author concentrates on the challenge of meaningful, sustainable and equitable national development and the role played by education to achieve these goals. Three major themes are examined. The first comprises a condensed summary of the period from 1960 to 1980 during which the bases of present-day institutions and practices were established. The concentration is on the extent and nature of coverage and quality offered before and after the Nicaraguan Revolution with a focus on the expansion of the entire system of education and the immense problem of quality in the light of the insufficiency of resources. The second theme starts with the 1990s and analyses the quest for a national plan for development and the underlying requirements for an adequate system of education. Here the focus is on stakeholder-generated plans, design, structure and efficiency. Key to this is provision for all levels of schooling. This involves the evaluation of quality in basic and secondary education, taking into account such factors as curricular changes, approaches to pedagogy, infrastructural resources and socio-economic ones. Included in this is an analysis of the relationship between education and the labour market, science, technology and the construction of society based upon cohesion and social values. The author concludes with a presentation of the principles that govern contemporary education policy with an emphasis on the most important challenges for the development of a sustainable education based on human rights, the necessity of consensus for a national plan for education, a greater investment in quality and the development of multisectorial alliances to further education as part of the national plan and regional integration. In statistical terms in 2012, the total population was six million with a relatively low population density of fifty people per square kilometre. The gross national per capita income was US$1,650. Fifty-eight per cent of the population lived in urban areas. The literacy rate was 78 per cent. Six per cent of the relevant age group was not enrolled in primary schools. Fifty-six per cent of those enrolled completed primary education. Net attendance at secondary school level was 40 per cent, but in 2009 only 11.5 per cent finished a secondary

Introduction: Regional Overview

13

school. The respective completion figures for the lowest-income quintile was less than 20 per cent and for the highest-income quintile was just over 50 per cent. Nicaraguans on average have attended school for about six years. In 2010, private school accounted for about 16 per cent of enrolments at the primary level and 20.5 per cent at the secondary level.

Panama Originally part of Nueva Granada (Colombia) with which its geographical link was tenuous Panama became an independent country in 1903 due to the entrepreneurial elite collaborating with the American government anxious to override Colombia’s objections to building a canal across the isthmus of Panama. From that time until 1968 Panama was a republic dominated by a commercially oriented oligarchy. From that time until 1989 when the United States invaded the country, it was dominated by the Panama Defence Forces. Since then some measures have been taken to deal with the fact that over 25 per cent of the population live in poverty and 3 per cent in extreme poverty according to the World Bank. Ninety per cent of indigenous communities are classified as living in extreme poverty, and sustainable development programmes have not been successful. Panama still has the second most unequal income distribution in Latin America. The service sector is largely composed of banking, a free-trade zone, insurance, container ports and flagship registry and enjoys something of a reputation as a tax haven but has not benefited from the boom that occurred upon Panama assuming full control of the canal. Soon after the separation from Colombia, the newly independent state moved towards the establishment of a highly paternalistic system of education. A government body declared: ‘The cultural heritage given to the child should be determined by the social position he will or should occupy. For this reason education should be different in accordance with the social class to which the student should be related.’ Under pressure the view changed, but the development of education has remained lopsided. The middle class primarily sends its children to private schools, and many of the elite families use educational institutions out of the country. The urban poor and, above all, rural areas have ill-equipped schools. Rolando de la Guardia maintains that over the last decade stakeholders have become increasingly alarmed with the poor quality of education, in fact, largely because of poor results in international examinations. Behind this are a number of factors: despite a continued economic boom, the disparity between the rich

14

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

and the poor has continued to grow and even the middle class has found that education no longer guarantees its social capital. In light of a public outcry the author points out that successive governments have attempted to respond, but their policies have encountered resistance or have been, relatively, insufficient. In statistical terms in 2012, the total population was 3.9 million with a relatively low population density of fifty-two people per square kilometre. The gross national per capita income was US$9,910, the highest in Central America. Seventy-six per cent of the population lived in urban areas. The literacy rate was 94 per cent. In 2012, 8 per cent of the relevant age group was not enrolled in primary schools. Eighty-six per cent of the entry completed primary education and 20 per cent finished secondary education. The net attendance rate at the secondary level was 71 per cent. The respective completion figures for the lowest-income quintile was less than 18.5 per cent and for the highest-income quintile was just over 75.5 per cent. Panamanians on average will have attended formal schooling for about six years. Moreover, despite its continued economic growth, 25 per cent of the population have no sanitation, 45 per cent do not have access to potable water, 11 per cent suffer from malnutrition and a further 19 per cent are not fed adequately. As in other Latin American countries the middle class has largely opted out of state education. In 2012, at the primary level, the private sector accounted for about 13 per cent of enrolments and 15.5 per cent at the secondary level. A recent report by Lanny Azucena Fuentes Rodríguez (Pobreza y educación en Panamá: Un análisis cuantitativo – 2013) recommends that urgent action is required to tackle the deficit in primary education and deal with the high dropout rate, promote education in rural and indigenous areas and create programmes that would lead to a reduction of the high rate of illiteracy in those areas. Dr De la Guardia provides us with an analysis of the different strategies to use education as a route to modernity, and also discusses the positive and negative aspects of the policies produced in order to provide us with information which might help to find possible solutions to the problems of contemporary Panamanian education.

3 The Latin Caribbean Again, the educational statistics in this section are taken from UNICEF ‘at a glance’ country reports examples: www.uniceforg/infobycountry/costarica_ statistics.html. However, for reasons we explain in our conclusions, they must

Introduction: Regional Overview

15

be taken with a huge pinch of salt and they are not necessarily similar to those derived from other sources that are referred to in the country articles.

Cuba The current Cuban government that arose from the 1959 revolution is concerned that the processes of globalization, the tendency to apply neo-liberal nostrums to the economy and education and problems of meaningful and sustainable development shared by less developed and developed nations could undermine what have been the most advanced social, health and educational policies in Latin America. A world that is increasingly interdependent and interrelated as a result of scientific and technological development poses a great challenge to those countries that wish to preserve equity and equality of opportunity. The experience of Cuba over the last fifty-four years is one of trying to combine economic development with social development that is improving the quality of everyday life by finding a way of fusing these two elements. Against great odds Cuba has created a universal system of education that is free and available to all. It developed a model for extending literacy that has been adopted by many Latin American and African countries. This has been buttressed by advanced systems of health care and social security and the right to meaningful work. It, however, has been done in a top-down manner that possibly has curtailed individual and collective development. Restricting decision making and the development of new policies, no matter how excellent they are in quality and outcome, enforces a system in which the process of creating equity ironically undermines equity itself. It is important to focus on the Cuban attempt to develop an allocatory device that combined equity, freedom of choice, coverage, participation and economic necessity. Such has rarely been tried in other countries and the fact that within Cuban the successes and failure of such models are rarely discussed is important. The chapter traces the development of education in Cuba from its essential role in the formation and legitimization of guerrilla struggle in the Sierra Maestra, through more than fifty years in which creating and maintaining an educational system capable of fulfilling the country’s economic, cultural and political needs have remained a constant priority and preoccupation within government and society. It is a story of repeated mobilizations, crises and reassessments, underpinned by a consistent commitment to education as a human right, which concludes with a twenty-first-century picture of highly qualified young Cubans struggling to reconcile the professional, personal and ideological expectations created by their education with new social and economic realities that challenge the very nature of their society.

16

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

In statistical terms, in 2012, the total population was 11.4 million with a population density of 107 people per square kilometre. There are no recent estimates of gross national per capita income. In 2000, it was estimated at US$5,880. Seventy-five per cent of the population lived in urban areas. The literacy rate was for all intents and purposes 100 per cent. In 2011, only 1 per cent of the relevant age group was not enrolled in primary schools. Ninety-five per cent of those enrolled completed primary education. Net attendance at secondary school was 98 per cent.

The Dominican Republic Despite the Dominican Republic being the ninth largest economy in Latin America and the largest economy in the Caribbean and Central American region, income inequality, high unemployment and government corruption have led to mass migration. Originally part of Haiti from the time it became a republic its history has been one of short-lived governments marked by rule by caudillos and constant military intervention by the United States. This culminated in the thirtyyear dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo that ended in 1961, being followed by further military intervention and the slow and uneven establishment of civil rule. Under these conditions, it was difficult to set up, maintain and expand a national system of education. To this day secondary education, although free, is not compulsory. In statistical terms in 2012, the total population was 10.4 million with a population density of 215 people per square kilometre, and the gross national per capita income was US$5,470. Seventy per cent of the population lived in urban areas. The literacy rate was 90 per cent. In 2011, 11 per cent of the relevant age group was not enrolled in primary schools. Seventy-five per cent of those enrolled completed primary education. Net attendance at secondary school was 55 per cent, but in 2013, only just over 15 per cent completed a secondary school. The respective completion figures for the lowest-income quintile was less than 34 per cent and for the highest-income quintile was just over 75 per cent. In 2011, private school accounted for about 23 per cent of enrolments at the primary level and 20 per cent at the secondary level. Only in 1966 was education up to and through secondary schools made compulsory. Although there has been some success in widening educational access and coverage, providing quality education remains a challenge. As the authors point out, the results from the 2006 SERCE exam in Latin America, administered in sixteen countries, showed that Dominican third and sixth graders have the lowest levels of academic achievement in reading and mathematics in

Introduction: Regional Overview

17

the entire region. Graduation from secondary school also remains a challenge with only one out of every two students who enter actually complete. With the election of Danilo Medina as president in 2012 – whose campaign promise was to raise education spending from 2.2 per cent to 4 per cent of the country’s GDP – a new focus has been placed on improving the quality of the education system. These reforms have included redesigning the national curriculum, reforming teacher training programmes and, most significantly, extending the school day from a half-day to a single-shift or full-day model. The authors explore the recent history of education reforms in the country, examine the motivations behind such reforms and evaluate the real and perceived impacts of these reforms on the education system and its stakeholders.

Haiti Haiti became an independent country in 1804, but its history is an almost unparalleled example of social and political chaos involving civil wars, coups d’état, dictatorships and long periods of American military intervention and massive emigration. The aim of successive governments was to preserve the domination of a small French-speaking elite and ensuring firm control over an often-restive peasantry. Under such circumstances little attention was paid to the development of a national system of education with schools remaining in the hands of the Catholic Church and other organizations. Given that schools were fee-paying, the vast majority received no education at all. Only in very recent times has education received attention, and as the authors have pointed out, the solutions currently being proposed are perhaps not the best ones. In statistical terms, in 2012, the total population in Haiti was 10.6 million with a relatively high population density of 384 people per square kilometre. In 2012, the gross national per capita income was a very low US$820. Fifty-five per cent of the population lived in urban areas. The literacy rate was reported to be 49 per cent – Haiti being one of the ten countries with a rate under 50 per cent. Seventy per cent of the relevant age group was not enrolled in primary schools, but of those on the rolls 84 per cent completed primary education – not surprising as most attended private schools. Net attendance at secondary schools was 25 per cent. There are no reliable statistics on completion rates. In 2012, the average Haitian had attended school for only one year. In 1990, the last year for which we have data, private school accounted for about 61 per cent of enrolments at the primary level and 82 per cent at the secondary level.

18

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

It, therefore, comes as no surprise, the authors write, that the recommendations of educational experts almost unanimously see the problem resolved through a greatly increased building programme. Lubin and François point out that even when discussions go beyond the questions of ‘access’ and coverage to address the issue of the quality of education, seldom do they go beyond recommending measures to improve system oversight and finding methods to strengthen basic literacy and numeracy so that more students can pass the national examinations. Therefore, the authors ask: Is increasing access, strengthening supervision of schools and teaching students the three Rs (well enough to pass tests) the panacea to Haiti’s educational woes? In an attempt to answer this question they argued that the system in the first instance promotes French culture and neglects Haitian culture and language. They maintain that the system is an internally inefficient social filtering entity that stunts creativity and scientific thinking. It reinforces ‘elite closure’, which disadvantages the vast majority of monolingual Haitians and greatly advantages a tiny elite who speaks French, the language to access the halls of power in Haiti. That is, the majority are illiterate in two cultures. The system, they conclude, produces an untold number of self-alienated individuals who in turn reproduce a separate and unequal society and impede sustainable socio-economic development. The solution they propose is to develop what they call ‘a critical pedagogy education framework’ and discuss how it could be possible to produce a system that is equitable and that enhances the life chances of those excluded from the system.

II Conclusions Having outlined the purpose of this book and presented the background of the countries that are discussed in depth in the following chapters, we wish to call your attention briefly to four important themes that should be borne in mind as you read about the educational systems of these countries. These are (i) the collection and use of educational statistics, (ii) the role of private education, (iii) the application of systems evaluation and (iv) some questions about the role and function of education.

1 Education statistics We must join Colin Brock and issue a word of caution about statistics and, in particular, their collection. In order to give the reader an approximate idea of the general situation of primary and secondary education in the countries that are

Introduction: Regional Overview

19

the subject of this book, we and the authors of the chapters that follow present some basic statistics collected by national governments and international agencies. These can give a general appreciation and must be taken with a fair pinch of salt because they are not necessarily reliable or comparable. Although agencies like UNESCO, the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank and the OECD go to great lengths to draw up categories that can be used universally, and despite their giving very explicit information about what each category is and what data must or must not be included, their templates are not always respected. First, those responsible for setting up the data collection in each country do not necessarily communicate information that can be fully comprehended by the data collectors. If contact between the central ministry and schools is poor and trained personnel are few on the ground, one cannot expect data collection to be as rigorous in Haiti as in the UK. The problem runs the gamut from a lack of understanding of the categories to communication with those being questioned through the fact that for a variety of reasons areas are often omitted. Secondly, for a variety of reasons many national governments are often prone to exaggerate favourable statistics – literacy rate estimates are a good example. There are also cases of misinterpretation of categories. A government can even inadvertently substitute its own definition of a term like ‘attendance’ for that of the organization that initiated the process for the collection of data. Thirdly, the data can be fudged. This is not to say that one cannot trust the data. The data can convey a trend or indicate a tendency, but one must be careful.

2 The role of private education With the exception of Cuba, private education plays an important and increasing role in Latin American countries. There are a variety of private schools, including those run by the Catholic Church, entrepreneurs and even international organizations and agencies. The quality is very uneven. The problem is that in most cases they are not regulated as carefully as the state system and there are sometimes fly-by-night private schools. So-called bilingual schools are a good example. Their growth coincides with the growth of a middle class based upon the accumulation of cultural capital. When national systems were small, the public sector offered the possibility of such an accumulation. But the move towards mass education led to a mass opt-out of the middle class from the system. UNESCO points out that the size of the middle class is often a determinant of the vigorousness of the private sector. Once the social group that is both the

20

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

author and the main beneficiary of the system is no longer using the sector, it suffers from a lack of attention. Indeed, although in many cases state schools are superior to private schools, the population at large is convinced that the reverse is true and state education suffers. As we have seen, most schools in Haiti are private schools. Nowhere does the sector account for less than 9 per cent of the eligible population, and in countries like Nicaragua, Guatemala and the Dominican Republic, over 20 per cent of secondary school pupils are enrolled in fee-paying private institutions.

3 The role of evaluation Recently, evaluation of pupil progress and the performance of teachers, school heads and their institutions have been cast as something akin to a panacea for solving all of the problems that arise from the poor and badly performing education systems described by our authors. Pierre Lubin and Roselor François, in their analysis of education in Haiti, observe that the problem is a deeper one than devising adequate and valid systems of evaluation. The Instituto Nacional de Evaluación Educativo (INEE) in Mexico in a report (Schmelkes 2016) issued in February 2016 stated that a large percentage of schools were found lacking basic conditions to teach and learn satisfactorily. The report covers infrastructure, teachers and equipment. Among the disturbing findings were that nearly half the schools do not count on teachers with up-to-date qualifications, nearly half the schools in rural and indigenous areas lack adequate infrastructure and 65 per cent of day workers’ children lack any access to education. If schools are ill-equipped, if the curriculum, curriculum standards and pedagogy are not adequate, if teachers receive poor training, if the systems governing schools are poor, then the question is, to what extent can an evaluation be useful? Researchers have rightly focused on the learning process itself starting from the premise that the aim of education is to instil a system of problem-solving whereby students from cultures foreign to that of their schools can access their own knowledge and integrate it with school knowledge through problemsolving. This was the original thinking that led to Andreas Schleicher’s creation of the PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) examination setup to see how well pupils at the age of fifteen performed. It was never intended to use this as a league table, which was inevitable, and never meant to be any more than an indicator of pupil competence. The problem is that it measures pupil’s performance within a subject and not their competence to solve problems accessing information from across subjects. That is, PISA does not measure the

Introduction: Regional Overview

21

extent to which creativity is accessed and used outside of an individual subject. By respecting the traditional subject boundaries it compromises the chance of those whose knowledge is organized in a different way and makes it impossible for them to apply that knowledge. Basically, it disadvantages children whose educational codes are not those that correspond to official discourse. That is, PISA respects the existing organization of knowledge and cannot enfranchise local discourse and thinking across boundaries; the essence of creative thinking essential to enhancing life chances does not take place. Subjects remain strongly insulated from each other. The second problem is that quite a number of countries decided that the way to move up the all-important PISA league table was to train young people to know how to succeed in the PISA examination. For example, in Mexico, the policy at one point was to create mini-PISAs so that the children could master the technique of the examination. This splendid and unfortunate example of teaching to the test deforms the curriculum and skews pedagogy. Little enough time in the countries we have examined is devoted to learning in the classroom, and this time is further reduced by the PISAfication of classroom activity. The danger is such actions can nullify the supposed aim of the examination as well as disrupting the curriculum and any attempt to develop a more progressive and responsive pedagogy. The problem of the suitability and applicability of such an examination extends to the evaluation of teachers. As almost all our authors emphasize, if teachers are not provided with pre-service and in-service training of a high standard, have to work in poorly well-equipped schools and lack training in educational leadership, one cannot expect them to meet standards that do not reflect the reality of the classroom and the environment in which it operates. Evaluation of institutions is a neglected area. This is largely because, as we have seen and becomes crystal clear in the country reports, these institutions operate as quasi-political organizations with their own de facto rules of selection and promotion. This, of course, varies from country to country as we will see. On one level local education systems find it easy to adapt to PISA because it means they can appeal to a much higher authority so that they can be seen as actively trying to put order into what are largely chaotic systems. Having an international institution in charge of evaluation means they can abandon any attempt to devise their own potentially more appropriate systems. In fact ministries evade responsibility when instead of starting with institutional reforms they start backwards with evaluation of everything except those who manage education.

22

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

4 Understanding the role and function of education The phenomenon of the creation of national systems of education is comparatively a recent one dating back to no earlier than the middle of the nineteenth century. An important question is, why did such systems become so widespread? Those wishing to answer this question and those wishing to understand the aims and purposes of educational systems in countries as varied as those discussed in this book should bear the following points in mind as they read through the chapters. Why did these countries put so much effort into creating and extending potentially costly national systems of education? First, it can be argued that education, correspondingly, seems to have had different purposes in each of the countries. In Mexico, from the inception of the national system in 1919, it was seen essential to weld the disparate parts of the territory into a nation by creating a national identity or inculcating a central value system with all the paraphernalia like military-like assemblages in school courtyards, pledges of allegiance and national anthems. One can argue that it served the same purpose in other countries in Central America and the Latin Caribbean where borders were artificial creations with the nation state including many different ethnic groups. The need for a thoroughgoing nationalism complete with myths and symbols could explain why so much of the school day is devoted to honouring national symbols and conforming to discipline in the name of a national ethic. That is, for the bulk of the population, education functioned as a system of social control through the artificial creation of mechanical solidarity in the Durkheimian sense. However, education also had another role that could conflict with social control. The need for administrating and managing ever more complex societies and expanding state institutions required the training of many more leaders with a much wider range of knowledge than had been done by the old church-sponsored schools. This conformed to the rise of a middle class based on cultural capital whose need to accumulate that knowledge and the ethos of professionalism led them to push for the development of an education that was a necessity that they clothed as a human right. We call this need ‘selection’. The problem is that while at some historical conjunctures control and selection coincide there is at their heart a contradiction. The essence of preparing the next generation of leaders is to encourage creative and imaginative thinking through the exploration of educational time and space. The essence of social control is to prepare people for precise roles through rote learning and inculcate the separation of knowledge into discrete and immoveable categories whose insulations could not be challenged. How can a system cope with both necessities at the same time?

Introduction: Regional Overview

23

Attention must be paid to what we can call ‘educational bifurcation’. Briefly, state schools whose organization of curriculum and pedagogy enforces the conformity required for maintaining order and providing a minimal education for most of the population and private schools for the middle class based on cultural capital. The private schools practise what Bernstein has called an ‘integrated code’. The integrated code is the key to prepare people for leadership roles. The state schools practise what he calls a ‘collection code’ that does not allow such access to higher positions. Could this help us to understand the backwardness of state education in all the countries discussed in this book with the exception of Cuba and the partial exception of Nicaragua? For that reason it might seem odd to ask a further simple question: What can we learn from these very different experiences? This is both a theoretical or conceptual problem and a very practical one in the sense that education since the advent of human capital has been almost universally seen as the vehicle for solving problems of poverty which until now are endemic in the region. The authors agree that attention must now be paid to the quality and organization of the curriculum and pedagogy and their delivery. Knut Walter asks, what is the purpose of 100 per cent coverage if what is being taught and how it is taught is so deficient? A quality education is expensive but what is more expensive is the waste generated by a system; for instance, in Mexico about 120,000 teachers at a time were given long-term leave and/or seconded to organizations that may or may not exist. Meanwhile, the majority of children attend poorly equipped schools that can do little to compensate. Indeed, schools reinforce that inequality. The clientelism involved in the type of polities that have evolved in most of the countries discussed in this book is what is responsible for a dysfunctional system of education. That is the root of the problem. As an important addendum in this work, we have not discussed the very innovative programmes set up by volunteer and non-governmental organizations that seek to enfranchise marginal groups through new educational programmes. Many are successful in achieving their aims but worry their governments because they operate ultra vires the rules of social control. But we can see the enduring strength of the de jure systems of clientelism and patronage in even so-called community-managed schools, as Daniel Altschuler (2013) points out. They cannot escape the system. Indeed, one must consider whether any reform or experiment, no matter how well thought out, will bear fruit until the system and process of implementation become transparent and subject to evaluation.

24

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

Even in those cases where coverage of the primary school-age groups has become little short of universal, dropout rates continue to be high and, in fact, in some cases, growing. What is worse is that schools fail to deliver an education that is relevant and of quality. The frustration of parents, teachers and the students themselves who were led to believe that quantity somehow transmutes into quality is worrying. The failure to deal with equity, ethnic and gender issues is palpable. The consequences are a loss of faith in the promise of education, and this is storing up trouble for the future.

Bibliography Altschuler, Daniel. ‘How Patronage, Politics undermines Parent Participation and Accountability: Community-Managed Schools in Honduras and Guatemala’. Comparative Education Review, 57, no. 1 (February 2013): 117–44. Arnove, Robert F. ‘Education as Contested Terrain in Nicaragua’. Comparative Education Review, 39, no. 1 (February 1995): 28–53. Bernstein, Basil. Class Codes and Control, vol. iii, Towards a Theory of Educational Transmission (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1975). Bernstein, Basil. Class, Codes and Control, vol. iv, The Structuring of Pedagogic Discourse (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1990). Bernstein, Basil. ‘Code Theory and its Positioning: A Case Study in Misrecognition’. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 16, no. 1 (1995): 3–19. Bernstein, Basil. Pedagogy, Symbolic Control and Identity: Theory, Research, Critique (London: Taylor and Francis, 1996). Bourdieu, Pierre. Language and Symbolic Power (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991). Bourdieu, Pierre. The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1993). Bourdieu, Pierre, and Jean-Claude Passeron. Reproduction in Education Society and Culture (Beverley Hills, CA: Sage, 1977). Edwards, John. Education and Poverty in Guatemala (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2002). Fuentes, R. Lanny, A. ‘Pobreza y educación en Panamá: Un análisis cuantitativo’ (BA Tesis, Zamorano: Escuela Agrícola Panamericana, 2013). MacCameron, Robert. Bananas, Labour and Politics in Honduras 1954–1963 (Syracuse and New York: Syracuse University Press, 1983). Miranda, Miriam. ‘La construcción de la identidad panameña a inicios del siglo XX’, Bulletin of the Asociación para el Fomento de los Estudios Históricos en Centroamérica, fiche 2495, no. 46 (September 2010). Posner, Charles M. ‘Education and the Philanthropic Ogre’. Comparative Education, 38, no. 4 (2002): 401–14.

Introduction: Regional Overview

25

Rivarola, Magdalena, and Bruce Fuller. ‘Nicaragua’s Experiment to Decentralise Schools: Contrasting View of Parents, Teachers and Directors’. Comparative Education Review, 43, no. 4 (November 1999): 489–521. Schulz, Donald E., and Deborah Sundloff Schulz. The United States, Honduras and the Crisis in Central America (Boulder: Westview Press, 1994). Schmelkes, Silvia. La Evaluación de los Centros Escolares (México: Organización de Estados Iberoamericanos, 2016). Walter, K. La educación en Centroamérica: Reflexiones en torno a sus problemas y su potencial. CA2020 Documento de trabajo no. 10 (Institut für Iberoamerika-Kunde, 2000). Williams, Robert G. States and Social Evolution: Coffee and the Rise of National Government in Central America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991).

Part One

Mexico

2

Mexico: An Introduction to the Contemporary State of Education C. M. Posner, Christopher Martin and Elsa Guzmán

Part I Introduction Mexico is by far the largest Spanish-speaking country in Latin America and the thirteenth biggest economy in the world. Because of its free-trade agreement with the United States and Canada (NAFTA) and its entry into the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Mexico has become closely integrated into the global economy. The need for quality education has become even more imperative. From the end of the active phase of the Revolution in 1919, the country has exhibited a unique and unbroken commitment to education hallmarked by significant cultural achievements and the development of a dedicated group of educational researchers and practitioners. This continuity has been unique in Latin America. It has been underpinned by institutional continuity and a consistently high proportion of the budget devoted to educational provision, training and research. Research and innovatory programmes have been brought to life as a result of the government’s promise to providing a modern system of education, and this has evolved into a strong commitment to work with national and international institutions seeking to improve educational institutions and practices and to enhance the life chances of young people. Despite these enormous efforts and a dedication to developing an education of quality, Mexico continues to languish at or near the bottom of every league table that measures educational achievement. How is this possible? In statistical terms, there are now about twenty-six million pupils in the system. Most of them attend part-time or multigrade schools depending upon the individual state. A typical fifteen-year-old pupil will have had two years of preschooling, six

30

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

years of primary schooling and three years of secondary education – what is known as basic education. The average school day extends to no more than four and a half hours – a bit more than half that of South Korea and France. Only about half of the time spent in a school is devoted to learning as compared to the OECD average of 85 per cent. Analyses of the two major examinations purposefully designed to provide us with an indication of performance, ENLACE (Evaluación Nacional del logro académico de los Centros Educativos) and PISA (International Programme for Students Assessment), indicate that the vast majority of pupils at the age of fifteen have not attained the minimum level needed to find gainful employment. It is estimated that 38 per cent of the fifteen- to nineteen-year-old age group cannot read to an acceptable standard. Fully 79 per cent of that cohort cannot communicate in Spanish and about 80 per cent are deficient in mathematics. In fact, according to the former undersecretary of basic education, despite the dedication of resources and several rounds of reform, levels of performance have declined over the last few years and the dropout rate has risen to even more unacceptable levels. Moreover, only 46 per cent of fifteen-year-old students enter upper-secondary education. The dropout rates at this level are also on the increase. Although education till the age of eighteen is now obligatory, almost eight million pupils between the ages of thirteen and eighteen have abandoned the system. In 2012, the national authorities in charge of basic education, led for the first time by a highly qualified and experienced educationalist, announced a programme to put learning at the centre of the educational process and to drastically reduce the growing number of school dropouts. To overcome these problems and related deficiencies, they made it clear that they intended to establish clear norms for the management of the school, the organization of classroom activities, abjure the tendency to ‘test to the test’ and find ways of involving stakeholders in the running of schools. They were convinced that these changes and innovations could only be accomplished by laying the bases for working in close collaboration with teachers and jettisoning the previous failed policy of bombarding them with impossible aims and directives. It appeared that the long-standing policy of culpabilizing teachers for the failures listed above, rather than seeking their cooperation, was on the cards. This was aided by a significant change in the organization and brief of the trade union (SNTE) Sindicato Nacional de Trabajaddores de Educación representing the majority of teachers. The undersecretary dates pointed out that in the first instance, collaboration could be built up by reviving and expanding the scope of activities of the near moribund consejos técnicos and involving, for the first time, parents and community stakeholders in school governance.

Mexico: An Introduction to the Contemporary State of Education

31

This ambitious programme collapsed because it ran counter to the government’s wish to exert federal control over all activities in the light of student unrest resulting from acts of violence in many states. The knee-jerk reaction meant that an undersecretary and her staff, who were professional educationalists, had to be replaced by a team of party politicians to restore control. The downside was that they had little real experience in education, which for them was not an exploration of time and space to encourage creativity but was based on the perceived need to prevent young people stepping out of line. Their leitmotif was conformity. The newly installed authorities immediately abandoned all the modest programmes that were designed to escape from the educational abyss as described by the ministry itself. In its place they substituted a rigorous top-down reform, discussed in the four following chapters, the aim of which was to bring greater coherence and control into the failing system. In order to understand the background of the reforms and the reforms themselves, it is first necessary to have an understanding of the de jure and, more importantly, the de facto system of education and equally of the official and unofficial division of labour between stakeholders. The de jure educational system is described as federal, consisting of thirtytwo constituent state systems enjoying a measure of financial and operational autonomy. However, finance is really controlled by the federal government which must give its approval to local programmes before the funds are released, and state governments have little, if any, funds of their own to use. Operations are naturally constrained by finance. In part, the generation and development of programmes depends on the relative wealth of the states and whether they have the personnel to undertake such independent work. In basic education, the states are also bound to federal normative control, a national curriculum and systems of evaluation. This de facto centralization is reinforced by corporate arrangements and practices that prevail through agreements between the federal administration (SEP, Secretaría de Educación Pública) and the national teachers union (SNTE), whose role since the imprisonment of its leader has supposedly been reduced. Until that time promotions and transfers took place across and between the union and the administration. These arrangements had been sealed in a series of agreements and alliances, such as the most recent Alianza por la Calidad Educativa. This was somewhat mitigated at the state level if the state SNTE was relatively independent of national headquarters or if more than one trade union exists in the state. However, there is little real evidence that a new system really alters the situation.

32

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

Despite important changes in the political structure over the last decade, the system can still be characterized as being, in essence, corporative. That is, education is vertically integrated and tends to be inward looking and hierarchical. In human terms, it is held together by a complicated patchwork of individual and group loyalties upward and across the system. Loyalty is repaid with benefits, privileges and other concessions such as secondments, loans and transfers, binding people to their superiors. It is not surprising then that educational considerations are frequently subsumed by political and personal considerations. (In the Mexican political system, personal and political considerations are often one and the same. They count far more than policy considerations and often override ideological differences.) Some Mexican scholars have even spoken of Mexican education as having been held to ransom by such considerations or it being run by a ‘philanthropic ogre’, to adopt Octavio Paz’s term (Posner 2002). The Mexican educational system, corporative though it is, operates within a very regionally diverse society. Ethnic, economic, social class and geographical variations have played an important part in the development of the particularities of the state educational administration. For example, Aguascalientes and Colima are small and relatively well-endowed states with, in ethnic terms, a fairly homogenous population. Their administrations, including education, have benefited from these factors, and their populations enjoy above-average public services. Nuevo León is a relatively rich state with more resources than the norm, and the neighbouring state of Coahuila is very much its satellite. At the other extreme, Chiapas, Guerrero, Nayarit, Oaxaca and Tabasco are states with high proportions of ethnically diverse people and high levels of poverty. Between these two extremes are the states of Jalisco, Sinaloa and Zacatecas in which coexist a large middle-class and urbanized population and specific regions of poverty, marginalization and ethnic minorities. In these states, as in Chiapas and Tabasco, the educational administrations struggle to meet the extremely varied needs of their people within their limited budgets. Yucatán, with a long tradition of relative independence, is one of the few states where an indigenous language is spoken across the state and which has official recognition, and it also has resources that other states do not have. In this top-down system, the implementation of reforms must pass through a large number of filters so that when teachers finally learn about them, in Chinese-whisper style, they don’t have the same grasp of the reforms as the decision makers. Indeed, given past failures, the first reaction of the teaching profession is to see all reforms, no matter how good they are, as a threat. The resulting suspicion and fear constricts their activities and has a negative effect

Mexico: An Introduction to the Contemporary State of Education

33

on pupils. When the reform leads to the production of a new curriculum and textbooks, their sometimes lack of relevance impedes critical learning. The textbooks become objects for memorization and not the basis for integrating the knowledge and curiosity of pupils with the written word. In that sense, as teachers reported to us during our research, they only go through the motions ceasing to give of themselves rather than giving of themselves. Moreover, it does not help that despite the wishes of the new National Institute for Educational Evaluation (INEE) the basis of evaluation has become ‘teaching to the test’. While it was conceived as an instrument to guarantee a more homogeneous system of delivery, the cost of learning is great, and the danger is that instead of critically evaluating learning so that the evaluation can be an aid, it becomes an instrument to measure ‘efficiency’. Another problem that any new reform must overcome is scepticism. There have been four serious attempts at curriculum and pedagogic reforms over the last twenty years. Many reforms were constructed and sponsored by national and international researchers, and these have all signally failed to lift educational performance – indeed, most have never been properly implemented. Despite the production of reforms, as we have seen, according to recent studies undertaken by the Ministry of Education and reported by the then-undersecretary of state for basic education in her opening remarks to the staff on the ministry, in 2012 itself Mexico had regressed with percentages of most age groups now attending school being lower than before. It can be argued that the root of the problem lies in educational institutions’ clientelism, which means that successive governments of all political colours emphasize the politics of interpersonal and group loyalties above educational exigencies. The net result is poor planning and targeting, inappropriate use of resources and poor articulation between institutions and other stakeholders involved in education. Parents, when they have the means, attempt to avoid the state system of education that, in their experience, seems incapable of improvement. In order to make sense of this very complex system, we focus on three themes that summarize the breadth and depth of the failure to provide a meaningful education. 1. Policymaking is very much a top-down process abjuring a system whereby educational stakeholders have an input into educational decision making. From the outset the system has been driven by the belief that the population as a whole does not have sufficient background and training to participate

34

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

and can, in fact, be injurious to educational progress. While such an approach is perhaps necessary when there are no operative educational institutions, when the educational level and aspiration reach the level they have in Mexico, the top-down approach is not only wrong but can damage, if not nullify, even the best of reforms. As Bonifacio Barba and Rodolfo Ramírez argue, it means that the professional educational decision makers not only are out of touch with what is happening at ground level but also squash any innovations that they themselves do not fully control. 2. In the following chapters examining various aspects of the latest reform, a constant theme is that Mexican society is constructed on the basis of clientelism and associated forms of corruption. This means not only that there is little room for advancement by merit in the system but that the system functions with a high degree of institutional irrationality. The Turners point out how teachers’ positions are inherited and/or sold within the system. Barba demonstrates the gap between the law and political interests, and Ramírez shows how the best of reforms remain on paper and are subject to political rather than educational decisions. 3. At the top we have a kind of technocratic authoritarianism manned by groups who have worked in international organizations and/or have been educated in institutions that do not fully understand the problems and possibilities of Mexican society. They are beholden to the representatives of political organizations and, in the past, the teachers’ trade union. These organizations constantly override or modify their programmes for the curriculum, pedagogy and evaluation to suit their immediate political needs. Each new administration starts with reforms and usually ends with only a semblance of reform. The key appointments go to those with party loyalty and/or those whose role is to control any potential sign of opposition. In most cases, they lack educational credentials but are expert political movers and shakers. For that reason, the highly qualified undersecretary of state at the beginning of the current political administration, who lacked such networking, was summarily dismissed. Carlos Ornelas gives the current president Enrique Peña Nieto the benefit of the doubt and even describes him as a Machiavellian innovator and strategist who knows how to balance sometimes contradictory political forces and makes no excuses for focusing on the top political level. According to Ornelas, his reforms are an attempt to reassert presidential control over a wayward system. He was able to rally enough support from the Congress and disgruntled parents. He

Mexico: An Introduction to the Contemporary State of Education

35

saw the corporative trade union (SNTE) as the chief obstacle to change. Like a previous president, he thought it was sufficient to imprison the trade union leader and to promote two other measures that centralized the payroll and allowed the hiring, firing and promotion of teachers. Ornelas concludes that the jury is out on whether these reforms will work, because they have been borrowed from international organizations and then have been filtered through Mexican political organizations. The filtering leads to their distortion. In other words, one must be aware of the gulf between policies, no matter how well intentioned, and of the reality of political clientelism. Bonifacio Barba points out another contradiction that exists between the constitution as regards education administration, on the one hand, and the protection of the civil rights on the other. The real contradiction lies in the way in which these two aspects of the Constitution are enacted. On the one hand, to bring about much needed educational change, the authorities resort to implementation without due concern to real conditions and how to deal with them. The result is what he calls ‘an ineffective authoritarianism’. On the other hand, he argues that there is a blatant disregard of constitutional guarantees of the rights of citizens. This is in sharp contrast with the freedom and safeguards for national and international business interests. He identifies three obstacles to reform: the lack of resources and their effective management; the need to overcome the social diversity of schools and to bring groups representing this diversity (from outraged parents to bellicose teachers and reluctant state authorities) on board; and the failure to address and readdress gross inequalities of teaching and material resources, a reflection of the larger neglect of poverty and inequality in society as a whole. In conclusion, he praises the reform proposals as such but not their partial, ineffective and authoritarian execution. David and Guadalupe Turner locate the source of the reform in the dynamics of the expansion, consolidation and current paralysis of the system of education. When growth slowed and attention turned to the need to improve quality, the authorities came up against the long-established interests of officials and teachers. The chief of these, they point out, is the entrenched system of tenure whereby teachers could acquire lifelong position without possessing the necessary qualifications or experience. Over the last two decades, measures to reform this situation have floundered because of a failure of political will or competence. The latest of these reforms has boldly tried to overcome this by instituting promotion based on merit and developing an independent body, the INEE, to oversee the procedure. They warn us that these new measures are still inadequate, because organized demonstrations by groups of dissident teachers

36

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

combined with less-visible stratagems of resistance have come to the fore. The old system still prevails by continuing to fill posts based on clientelism and such actions as rigging the figures on vacant posts and generally ignoring the implications of the new hiring and promotional regime in schools. Pre-reform appointees fail to cooperate with new appointees, making their life difficult and thus nullifying the effects of the new system of recruitment based on merit. Rodolfo Ramírez discusses the impact of the reforms within the schools themselves and looks at how they affect the day-to-day work of the teachers. Like the Turners and Barba, he examines the new laws governing selection and promotion of teachers but emphasizes that policies rarely go beyond the drawing board. He argues that the tests developed to measure teachers’ competence and the instruments that have been devolved to select and promote teachers can only provide evidence of a very small portion of their real work. He challenges the authorities to undertake what he calls ‘a comprehensive evaluation’, if one is going to be done at all. Since there is little evidence, Ramírez writes, that testing alone cannot improve performance, he reminds the authorities of their promise to develop a formative form of evaluation. Such an evaluation must take into account the full range of teachers’ work and conditions and challenge the authorities to evaluate their own administrative apparatus that has failed to provide us with a way of rewarding teachers’ work that is relevant and helpful. The four writers contrast the ambitious reforms with the real conditions in schools. The authorities seem not to fully appreciate that most educational institutions are underequipped, with poorly trained teachers and subject to impossible technical, administrative and political demands to such an extent that it was reported in the press that the INEE has pointed out that about 85 per cent of schools cannot be evaluated because they are not in a condition for such an evaluation to take place. The following points that emerge from the four chapters are fundamental for understanding current educational policy and practice.

1 The gap, if not an abyss, between policy and classroom reality The disjuncture between decisions and their implementation has more commonly been treated under the heading of the widely acknowledged centralization of Mexican education. Decision making concentrated at federal level. Central authority largely determined the curriculum, standardized textbooks and the length of the school day. These formal aspects of educational procedures set out in official documents are what have most concerned commentators. Yet, it is only one aspect of the relation between

Mexico: An Introduction to the Contemporary State of Education

37

the top and bottom of the system. This view emphasizes the hierarchical relationship between the authorities and teaching in a chain of command in which educational functions are distributed. Yet, there is another aspect of the relationship that is less often analysed, namely the gulf, rather than the connection, between policy and practice; between official intention and actual classroom practice. As Barba says, the polarization of Mexican society has much to do with this. Officials rarely spend much time in classrooms, relying more on reports and statistics conveyed through official channels. At best these can tell what is happening on the ground, but not why it is so. Even academic research has generally lacked close contact with the field. Carlos Ornelas studies this mainly in terms of the politics between teachers’ organizations, state authorities that were previously granted increased powers under decentralization that have more recently been eroded, and the federal government. He details the strategy, Machiavellian tactics and struggle the office of the president employed and its deficiencies. Ramírez also deals with the political aspects but in terms of the classroom: he sees the contemporary imposition of what the teachers consider punitive evaluation as both politically provocative and a very ineffective way to evaluate the professions. As such, evaluation has become political and the independence of the newly established INEE has been undermined. The ministry authorities mitigate the work of the institution by defending the ancien régime of clientelism. Evaluation of teachers is not matched by an evaluation of administrations and administrators. It is argued that the government’s concern is political and its purpose is to undercut the SNTE and to reform teachers’ conditions of service and labour law. As such, the reform is not so much an educational reform as a labour reform. Bonifacio Barba attributes the gap between policy and practice to a social contradiction in which an avowed commitment to equity in public education provision runs up against a de facto bias towards the supposed needs of the private sector. The rights of the mass of the population are conditioned by the imperative of generating economic capital. The limited contact with the schools and constricted models of engineered change and policy implementation mean that decision makers and top administers are cut off from the reality they seek to influence. This, in turn, means that much policy is just plain out of touch and thus misses its mark. Therefore, policymakers more often than not have little understanding of what occurs in basic, secondary and upper-secondary education. All four chapters refer to the political opposition that the state governments have manifested; and Ornelas and Ramírez from distinct perspectives treat teacher militancy seriously.

38

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

As the official union, the SNTE has long acted as the broker between government policy and teacher interests, even if not always to the satisfaction and advantage of its members. Nevertheless, that the recent reforms have sidelined the union in several ways is also dealt with by each author. Teacher organizations have reacted to this with demonstrations and strikes, particularly the most radical wings of the teaching force in the traditionally radical poorer states of Chiapas, Oaxaca, Guerrero and Michoacán. Apart from formal, organized rebellion, teachers resist reforms invisibly, in the classroom, through absenteeism and other forms of what James Scott (1985) has called ‘silent resistance’, which is also analysed by Mars (1982) in ‘Cheats at Work’. In research carried out in two sets of locations in Jalisco and other states, over two different time periods, we have found that it is common for teachers to see their job in terms of riding out changes, making the minimum token adjustments to reforms knowing fully well that there will be another reform in the next presidential period. They do not see it as worth their while in making too many adjustments to their modus operandi under such conditions, especially when these prejudice their working conditions, imply extra work or are not fully grasped due to lack of adequate training. All the above circumstances create obstacles to the simple application of reforms in state administrations and in schools.

2 Rational versus politicized administration Another aspect to the gap between policy and classroom reality is the gulf between official declarations about educational processes and actual practice, the former being rule bound and the latter according to personalistic, patrimonial political considerations. The phenomena we have outlined generate what Basave has termed a ‘form of schizophrenia’ (2013). In analysing the gap in the Mexican official mindset between ideas and reality, officials and others cherished a belief in the law, due process and the impartial, democratic institutions of their nation, while practising patron–client relations with superiors, political friends and subordinates. Personalism and cronyism are rife in the educational administration and among teachers as the Turners show, for example, in the institution of permanent tenure. Under the current reforms, the previous system, in which teaching posts were passed to members of the immediate family or sold to the highest bidder, is being replaced by open, meritocratic hiring and promotion, yet the administration remains strongly clientelistic with personnel still finding places through personalistic ties and many paying their patrons for the privilege of their posts.

Mexico: An Introduction to the Contemporary State of Education

39

The persistence of clientelism and cronyism in education stands in stark contrast to the supposed intention of the reforms with their emphasis on rational, open, technical procedures. As such, they aim to make teachers more accountable in delivering a more creative curriculum and thus improving student educational performance. But the inconsistencies already referred to in carrying out the reforms have made our contributors doubtful about the outcomes (Ornelas), as well as the intentions of the reforms (Ramírez and Barba). Ramírez also questions whether the intentions were truly educational or whether they were motivated by political considerations.

3 Pseudo-technocratic control over learning To push through the reforms, the government has increasingly adopted a policy of recentralizing many aspects of the administration, replacing educational experts in the secretariat with political appointees and reinforcing technocratic measures to justify its control over teachers and students, notably through standardized aptitude testing (SAT). This is particularly easy to see in the delivery of the curriculum and in teachers’ career development. It has been said that as soon as evaluation is tied to non-learning criteria such as teacher or student promotion, it becomes contaminated and its educational value hollowed out. This has been one of the most trenchant criticisms of SAT in other parts of the world (see Scott et al. 2015). The introduction of SAT in Mexico has been associated with both student advancement and, most significantly now, teacher promotion. Indeed, important aspects of teacher promotion depend on both the teachers’ performance in multiple-choice tests and the multiple-choice tests of their students, thereby doubly corrupting any educational value. Teaching to the test threatens the coherence of the curriculum. The curriculum is fraught with contradictions allied to the SAT. The reform of the plans and programmes of study in the 2000s were directed to enhancing the creativity of students through important moves towards discovery learning after many decades of prescriptive, encyclopaedic textbook-based learning. But this new approach was instantly undercut by the SATs that even tried to make creativity prescriptive, a challenge to teachers at every stage in the curriculum. As our field studies have shown, it is difficult for a student to display his or her creativity on a timed multiple-choice exam, with, as likely as not, teachers, complicit with their colleagues and their pupils, in spoon-feeding their examinees with ‘the right answer’.

40

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

Ironically, where groups of teachers or schools have sought to promote the creative spirit of the reformed curriculum through project work, flexible approaches to curriculum pacing and through bolt-on enrichment programmes such as in Centro Educativo Narciso Bassols (CENB), ovimiento para la Inovación y la Transformación de la Educación Básica (MITEB) and Contracorriente, they have been met by indifference and, occasionally, hostility by the authorities. The upshot of the technocratic impulse in the past few years, then, has more to do with politics than with improving educational quality. This is the conclusion reached by each of our contributors in distinct ways. Ornelas documents how the new reform intentions ran aground in the political endeavour to negotiate with the teachers and the state administrations. The reformers failed to convince either and ended up disempowering both. Barba shows us how the politics of inequality have continued to override legal prescriptions; the Turners show how the tenure system’s imminent demise attacks the teachers’ and the Union’s power base; and Ramírez criticizes both the evaluations’ politicization and its distortion of properly educational objectives. The reforms of the current administration rested upon the notion of wresting education from Union cronyism and returning the sector to the public authorities. Convincing as this argument was, it could only be made good if the policymakers and authorities themselves placed education over politics. Unfortunately this claim was undermined in spring of 2015 with the government’s last-minute suspension of the evaluations. This overriding of the much-vaunted independence of the INEE gave the lie to the foundations of the reform in the eyes of many. The excuse for this intrusion into the autonomous work of INEE was unclear but certainly political, occurring as it did on the eve of the electoral campaigns, where teachers’ votes counted significantly.

Bibliography Basave, Augustín. Mexicanidad y Esquizofrenia, (Mexico: CDM Oceano, 2013). Scott, James C. Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New York, Yale, 1985). Scott, David, Charles Posner, Christopher Martin, Elsa Guzmán. Interventions in Education: Systems Reform and Development, (London, Bloomsbury, 2015).

3

Mexico: The Education Reform Project Carlos Ornelas

Summary President Enrique Peña Nieto announced in his inaugural speech on 1 December 2012 that there would be changes to Mexico’s educational politics. He proclaimed that a new education reform must be undertaken, and that he would propose amendments to the Constitution and to the General Education Act to the federal Congress. The president stated: ‘There will be clear and precise rules for everyone who wants to enter as, remain in the position of, or be promoted as a teacher, principal, or supervisor, based on her/his work and merit.’ He was responding to a visibly flawed system. In Mexico, retiring teachers can bequeath their post to their offspring or, if they have no heir with teaching credentials, they can sell it to the highest bidder. Based on political and institutional analysis, I scrutinize the setting up, the legal formulation, the logic of policy implementation and the hostility towards the education reform in the first two years after the presidential announcement. I also analyse its potential for failure and/or success.

Presentation The international literature on the analysis of educational reform offers different interpretations of trends in institutional change and of the consequences that those reforms incur. Carney, Rappleye and Silova (2012) review a large body of the literature on education reform to illustrate the differences, rather than the similarities, between two modes of interpreting the increasing homogeneity of educational systems worldwide. On the one hand, there are those who argue that the trend towards isomorphism is the mere by-product of the passage of

42

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

time. For those authors, the educational reforms worldwide are the effect of a growing world culture that establishes its values and insights globally (Meyer 2008; Ramírez 2006). For others, this homogeneity results from an international education reform model that has been imposed on reticent societies by international capitalist organizations, such as the World Bank (Klees, Samoff and Stromquist 2012; Stromquist and Monkman 2014). Still other scholars emphasize the importance of local political struggles in motivating governments to promote education reforms, although governments that carry out those reforms may borrow ideas from abroad (Rappleye 2012; Rust 2007; SteinerKhamsi 2012). There are many ways to make sense of educational reform. It may result from the goals of the reformers, which include, for example, addressing the perceived needs of their education system, resolving a crisis, serving political ends or legitimating a given government policy (Bacharach 1990; Tyack and Cuban 2001). As Burton Clark has argued, ‘Change is the most used concept in the social sciences’: both wide system reforms and micro reforms are key to the field. The reforms can be designed and implemented by way of a top-down approach in which an authority targets the schools’ setting or teachers. Alternatively, it can come locally from grass-roots organizations, gain momentum and spread to other branches of the system (Clark 1984). Another issue is the actual objective of educational reform. A selective review of the literature shows that most reforms, especially those that use a top-down model, follow a similar path: legal formulation of strategies, policy implementation, changes in curriculum, new textbooks and teacher enhancement. Other reforms attempt to institute a given model of pedagogy, such as the competence-based approach or the constructivist paradigm. Another type of reform attempts to establish a centralized evaluation system in tandem with decentralized school management; this makes use of external accountability and punitive measures for teachers. The neo-liberal ideal, alternatively, might suggest the privatization and deregulation of educational systems (Zadja 2006). The networks of significance of educational reform are so vast that a researcher can focus on whatever aspect he or she is looking for. However, the analyst is responsible for making clear her or his analytical preferences. Institutional change entails modifications of the written rules as well as changes to the institutional or political leadership. It also necessitates agreeing upon new goals and means, and articulating the new system’s purpose to win the support of the majority. This last requirement of change is most noticeable if there are substantial variations in governing bodies’ decision-making processes

Mexico: The Education Reform Project

43

(Crawford and Ostrom 1995; March and Olsen 1996). However, the institutional approach is not entirely sufficient. Its main flaw is that it applies to the analysis of policies or government strategies but fails to scrutinize the political forces and power struggles underlying education. I will therefore contrast the neoinstitutional theoretical framework with the power dynamics involved in the ongoing Mexican education reform. Since I agree with Antonio Gramsci that education is politics and politics is education, my analytical approach relies heavily on the political action of crucial political actors and important individuals in the educational system (Gramsci 1976). Most educational reforms can be explained by changes to policymaking design, evolution in the managerial system and/or – as I would like to emphasize in this chapter – significant alteration in power structures (Carnoy and Samoff 1990).

Setting up As President Enrique Peña Nieto declared, ‘There will be clear and precise rules for everyone who wants to enter as, remain in the position of, or be promoted as a teacher, principal, or supervisor, based on her/his work and merit’ (Excelsior, 2 December 2012). He was responding to a visibly flawed system. In Mexico, retiring teachers can bequeath their post to their offspring or, if they have no heir with teaching credentials, they can sell it to the highest bidder. Although many high-level public servants have been aware of such practices since the 1990s, none did anything to prevent them, even when the issue was reported in national newspapers. However, the situation became a matter of government shame internationally when the Washington Post made it public in 2004 (Jordan 2004). Felipe Calderón’s administration (2006–12) tried to solve the problem by negotiating with the leaders of the National Teacher Union (SNTE), but the resulting Alliance for the Quality of Education (ACE) failed towards the end of his presidency (Author 2012). President Peña Nieto used a different strategy. He and the leaders of the three major political parties made public the Pact for Mexico on 2 December 2012. This pact comprised a package of ‘structural reforms’ aiming at modernizing the economy and achieving a more equitable political system. They claimed that the changes would benefit society (Presidencia de la República, 2013). The pact involved a proposition to open the oil industry to private investors, thus diminishing the power of Pemex (a state monopoly since 1938), a reorganization of the electoral system, a progressive fiscal reform, the destruction of the

44

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

monopolistic media and telecommunications empire, and changes to education governance. Of the pact’s ninety-five points, eight were devoted to education. Although the Pact for Mexico expired before the package of legal reforms was approved, President Peña Nieto announced a pragmatic agreement with political actors. Since the political party, PAN (Partido de Acción Nacional), would not approve the fiscal reform, the president allied with the political party PRD and accepted some of its proposals. However, because the PRD (Partido de la Revoluxión Democrático) opposed his planned energy reforms, the president agreed to support the PAN proposals to open the oil and electric industries. This did not lead to breaking up relations with any party or criticism of their leadership. As Maquiavelli would say, the president acted as a fox, not as an irrational beast. Peña Nieto presents himself as a reformist president. He ostensibly has a political project that aims at economic and political innovation. However, as Machiavelli pointed out: It should be borne in mind that there is nothing more difficult to manage, or more doubtful of success, or more dangerous to handle than to take the lead in introducing a new order of things. For the innovator has enemies in all those who are doing well under the old order, and he has only lukewarm defenders in all those who would do well under the new order. … It is necessary … to determine whether these innovators are standing on their own or depend on others; that is, whether they have to beg or are able to use force in order to conduct their affairs. In the first case they always end up badly and do not accomplish anything, but when they depend on their own resources and are able to use force, then they are rarely in danger. (Machiavelli 2003; original en 1503: 25–6)

Machiavelli’s quotation provides an excellent framework for analysing Peña Nieto’s project of educational change in political terms. I address the issue from the perspective of political conflict and analyse the possibilities for institutional change that result not only from legal amendments, but also from controversies surrounding political power. Because the changes I discuss are recent and of uncertain future, I venture to speculate about the reform’s viability in the relatively short term – let’s say for the duration of Peña Nieto’s administration. My assessment will focus on the changes to the education system and their possible consequences. I argue that the government’s strategy in dealing with the first package of legal amendments was successful. Nevertheless, there is no assurance that the political and bureaucratic landscape will continue to support the goals elaborated in the constitutional amendments. The project’s outcome depends on whether, as Machiavelli would say, the president implores that such reforms should be accepted, or if using a suitable power technology, the president imposes his political will.

Mexico: The Education Reform Project

45

The top-down model of educational reform employed by the Mexican government follows the pattern identified by analysts of education reforms such as Torsten Husen and Hans Weiler (Husen 2007; Weiler 2007). First, it involves a legal formulation preceded by a coherent discourse arguing for the necessity of change. However, the policy implementation has coincided with political struggle. Although there have been initiatives to change the basic education curricula, as the announcements of new textbooks for primary and lower-secondary education and have enhancements to the teacher’s education programme show, I do not deal with them in this chapter.

Legal formulation of the education reform The Pact for Mexico set the stage for the legal design of the reforms. Because they basically agreed that the catastrophe of education was the most pressing issue facing the country – and because the leader of SNTE, Elba Esther Gordillo, was their mutual political enemy – they agreed to start with education reform. As early as 10 December 2012, the president announced in a symbolic gesture that the following day he would send an initiative to amend Articles 3 and 73 of the Constitution to Congress. The proclamation of the reform lent credibility to the government and to the Pact for Mexico. On 17 December of the same year, a poll by BGC-Excélsior showed that 60 per cent of interviewees said that the publicized reform would help to transform education in Mexico, while only 28 per cent thought that it was just another innocuous reform, like the ones in the past. If credibility is the basis for legitimacy, the Peña Nieto administration had made a good start on the proposed education reform. The constitutional amendment was fast-tracked. The federal Congress approved the presidential initiative on 20 December with few extensions or elucidations. Most state congresses had passed the bill by 20 January 2013. Although there was bitter debate, two new regulatory laws and the amendments to the General Education Act were approved and decreed by the president (Diario Oficial de la Federación, 11 September 2013). A new institutional framework for the Mexican education system had been instituted. The General Act of Educational Professional Service (SPD) embraced clear, meritocratic rules for entry into the teaching profession and offered guidelines for promotion to supervisory positions, the distribution of work, and new methods of exercising authority. The National Institute for the Educational Evaluation (INEE) Act provided the institute with autonomy and expanded its duties beyond

46

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

evaluation. Merit was the cornerstone value of the new secondary laws, while evaluation served as the instrument to measure it. With these new regulations, the federal government aimed – at least in the official discourse – to end the sale and inheritance of teaching posts. In addition, thousands of education workers were ‘commissioned’ to SNTE management and other activities outside the education system but still on the payroll to contend with. In the Mexican popular jargon, they are called aviadores (aviators). Everyone knew of the existence of these anomalies, but their numbers were unknown. Thus, the reform included a census of teachers, students and schools of basic and special education, to gauge the number and location of teachers who were actually at work in the system. As part of the constitutional reforms, the Peña Nieto administration instructed the National Institute of Geography and Statistics (INEGI) to take this census. Since INEGI was legally responsible for collecting information, the state governments were forced to deliver data that they had previously denied to the Secretariat of Public Education (SEP). Education reforms have aspects of centralization. The first step is the absorption of all overarching political functions by federal government institutions. This was carried out with the support of the PAN and the PRD. The Pact for Mexico included a centralizing project, broadly defined, which was approved by the federal Congress despite some initial reluctance. State governments and their congresses disliked this feature, as the amendments to the Government Accountability Act dismantled certain ‘feudal’ aspects of governance previously instated by state governors.

Argument I posit that what today is called ‘educational reform’ is actually the instatement of political prerequisites to investing power in the federal government; henceforth, the high-ranking officers will be able to make decisions independently of the SNTE. Previous attempts to reform Mexican education have created more glitches than they have solutions. They failed because the government, either under command of the Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI) or PAN, ceded power to the SNTE in exchange for its political support. In 1992, the secretary of public education, the general secretary of the SNTE and all state governors signed the Agreement for the Modernization of Basic Education, in which the SEP decentralized the administration of the school system by granting authority, including with regard to labour relations, to the states. In 2002, President Vicente Fox and the leader of the SNTE signed the Agreement for the Quality of Education, unaware that the

Mexico: The Education Reform Project

47

effect would be to increase SNTE power. In 2008, the SEP and the SNTE signed the Alliance for the Quality of Education, which failed to bring about any tangible change. These last two agreements promised to put an end to the inheritance and sale of teaching posts.1 The agreement of 1992 also entailed a tremendous transfer of funds from the federal treasury to the states (Author 1995; segunda edición 2013; Pardo 1999). The funds relocated to the states became easy prey for SNTE leaders. The governors were unable to overcome the power of the union sections, as their National Executive Committee always supported them. Thus, the president proposed, and the Congress accepted, an amendment to the Law of Fiscal Coordination that eliminates the Federal Fund for Basic Education (FAEB), which transferred financial resources to the states. Since January 2015, the SEP and the secretary of finance have been in charge of teacher payroll. If one assesses the success of the reforms by their ability to enact legal change, Peña Nieto’s administration is to be applauded. His rhetoric for effective models of governance and his drive to reform have marked him as an innovator. In just over twenty months, the federal Congress approved eleven ‘structural’ reforms, which included fifty-eight amendments to the Constitution, eighty-one adjustments to various secondary laws, twenty-one new regulation acts and the abrogation of another fifteen (Beltrán del Río, 2014). The president has signed all of them. At this juncture, as Machiavelli would say, he acted as both a fox and a lion. As Machiavelli foresaw, the innovator president makes enemies of those who benefited from the old system and has few defenders outside of the government.

The logic of policy execution Even before the legislative process was over, the government tried to brand the purpose and content of the educational reform as a positive change involving the removal of ‘perverse’ practices. The top of the executive branch developed the policy design, but it lacked a uniform strategic line. The higher echelons of the bureaucracy held conflicting views. Nevertheless, it brought about noticeable changes in the management of the educational system, especially in the SEP, and also altered the balance of power. The amendments to Articles 3 and 73 of the Constitution and the General Education Act – together with the enactment of the General Act for Professional Teachers Service and the INEE Act – attempt to modify the rules of the game between the SEP and the SNTE substantially. The main aim of recent changes, according

48

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

to President Peña Nieto and Secretary of Public Education Emilio Chuayffet, is to recover the stewardship (rectoría) of education. In their view, the only way to achieve this control is by centralizing the duties of the SEP. As the secretary of public education explained, ‘We must critically review it to make it again the federal agency exercising the executive authority of the state’ (Excelsior, 11 December 2012). The government therefore began to implement a centralizing strategy. First, the president appointed Alba Martínez Olivé as undersecretary for basic education. She had been a teacher of basic education and had experience in the education bureaucracy but had never been close to the leaders of the SNTE. She replaced Fernando González Sánchez, the son-in-law of Ms Gordillo, who had in turn been appointed by President Felipe Calderón, allegedly as a reward for electoral favours during his presidential campaign in 2006 (Raphael 2007). Soon, all loyal SNTE cadres were removed from the undersecretary for basic education and replaced by technocratic and academic functionaries who took control of the bureaus. Soon thereafter, at the same time that the debates in the Congress were taking place, the SEP began to pressure the state governments to take action in favour of education reform. The governors were not enthusiastic. During a meeting of the governors’ council in Mazatlán, they asked for more resources. President Peña Nieto responded that the federal government will take back control of the payroll (Excélsior, 27 August 2013). Furthermore, since most governors did not favour the reform, Secretary Chuayffet criticized them. He noted that one of the problems with the country’s education was the state governments’ lack of leadership. The reform, he alleged, was not synonymous with a state monopoly. Recovering the direction of education entails making fundamental decisions about how, what and when the government should provide a public service, he argued. Then he called upon ‘local governments to assume the governance of basic education and prevent labor groups, such as the CNTE (National Coordination of Education Workers, which assembles dissident teachers’ groups) or even the SNTE to decide on matters of educational policy’ (Excelsior, 12 February 2014). The reform was bolstered by the results of the census carried out by the INEGI, which were devastating: The first ever government census of schools in Mexico shows that 13 per cent of all people registered on the schools’ payrolls do not turn up to work. That is 298,000 out of a total of 2.25m, divided among those who receive a paycheck but appear to be figments of someone’s imagination; who work somewhere else; who are on leave (often as union representatives); or who have quit, retired or died. Organisations that represent outraged parents call it the ‘theft of the century’. (The Economist, 7 April 2014)

Mexico: The Education Reform Project

49

The federal government has not yet undertaken cleaning up the payroll. It lacks the legal ability to do so until January 2015. Next, the government addressed the lack of communication between the central government and educators in classroom settings. Perhaps as a means to achieve legitimacy, but also as a way to include teachers and administrators in the reform, the SEP called for a national debate on the pedagogical features that the reform should include. That debate was probably the primary reason for organizing the Fora to Review the Educational Model, which SEP summoned on 15 January 2014. They were organized for basic education, upper-secondary education and teacher colleges in several states. Eighteen regional and three national fora were held between February and June of 2014. These fora were well organized, and many teachers, school principals and supervisors participated and discussed the SEP’s proposals, although they often interjected other proposals. Although some of the participants were critical – and even some insulted the authorities – there was no censorship.2 All papers and oral presentations are posted on the SEP web page. In response, some state governments and local congresses made deals with regional leaders of the SNTE. In other states, like Oaxaca and Michoacán, legislators made deals with CNTE leaders to evade, at least partially, the mandates of the General Act of Educational Professional Service. These deals were unacceptable for the federal government in its centralist aims. On 12 March 2014, all states were required to reconcile their local laws with the federal ones, but Oaxaca, Sinaloa and Baja California Sur had not yet done so. Moreover, a study by a new NGO, The Citizen Eye, showed that another thirteen states avoided including sanctions for teacher absenteeism, permitted the existence of aviadores, and even allowed for the possibility of retiring teachers bequeathing their post (Excélsior, 9 April 2014). However, the federal government did not allow state governors and local congresses to violate the general laws. On 15 April 2014, President Peña Nieto asked the Supreme Court to intervene in four states that did not align their laws with those approved by the federal Congress. ‘We will engage in all necessary constitutional disputes to ensure that local legislation is in perfect harmony with the educational reform,’ said the legal adviser to the president (Excélsior, 16 April 2014). Two more constitutional disputes were presented on 30 April (Excélsior, 1 May 2014), and another three on 21 May (Excélsior, 22 May 2014). Other states, such as Veracruz, rapidly altered their laws to avoid controversy and sanctions from the federal government. In July 2014, the SEP and the new INEE conducted the first national teaching post competition. Their goal was to select teachers for around 15,000 teaching

50

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

posts in basic education and upper secondary. The government call received an overwhelming response; almost 150,000 individuals with teacher credentials participated in the contest. Although a few irregularities were reported, the examination was welcomed by many teachers without relatives working in the system and by professionals who otherwise had not had an opportunity to enter into teaching.3 Nevertheless, the government was criticized because the overall performance of the prospective teachers was very low. Blanca Heredia noted that 60 per cent of the examinees were found ‘unsuitable’ for the job (Heredia 2014). The top-down model of policy execution produced tangible results – not necessarily in terms of improving education (at least not yet) but in terms of altering the managerial system of basic education. The centralist move will deprive state governors of tools necessary to accommodate some local exaggerated demands, including requests from the regional sections of SNTE for more teaching posts, increases in days of salary and other benefits for leaders like state-sponsored vehicles and extra money for festivals and raffles for Teacher Day. The educational reform yielded a tremendous institutional change towards centralization that altered the prevailing power structure in the education sector. I am not arguing that SEP or even the federal government has recovered the stewardship of education which was lost through many decades of concessions to the SNTE leaders who colonized the management of education.4 It is still the case that many SNTE leaders are secretaries or undersecretaries of education in many states. But it seems clear that the federal government, both through negotiation and through imposition, is pushing for more political control. The centralization of the payroll will be a powerful instrument, ‘like a hammer on the head of SNTE leaders’.5 All these moves affect the leadership of SNTE and even more so the dissident teachers of the CNTE. For different reasons, these two clusters of leaders defend the status quo, alongside the innumerable rank-and-file teachers who do not want to change their routines and practices.

Opposition to reform Machiavelli predicted that the innovators will make enemies of all those who did well under the old system. However, he believed that if the groundbreaking prince devises a technology of power to organize his forces, and if he acts as a fox or a lion, he may nevertheless succeed. If, however, the prince begs, he might fail in his undertakings. It seems that Peña Nieto dealt well with the strongest organization that opposed his reforms even before he took office: the portion of

Mexico: The Education Reform Project

51

SNTE under the leadership of Elba Esther Gordillo. Nevertheless, it seems that he lost his way in dealing with CNTE. The SNTE is a corporate body that was created at an apex of political power in 1943. The state granted it a monopoly on labour and political representation of all teachers. It was a unique, non-competitive union whose leadership was installed by the state through its official party. ‘This whole (and other) category shows us a type of state corporatism, typical of countries of peripheral capitalism, in which the corporation is created and preserved as dependent on the state for its legitimacy and functioning’ (Aziz Nassif 1989: 43). This type of organization led to the formation of cliques and fiefdoms that were attached to the state apparatus and whose main mission was to control the affiliates of the unions. In exchange for this control, the government rewarded cliques by offering them political or administrative posts and by incorporating them into the state bureaucracy. This institutionalized political patronage (Langston 1994). In a little less than seventy years, three cliques have dominated SNTE under the command of strong bosses (caciques). The last of these caciques was Elba Esther Gordillo, appointed the general secretary of SNTE in April 1989 by President Salinas de Gortari, not by the members of the union (Cook 1996). She became a powerful political player in Mexican politics. In 2003, for instance, she was simultaneously the political leader of SNTE, the general secretary of PRI and the head of the PRI faction in the Chamber. But she was excluded from this party when she made an alliance with President Vicente Fox (2000–6) from PAN. She began working actively in the creation of her own political party (Panal). Then she made SNTE a fortress, changed its statutes and proclaimed herself its lifetime president. She and her group obtained many concessions from the PAN presidents, including high political posts, such as the manager of the federal pension funds and the undersecretary for basic education. Ms Gordillo appointed her son-in-law and other loyal cadres of SNTE as director generals (Raphael 2007). The undersecretary became a colonized territory within SEP with great autonomy from the three secretaries of public education during the Felipe Calderón administration. According to many press reporters and columnists, Ms Gordillo wanted to meet with president-elect Peña Nieto but he always refused to see her. She was famous for her political audacity and savvy, but this time her instincts failed her. She did not read the messages well. As soon as President Peña Nieto announced the reforms on education she entered into a vociferous disagreement with the government and refused to meet with the secretary of public education, Emilio Chuayffet. He was the primary politician who ousted her from PRI. Early in 2013, she called for the National Drive for the Defense of the Public School and its Teachers (Excelsior,

52

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

13 January 2013). Using careful documentation and legal procedures, President Peña Nieto authorized her arrest. She was jailed the same day that the reforms to Articles 3 and 73 of the Constitution were published in the official periodical of the federal government: 26 February 2013 (Poder Ejecutivo Federal 2013). With this move President Peña Nieto showed the traits of the fox. All charges against Ms Gordillo were founded on hard documents, the police investigation was carried out in secrecy, and when she was arrested, the government launched a coordinated media campaign. The political benefits to the president were great. A poll from BGC Ulises Beltrán and Associates showed that 86 per cent of the teachers interviewed agreed with the imprisonment of Ms Gordillo, while 74 per cent of teachers believed that she did not represent the interests of rank-and-file teachers (Excélsior, 4 March 2013). The president also behaved as a lion. The federal police detained Ms Gordillo just the day before she was to preside over a meeting of the National Council of SNTE that aimed to convince national teachers to revoke the constitutional amendments. By contrast, the president acted cautiously against the radical moves of CNTE teachers. To combat the reforms promoted by Peña Nieto, CNTE exercised its favourite tactic: direct action, including mass mobilization, wildcat strikes and blocking public buildings and roads. CNTE and other protesters threatened a national schools strike. In 2013, they paralysed schools in the territories in which they were dominant and mobilized against the reforms. In early April, a portion of CNTE membership took the highway between Mexico City and Acapulco just at the beginning of the spring break; on 4 April, they convened the first demonstration against the reform; on the next day, thousands of protesters tried to take over the Interior Department; and on 9 May, they began to set up camp in the Zócalo of Mexico City, just in front of the National Palace, where they remained and enjoyed the peak of their power on 19 August, at the beginning of the school calendar, until they were finally evicted by the federal police on 13 September 2013 (Excélsior, Reforma, La Jornada, in different dates). These tactics got CNTE results. Dissidents in Oaxaca obtained perks from the Department of Government (Segob) and from the state government. On 19 September 2013, there was a long meeting with CNTE leaders. The government agreed to apply the Programme for the Transformation of Education promoted by CNTE in Oaxaca, its stronghold. This programme contradicts the main tenets of the Peña Nieto reform. Furthermore, the administration pledged to safeguard the teachers’ colleges of Oaxaca, incorporating 1500 teachers with temporary posts (who can be assumed to have entered teaching via the inheritance or purchase of their posts). In addition, both the federal and state governments

Mexico: The Education Reform Project

53

agreed to pay bonuses and retained earnings to those teachers who were on strike (Reforma, 20 September 2013). CNTE’s masterstroke came in November 2013. Reforma (7 November 2013) reported that CNTE had managed to soften Segob so that the scope of the educational reform would be lessened in Oaxaca. The newspaper reported that the undersecretary of government, Luis Enrique Miranda, agreed with leaders of CNTE that they would be allowed to participate in developing criteria for the evaluation of teachers and devising standards for the awards they should receive. Segob also agreed that these groups would participate in the establishment of norms to enter into and be promoted in the teaching service. They also resolved that any current teacher, with or without a permanent post, would not be dismissed as a result of a poor performance. These efforts on the part of dissident teachers uncovered the weakness of the Mexican state and the lack of political coherence in the federal government. The president was able to domesticate the majority of SNTE because he relied on his constitutional powers. With the appropriate legal technology of power, he was able to impose his will. However, it appears that President Peña Nieto was imploring CNTE to accept his reforms. His power technology was frail and his political operators failed to deliver outcomes that strengthened the reform. This weakness suggests that his reforms may fail. There are many analysts who foresee more failure than success. I agree that the risks of fiasco for the educational reform are great. Not only do the dissident teachers pose obstacles to its enactment, but also other emerging issues are impeding its full implementation, including lack of financial resources, absence of support from local governments and, as Husen has pointed out, the common scourge of school systems: the bureaucratic ‘cement coverage’ that stifles innovation (Husen 2007). All that is in addition, of course, to the inevitable shortcomings in and hiccups during the reform’s execution. However, I would like to examine the possibilities for its success.

Possibilities for success I do not agree with the idea that political power is nothing but achieving obedience. I believe that the exercise of power requires appropriate means to realize the ends that a government seeks. Political power not only implies the domination of some people and the empowerment of others but also includes the ability to attain shared goals. Power is the ability to get what one desires.

54

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

Following Machiavelli, I define political power as the ability of certain actors in positions of authority to impose strategies and visions (of education, for example) that can generate opposition, but which ultimately achieve consensus and credibility among those actors and institutions that are in charge of applying them. In this case, it is nevertheless necessary that the prince forces. With the recentralization of teacher payment in the SEP, the government can refashion some of the steps of teachers’ professional ladder. It may use legal remedies, such as arresting leaders of CNTE with pending complaints and gradually limiting their actions; use the processes of evaluation and control of financial resources to reduce SNTE corruption via administrative repression mechanisms (which are legal, according to Articles 70 and 71 of the Teachers Professional Service Act); and discipline governors by controlling financial resources through the fund for contributions to educational payroll and operational expenditures, or Fondo de Aportación para la Nómina Educativa (FONE) (the substitute for the old Fondo de Aportaciones para la Educación Básica y Normal (FAEB)). It is feasible that a sort of bureaucratic rationality driven by the central government will improve the management of basic education and will render spending more transparent. Under this system, SEP will cease to be an archipelago, in the words of Secretary Chuayffet. The most important tool is SEP control over the salaries to teachers who commit immoderations and wildcat strikes. No governor has that power; they may have some authority in that regard, but SNTE (and in certain states CNTE) prevents them from exercising it. The ‘fangs’ of these reforms are obvious. Although it has suffered initial problems, a system of information and educational management is already being designed, and it will provide reliable data on schools, teachers and students. There are also groups pushing the government to make that data accessible and transparent for all potential users. I believe that in the four remaining years of the Peña Nieto administration SEP will be able to clean up the payroll, lessen the amount of aviadores, systematize the tasks of technical pedagogical advisers, expel undesirable staff from the supervisors’ offices and limit the number of teachers commissioned to SNTE. By means of programmes and incentives for voluntary retirement and by means of bureaucratic pressures, SEP can renew the supervisory staff. Presumably, the new supervisors will not owe allegiance to any of the cliques of SNTE once they assume the role of authorities. By promoting teachers to the position of principals and cultivating a culture of healthy competition, the rules begin to change.

Mexico: The Education Reform Project

55

Still, legal reforms alone are not the solution to the problems in education. Rather, they are the basis for a different bureaucratic organization in which legal and legitimate powers control the school system. Although the full achievement of the primary aim of Peña Nieto’s educational reform – that is, the recovery of the stewardship of education – is yet to come, it will have a tremendous impact. The constitutional reform and the new laws imply a novel institutional arrangement. New rules have emerged; alternative practices are incipient; and the undersecretary for basic education works to complete projects without the interference of SNTE colonizers. However, these institutional changes further weaken the little autonomy the states still have; it is a centralist reform, as everybody acknowledges. It is possible that these laws will form the basis on which the central government can improve the quality and equity of education. There will be a window of opportunity to advance a democratic and equitable vision for Mexican education. At present, the Constitution has sown legal principles that promise to blossom into new institutional arrangements. As to the issue of whether this project conforms to the ideas of international organizations like the World Bank and OECD, I would say that the Mexican project of education reform may borrow ideas from the international environment, but that, in the final analysis, the internal political needs of the regime and the opposition of local actors have determined its path and will continue to do so in the future. I presented a draft of this chapter in the Symposium, Mexico’s Education System in the Twenty-First Century, organized by the Center for Mexican Studies, Columbia University, the Teachers College, Columbia University, and Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas of Mexico, 18 September 2014. This chapter is based on an ongoing research project about education reforms in the early twenty-first century. I am grateful for the critical review of Ana Rosario Loera and Soledad Loaeza and I thank Annie Atura and Vania Salgado for their wonderful editorial assistance.

Notes 1. I have written extensively on those moves. Cf (Author 2010, 2012). 2. I witnessed the development of several of such forums. I saw that many teachers participated enthusiastically and critically supporting SEP agenda.

56

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

3. I followed the development of the contest in the daily news, especially in Excélsior, La Jornada and Reforma, three national newspapers. 4. I discuss in detail the colonization process of education allowed by both PRI and PAN governments. Cf. Author. 5. Samael Hernández, an analyst of education politics in Oaxaca, told me so in a personal communication, on 25 September 2014.

Bibliography Aziz Nassif, Alberto. El Estado mexicano y la CTM (Mexico City : Ediciones de la Casa Chata, 1989). Bacharach, Samuel B. Education Reform: Making Sense of it All (Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 1990). Beltrán del Río, Pascal. ‘Las reformas: pasado y futuro’,. Excélsior, 18 de agosto 2014. Available online: http://www.excelsior.com.mx/opinion/pascal-beltran-delrio/2014/08/18/976741 (accessed 26 November 2016). Carney, Stephen, Jeremy Rappleye and Iveta Silova. ‘Between faith and science: World culture theory and comparative education’. Comparative Education Review, 56, no. 3 (2012): 366–93. Carnoy, Martin, and Joel Samoff. Education and Social Transformation in the Third World (Priceton: Princeton University Press, 1990). Clark, Burton R. Perspectives on Higher Education: Eight Disciplinary and Comparative Views (Berkeley : University of California Press, 1984). Cook, Maria Lorena. Organizing Dissent. Unions, the State and the Democratic Teachers Movement in Mexico (University Park: The Pennsylvannia State University Press, 1996). Crawford, Sue E. S., and Elinor Ostrom. ‘A Grammar of Institutions’. American Political Science Review, 89, no. 3 (1995): 582–600. Gramsci, Antonio. La alternativa pedagógica (Barcelona: Novaterra, 1976). Heredia, Blanca. 2014. ‘Concurso de oposición docente: buenas y malas noticias’. El Financiero, 6 de agosto 2014. Husen, Torsten. ‘Problems of Educational Reform in a Changing Society’. In Education Reform in International Perspective, edited by Val D. Rust, 3–22 (Bingley, UK: Emerald, 2007). Jordan, Mary. ‘A Union’s Grip Stifles Learning; Teaching Posts Inherited, Sold in Mexico’s Public Schools’. The Washington Post, 14 July 2004. Klees, Steven J., Joel Samoff and Nelly P. Stromquist. ‘Introduction’. In The World Bank and Education, edited by Steven J. Klees, Joel Samoff and Nelly P. Stromquist, xv–xxi (Boston: Sense Publishers, 2012).

Mexico: The Education Reform Project

57

Langston, Joy. ‘An Empirical View of the Political Groups in Mexico: The Camarillas’. Documento de Trabajo (Mexico City: Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas, Centro de Estudios Políticos, 1994). Machiavelli, Nicoló. The Prince and Other Writighs. Translated by Wayne A. Rebhorn (New York: Barnes and Noble Classics, 2003; original in 1503). Mars, Gerald, and Mars Gerald. Cheats at Work: An Antrophology of Workplace Crime (London: Allen & Unwin, 1982). March, James, and Johan P. Olsen. El redescubrimiento de las instituciones: La base organizativa de la política (Mexico City : Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1996). Meyer, John. ‘Foreword’. In The Impact of Comparative Education Research on Institutional Theory, edited by David P. Baker and Alexander W. Wiseman, xi–xvi (Wagon Lane: Emerald, 2008). Ornelas, Carlos, La descentralización de la educación en México: Un informe preliminar. División de Estudios Políticos del Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas, Documento de Trabajo, # 35 (junio de 1995) Educación, colonización y rebeldía: la herencia del pacto Calderón-Gordillo, (México: Siglo Veintiuno Editores, 2012 Pardo, María del Carmen. ‘El órgano central: la tarea normativa y reguladora’. In Federalización e innovación educativa en México, edited by María del Carmen Pardo, 101–33 (Mexico City : El Colegio de México, 1999). Poder Ejecutivo Federal. ‘Reformas a los artículos 3o y 73 de la Constitución Política de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos’. In Diario Oficial de la Federación, edited by Secretaría de Gobernación (Mexico City : 2013). Presidencia de la República. Pacto por México (Mexico City : Presidencia de la República, 2013). Ramírez, Francisco O. ‘From Citizen to Person? Rethinking Education as Incorporation’. In The Impact of Comparative Education Research on Institutional Theory, edited by David P. Baker and Alexander W. Wiseman, 367–87 (Wagon Lane: Emerald, 2006). Raphael, Ricardo. Los socios de Elba Esther (Mexico City : Planeta, 2007). Rappleye, Jeremy. ‘Reimaginig Attraction and “Borrowing” in Education: Introducing a Political Production Model’. In World Yearbook of Education 2012: Policy Borrowing and Lending in Education, edited by Gita Steiner-Khamsi and Florian Waldow (New York: Routledge, 2012) Pages 121–147. Rust, Val. ‘Introduction: The Change, Process and Educational Reform’. In Educational Reform in International Perspective, edited by Val Rust, vii–xiv (Bingley, UK: Emerald, 2007). Steiner-Khamsi, Gita. ‘Introduction. Understanding Policy Borrowing and Lending: Building Comparative Policy Studies’. In World Yearbook of Education 2012: Policy Borrowing and Lending in Education, edited by Gita Steiner-Khamsi and Florian Waldow (Nueva York: Routledge, 2012) Pages 2–18.

58

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

Stromquist, Nelly P., and Karen Monkman. Globalization and Education: Integration and Contestation across Cultures. Second ed. (Lanham; Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014). Tyack, David, and Larry Cuban. En busca de la utopía: un siglo de reformas de las escuelas públicas (Mexico City : Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2001). Weiler, Hans N. ‘The Failure of Reform and the Macro-Politics of Education: Notes on a Theoretical Challenge’. In Educational Reform in International Perspective, edited by Val D. Rust, 43–54 (Bingley, UK: Emerald, 2007). Zajda, Joseph. ‘Introduction: Decentralisation and Privatisation in Education: The Role of the State’. In Decentralisation and Privatisation in Education: The Role of the State, edited by Joseph Zajda, 3–7 (Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer, 2006).

4

Mexico: Improving Educational Quality through Professional Teacher Development David Turner and María Guadalupe González de Turner

Introduction Through the 1970s and 1980s, the main problem facing the educational system of Mexico was the rapid pace of growth. The population of Mexico was young, with a disproportionate number of youths under the age of twenty-five, and the school-age population was doubling every six years or so. This presented huge problems in terms of expansion of the schooling system – to all intents and purposes, a new school system, matching the existing one, had to be built every six years. The solutions to those problems were radical and involved using school facilities and teachers in two, and sometimes three, shifts in each day. Coping with the demands of quantitative expansion put considerable strain on the system in terms of quality. However, the continuous expansion may have helped to mask some of the systemic obstacles that make improvement in quality particularly difficult. The rapid demographic growth slowed over the period up to the beginning of the twenty-first century. The school-age population increased between 2000 and 2015, as a result of government policy, when the length of compulsory schooling was extended, first, in 2001, from nine to eleven years and, again in 2012, from eleven to fourteen years, but natural growth of the school-age population ended around 2008. Apart from the two policy-induced expansions of the school-age population, the number of young people being catered for over the period for which UNESCO has data was approximately constant. The extension of compulsory schooling from nine to eleven years in 2001 was implemented without a major impact on the pupil–teacher ratios in government schools.

60

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

It would be interesting to see what the impact of the subsequent extension from eleven to fourteen years had on the pupil–teacher ratio, but data for the period 2011 to 2015 is missing from the UNESCO database. It should be noted that Mexico is by no means alone in not reporting data to UNESCO at times when the system may be under particular stress; over the period 1999 to 2015 covered by the UNESCO database, many countries, especially those in Latin America, extended the period of compulsory education, but data on the impact of these measures on pupil–teacher ratios is more often missing than not. What can be seen clearly from Figure 4.1, however, is a fairly steady increase in the amount of money that the government invested in education, as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP). Again, the figures are missing for the period after 2011, but it can be imagined that controlling the level of expenditure on education is a matter of concern for the Mexican government. So long as systems are growing, they hold out the prospect of self-correction. In much the same way as the problems of debt are automatically reduced in economies that are expanding, so poor quality can be addressed in expanding educational systems by improving the preparation of novice teachers; poorquality teachers who are already in the system will reduce as a proportion of the whole educational workforce, and eventually retire. In educational systems that have reached equilibrium, this focus on the initial preparation of teachers loses its potency as a policy for improving the quality of education as a whole. Attention has to be turned to the improvement of those teachers who are already in the system, as well as the facilities and environments that are provided by schools. Some of the potential for reform of the system through growth was illusory in the case of Mexico, because, with teachers teaching double, and occasionally triple, shifts, the absolute number of teachers was growing less rapidly than the number of students. However, before the 1990s, the focus of educational reforms was the initial preparation of teachers, with extension to the length of training/education, increasing the involvement of universities and equivalent institutions of higher education, and raising the level of teaching qualifications. This had been part of the move, noted across the world, to shift teaching towards an all-graduate profession and the enhancement of qualifications. This was promoted in Mexico by the establishment of the Universidad Pedagógica Nacional in 1978 (Rodriguez-Gómez 2015). That emphasis on improving education through the pre-service preparation of teachers changed in 1993,

Improving Educational Quality through Professional Teacher Development

61

35,000,000

30,000,000

25,000,000

20,000,000

15,000,000

10,000,000

5,000,000

0 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 Source: Data from Unesco Institute for Statistics

Figure 4.1 Population of compulsory school age, 1999 to 2015. Derived from Unesco Institute for Statistics, http://uis.unesco.org/country/MX.

when the government introduced the carrera magisterial as a way of improving the standard of teachers who were already in the system with a structured system of in-service training.

The carrera magisterial The aim and purpose of the carrera magisterial was to offer incentives to practising teachers and to reward them for improving their qualifications and skills. Officially described as a system of ‘horizontal promotion’, the carrera magisterial was designed to overcome two problems: one generic to the teaching profession across the world and the other specific to the organization of the teaching profession in Mexico. The generic problem for systems that are designed to reward good teachers is that they normally move good teacher away from the classroom and into positions of administration of management. This was the situation in Mexico, as is often the case, where promotion, and therefore a salary that was commensurate with the theoretical professional standards of teaching, could only be achieved by taking on administrative responsibility. This was the ‘traditional’ model of

62

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

promotion, or the system of ‘vertical promotion’. It was in contrast with that vertical system of promotion that the carrera magisterial described as a system of horizontal promotion. The second, and more local, problem with the traditional system of vertical promotion was that, once the system stopped growing, the promotion ladder was blocked. The system was dominated by the idea of the plaza, the exact definition of which will be discussed in the next section. However, the immediate problem was that, in order to be promoted, the teacher had to be promoted to a position, or plaza. This implies that for an individual to be promoted, either a plaza must be created for them to be promoted into or a plaza must first become vacant. By the early 1990s, the demographic profile of the country meant that growth had slowed and few new plazas were being created. Consequently, promotion was based largely on a system of ‘waiting for dead men’s shoes’, sometimes quite literally, and many young and ambitious teachers felt blocked in their aspiration to earn a decent living. Initially, the poor remuneration of teachers had fed into another need of the system, which was to supply the necessary number of teachers, and many teachers felt constrained to teach two shifts in different schools in order to make ends meet. Clearly, that arrangement did little to support the move for improved quality in the system when the policy emphasis moved from mere quantity to quality. The carrera magisterial provided a system of horizontal promotion based on the skills and professional development of the teacher. The carrera magisterial comprised eleven steps, each of which was associated with a level of qualification, skill and engagement in continuing professional development, as well as providing a reward in terms of salary that was a fixed percentage of the basic teaching salary. Entry into the carrera magisterial, or the assessment for it, was voluntary, and a teacher could only be assessed to move from one step to the step immediately above in the scale. Assessment for that promotion would involve a number of criteria, including seniority, qualifications, engagement in programmes of continuing professional development and performance of students under the teacher’s guidance. In addition, the carrera magisterial included three strands depending on the role of the teacher in the educational system. The first strand was for classroom teachers, while the other two strands were intended for those who carried more responsibility for the development of curricular materials and supporting learning, and for those who had more responsibility for the professional development of the personnel under their charge, respectively.

Improving Educational Quality through Professional Teacher Development

63

Thus, teachers who achieved higher qualifications, who developed their skills and who could show that they had a positive impact on the learning of those in their care were to be rewarded by promotion up the scale, with the intention that their professional status would be appropriately compensated. The Constitution of Mexico and the General Law on Education specify that education will be national, democratic, free and compulsory. Notwithstanding the specification that it will be national, many functions, including the implementation of the carrera magisterial, are devolved to the individual states. This can mean that the implementation is heterogeneous and that resources in different parts of the country are not equally generous. There were two major problems with the implementation of the carrera magisterial. The first problem was general to systems of professional development that rely on formal requirements, qualifications and certification; formal professional development is not always and necessarily mirrored in improved performance in the day-to-day tasks that face the professional. The second was more specific to the implementation of the carrera magisterial, in that insufficient resources were allocated to reward all of those who would otherwise have liked to have taken part. One might regard these as normal shortcomings of systems of carrots and sticks that are designed to motivate professionals towards self-improvement; simply put, the carrots were not plentiful enough. By 2003, the cost of the augmented salaries associated with the programme was around 26 billion pesos. By that point there were teachers who had been promoted to each of the steps of the horizontal promotion scale, and there was some hope that the system would become self-financing, as teachers retired from the upper levels at the same rate as new teachers joined at the lower levels. This is simply another way of saying that around 2003 the system of horizontal promotion had become blocked, in much the same way as the system of vertical promotion had in 1993. There was a subsidiary problem with the incentives that were being provided, which was that the teachers may have been motivated to go through the motions of continuous professional development, without the system having any impact on their classroom performance. We might say that the carrera magisterial tended to stimulate a ‘tick-box’ approach, or ‘grade-itis’ (in Spanish – puntitis), rather than authentic professional development (Ortiz Jiménez 2003). The real difficulty with the system was the fact that there was no way to stimulate the improvement of all the teaching profession, as the sticks in the system of carrots and sticks were too few and ineffective. The problem

64

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

of professionalizing the teachers of Mexico, and of paying an appropriate compensation, was effectively blocked by the way in which the system of plazas operated. Therefore, the focus of our attention must be on the other side of the equation, and the absence of effective sticks or penalties for not engaging in professional development. That no teacher was in serious danger of losing his or her teaching position, or of facing serious disciplinary action for failing to meet appropriate standards of professional behaviour, is clear, and this represents a major obstacle to the reform of the system. In order to understand the full implication of this evaluation, one needs to understand the concept of the plaza in Mexico.

The teaching plaza A literal dictionary definition of the word ‘plaza’ is, in addition to the meaning of ‘square’ (as in the Plaza Mayor in Mexico City), place or location. So, in the context of a teaching plaza, it is tempting to translate it as ‘position’ or ‘teaching post’. However, in this context the word carries much more force than that. Plaza and possession of a plaza imply a sense of property ownership. In the first instance, plazas are allocated to successful graduates of teacher training programmes. Everybody who successfully completes initial teacher preparation receives a plaza. Of course, not all plazas are equal; plazas in attractive, normally urban, settings are highly prized, while plazas in remote rural locations are not. For the most part, plazas are allocated on the basis of merit, with the most attractive plazas going to those who achieve the highest marks, although there is no doubt some opportunity for that general schema to be modified by political and personal influence. There are two aspects to the sorting of teachers and their geographical location that arise from the application of this meritocratic principle. The first is that the most able teachers are concentrated in the most attractive regions, which particularly means in the urban areas and the least impoverished areas. Those areas that are most disadvantaged receive the teachers who are less well qualified, and in this way cycles of deprivation are reinforced. The second aspect, which does not arise directly from the meritocratic principle, but from the paternalistic operation of the political structures in Mexico, is that those with political ambitions, and therefore political connections, can use those connections to their advantage, and particularly to

Improving Educational Quality through Professional Teacher Development

65

stay close to the seat of political power in state capitals. It must be recognized in discussion of the reforms of education that are currently under way that ‘transparency’ and ‘meritocracy’ are generally presented as the antidote to the ossification of the system of plazas that is supported by the union. While that remains an important obstacle to reform, it must be remembered that there are two sides to transparency, and faith in a strictly meritocratic system will only grow if the actions and influence of senior administrators and politicians in the system are also transparent, which is to say constrained by publicly accepted standards. Once allocated, however, the plaza attains material status; it can be sold, bought, rented and even inherited. For example, a qualified teacher who does not wish to work in a rural area might buy a plaza in an urban area in order to make their work more congenial. Similarly, a family member might inherit a plaza from a deceased relative. Obviously, in all cases the new incumbent/owner of the plaza must be a qualified teacher, but the link between performance and desirability of the plaza which was forged at the stage of the initial allocation of plazas is rapidly eroded by the market operations that follow. It is not difficult to see why such a system will be a brake on the reform of the system. Teachers regard their teaching position, not merely as a personal property, but also as a very real investment which they may choose to realize at a later date. They have no reason to wish for, and every reason to oppose, a change that renders their ‘investment’ worthless. As noted above, this obstacle to reform is even more constraining in a period of zero growth, when the rate of creation of new plazas is low, than it is in periods of high growth.

The political setting The position of the unions is not always easily understood. The main political party in Mexico since the 1920s has been the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), or Institutional Revolutionary Party. The PRI governed continuously between 1929 and 2000. It was originally designed as the vehicle to institutionalize the socialist reforms of land ownership and labour that were the key outcomes of the revolution, which lasted from 1910 to 1920. However, the PRI has been pragmatic in its adoption of policies that would, in other circumstances, be described as left wing or right wing. Policies which would generally be seen as socialist (nationalization of resources, protectionism,

66

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

state investment in infrastructure) or neo-liberal (privatization of financial institutions, freedom on international trade, disruption of monopolies) have all been part of the PRI portfolio at one time or another. In addition, after a continuous period of seventy-one years in power, the PRI, whose colours are red, white and green, the same as the colours of the Mexican flag, sometimes became so integrated with the organs of state that the boundaries between state and party become blurred, especially in rural areas. Similarly, the main teachers’ union, which is affiliated with the PRI, is the Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores de la Educación (SNTE) or National Union of Workers in Education. In the past, the PRI used public employees, among whom the teachers make up one of the largest groupings, to stage public demonstrations of support for the party/government (over the very long time when the two terms were more or less synonymous). In return, the union was rewarded with concessions that included the maintenance of such restrictive practices as the system of plazas. The close relationship between the PRI and the SNTE came under increasing strain. Matters came to a head in 1989, when the president of the SNTE, Carlos Jonguitud Barrios, who had effectively led the SNTE for fifteen years, was forced out of power by the president of the republic, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, who became president of the republic in 1988. He was succeeded as president of the union by Elba Esther Gordillo Morales, who has subsequently been imprisoned on charges of appropriation of union funds, money laundering and criminal activity in 2013 (Wikipedia 2015). The exact causes of this turbulence in the union are, of course, private, but it is clear that, at the very least, the union has lost some of the protection of the PRI that it once enjoyed. It is interesting to note that the division between the SNTE and the PRI becomes increasingly acrimonious as the growth of the education system slows, and the need to reform the system, and especially the system of plazas, becomes most pressing. Rodriquez (2015) traces the complex history of the relationship between the Secretaria de Educación Publica and the unions. The changing context, especially the decentralization of education to the individual states, meant that the SNTE increased its power through a process of ‘double negotiation’ in which the union could negotiate at both the national and the local levels (RodriguezGómez 2015: 314). After an interregnum of twelve years, the PRI regained supreme power in the country when Enrique Peña Nieto was elected president of Mexico in 2012. Peña Nieto has made the reform of the education system one of the central planks of

Improving Educational Quality through Professional Teacher Development

67

his platform as president, and has proposed substantial changes in the terms and conditions of work of teachers. In this he is supported by the SNTE, but opposed by the Coordinadora Nacional de Trabajadores de la Educación (CNTE) or National Coordinating Committee of Workers in Education. This breakaway union, which is strongest in Oaxaca and several other southern states, opposes the reform, especially the reform of the system of plazas. Rubén Nuñez, leader of the Oaxaca chapter of the union, is reported to have asserted that ‘they will not take what is ours’, using language that underlines the point made earlier, which is that teachers have come to see themselves as having concrete property rights over their plaza (Financial Times, 22 July 2015). The links between political stances and the underlying problems of the educational system are not always clearly delineated. However, Oaxaca has approximately the same school population as the state of Michoacán, but the former has twice as many teachers (Financial Times, 22 July 2015). Also, the State Public Education Institute of Oaxaca (IEEPO) is staffed by 4,000 teachers who, in addition to the salaries that they draw at the Institute, also have plazas, and therefore derive an income from those. It is estimated that the Institute could run efficiently with a staff of 500 (Financial Times, 22 July 2015). But identifying causal relationships is more difficult, and it is not clear whether the inefficiency in Oaxaca arises from the strength of the union or whether the union is strong because more vested interests are involved. But while Oaxaca is at the forefront of the present crisis, there may be similar situations in other states as well. This political conflict came to a head in 2015. It may be that the extensions of the length of compulsory schooling in 2001 and 2012 were an attempt to postpone the problem and remove the logjam in appointment and promotion systems by creating artificial growth in the education system. Such measures could only be temporary, however. In 2015, President Peña Nieto, with some hesitation, threw his weight behind a more lasting reform of the education system (Financial Times, 2 June 2015). It should perhaps be noted, however, that the reforms of 2015 do not arise out of nowhere. Starting in 2006 the Secretaria de Educación Publica had introduced the Evaluación Nacional del Logro Académico en Centros Escolares (National Evaluation of Academic Achievement in Educational Centres) (ENLACE). This was an attempt to evaluate the performance of teachers by assessing the performance of their pupils/students. Given the cycles of deprivation that have been noted above, with the less-qualified teachers going to the more deprived areas, there is much that could be said about the potential unfairness of evaluating teachers in this way. However, Rodriguez (2015) notes

68

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

other serious shortcomings of the ENLACE, in particular the fact that the level of aggregation of the results meant that it was impossible to use the results as an indicator of quality of any particular teacher or educational institution. As a result, ENLACE was not of any value as a tool for the improvement of the system.

The reforms of 2015 The General Law of Service in the Teaching Profession (Ley General del Servicio Profesional Docente (LGSP)) was passed in September 2013 (Government of Mexico 2013). This law provides the legal framework within which the system of education will be reformed, including the mechanisms for professional development, recruitment, promotion and recognition of qualifications. Details of the programme that was to replace the carrera magisterial were published in May 2015 (Coordinación Nacional del Servicio Profesional Docente (CNSPD 2015). The CNTE maintained its protests against the reforms since the publication of the LGSPD in 2013, but the political stakes had been raised as the government showed its determination to push forward with the reforms in 2015. It therefore makes sense to think of these as the reforms of 2015, even though, technically, the relevant legal framework was set up in 2013. Article 2 of the LGSPD sets out the four objectives of the law: ●

●

●

●

To regulate the service provided by the teaching profession at all levels of education up to the bachilerato or equivalent, To establish standards, measures and indicators for use in the teaching profession, To establish the rights and obligations of those engaged in the teaching profession, and To ensure transparency and accountability in the teaching profession.

Specifically, Article 21 sets out the requirements for entry into the profession, namely that there should be open procedures for appointment to positions on the basis of annual competitions, where all details of the criteria and procedures are to be published in advance. Such procedures are to be approved by the secretary of education. In addition, Article 23 sets out constraints on the appointment of individuals to positions that fall vacant in the course of an academic year. Generally speaking, those appointed should be those who took part in the previous open competition, but who failed to secure a position, starting with

Improving Educational Quality through Professional Teacher Development

69

those who were best qualified. But, in any event, such interim appointments are to be temporary and subject to review and confirmation at the end of the academic year in which they take place. Article 22 introduces an induction period of two years for new teachers, during which they will have an appointed mentor to oversee their professional development. This induction period includes two very important hurdles before the teacher can be confirmed in a permanent post: they must complete the first six months of employment without unfavourable reports, and they must pass an evaluation at the end of the first year. As a result of that evaluation, the new teacher may be required to attend a specified professional development programme. Failure to attend, or to obtain a satisfactory evaluation, can result in dismissal from the teaching service. Taken together, although the question of the sale of plazas and other restrictive practices is not directly mentioned in the law, the implementation of these measures would effectively mean an end to the idea that a plaza is an object that can be owned, or its ownership transferred in a commercial transaction. One commentator noted: ‘The open, public competitions, and the removal of the sale and inheritance of plazas, is a welcome proposal’ (Flores Andrade 2014: 198–9). And there can be little doubt that this is the official purpose of these measures that are specified in the LGSPD. Only days before the enactment of the LGSPD, the Senate of the Republic (2013) published a pronouncement that included the following statement: In the processes for appointment of teachers to initial positions, and in subsequent promotions to senior positions, there have predominated, over many years, criteria which have nothing to do with academic work, or with the skills and capabilities that are necessary to discharge the duties of teacher, such as influence and nepotism, even including passing positions to relatives, or the sale of teaching posts.

This leaves little doubt about what is at stake in the current reforms of the education system. The major problem that currently faces the move to develop a high-quality education system that will help Mexico move into the knowledge economy and reduce her dependence on cheap labour and the export of raw materials is the reform of the system of plazas. The system of professional development that was incorporated in the carrera magisterial was completely voluntary, but is to be replaced by a system that carries sanctions for those who are unable or unwilling to meet the standards that are set by the responsible national authorities.

70

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

At the same time, for obvious reasons, there is very substantial opposition to the reforms. While the largest teachers’ union, the SNTE, supports the reforms, the CNTE is adamant in its opposition. And, although the smaller of the two unions, the CNTE nevertheless has a membership that accounts for nearly onequarter of all teachers in Mexico, concentrated in some of the more conservative states in the south, notably Oaxaca (Financial Times, 22 July 2015). Nobody expects this to be a reform that is settled and established very quickly. In particular, Flores Andrade (2014) notes that, like all laws that are passed under the Constitution of the Republic, the LGSPD cannot apply retrospectively, and can therefore only apply to new entrants to the teaching profession. Those who are in established positions, and who refuse to engage with the system of professional development envisaged in the LGSPD, and set out in more detail in the documents published by the Coordinación Nacional del Servicio Profesional Docente (2015), can only be moved sideways, rather than being subject to the full disciplinary measures envisaged in the law. This necessarily means that the full effect of the reforms will take many years to be felt, especially in the current circumstance that the system is no longer growing, a situation which brought the current crisis to a head in the first place. In any event, breaking the dominance of the system of plazas is only the first step in what will necessarily be a long process of reform. Doubtless there will be subsequent reforms of curricula, textbooks and programmes of study. The current reforms are only a necessary step towards the global knowledge economy, and not a sufficient one. In presenting the reforms in this chapter, we have concentrated on the need to reform the system of plazas, to the exclusion of any other problems with the educational system. This focus must be tempered with the observation that, in making its case, the government has relied very heavily on the use of testing and the use of tests in increasing the accountability of teachers. In this the Government of Mexico has been influenced directly by the OECD and indirectly by the results of the PISA testing produced by the OECD, as have many other governments (Rodriguez-Gómez 2015). But this use of mass testing as a way of promoting educational improvement receives less scrutiny than it deserves. The World Health Organization has adopted guidelines for the application of mass screening in health care, and notes that screening is only justified if a number of important are satisfied. In particular, screening is only helpful if the trajectory of a disease is well established, if a reliable test exists for the diagnosis of the disease (a test that is independent of the definition of the disease), if an

Improving Educational Quality through Professional Teacher Development

71

intervention exists that is accepted to ameliorate the effects of the disease and if early intervention is known to produce better outcomes than late intervention (Wilson and Jungner, 1968). In the case of PISA and educational reform, none of these criteria are satisfied. The mechanisms that promote educational quality are poorly understood, and there are no tests of educational quality that are widely accepted. Moreover, the links between test scores and any specific aspect of educational reform are, to say the least, tenuous. It follows that the introduction of tests alone is unlikely to have a positive effect on the quality of the educational system, which must, ultimately, be the goal of the current reforms. What is needed is a system of quality evaluation that is linked to acceptable interventions in the form of support and resources. Mass screening for the diagnosis of a disease for which there is no cure is unlikely to have a positive outcome. As this analogy makes clear, however, testing that is not linked to improvements is not merely neutral; it is likely to have a damaging and demoralizing effect. To be effective, the current reforms will need to be much more imaginative in linking evaluation to improvement than they have been in the past.

Conclusion Systems that are growing can tolerate a good deal of vice without succumbing completely. For example, expanding economies can tolerate a level of debt that would cripple stagnant economies. Indeed, high levels of debt tend to be self-correcting in inflationary economies. In much the same way, education systems that are expanding can tolerate a good deal of internal inefficiency, and retain the hope that a regular and large influx of young, enthusiastic and well-trained new personnel will have a substantial impact on raising the quality of the system. In contrast with that, steady-state systems can only be reformed much more slowly, as new teachers can only be appointed to replace those who are coming naturally to retirement and the end of their careers. And this is only exacerbated when an end to growth comes after a period of rapid expansion, when many of the teachers will be younger, and there may well be a long time before they move aside. The education system of Mexico faces just such a perfect storm, coming to the end of growth after a period of rapid growth. The possibility of rapid reform has been removed, not to mention the indirect effect that waiting for dead people’s shoes can have on the morale of the teaching profession, especially among younger professionals.

72

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

With the end of the expansion of the education system, Mexico can no longer afford a system of restrictive practices which allocated a teaching post to teachers, however inefficient, mercenary or downright unprofessional some of them may have been, for life, and sometimes even longer. The current reform of the education system will be painful in proportion to the length of time for which it has been postponed. Since the strength of the teachers’ unions in Mexico, and the system of plazas, have their origin in teachers’ strikes at the end of the 1920s, this is a reform that has been shelved for a long time, possibly longer than any other educational reform in the world. It will not be concluded swiftly. On the other hand, the system of plazas has long been an open secret in the Mexican education system; the sale and rent of plazas was ubiquitous but never openly discussed, and even now the discussion of the reforms is conducted, on both sides, without much direct reference to the real abuses in the system. If the curriculum has long been considered the ‘secret garden’ of teaching professionals, then the system of plazas was undoubtedly an inner sanctum. That, at least, has now ended, and what is at stake in the present reforms is more open to public scrutiny. One objective of the LGSPD of 2013 is greater transparency, and that has certainly been achieved in relation to discussion of the plazas. Transparency over the evaluation of teachers has not been advanced so effectively, with contradictory statements being made by politicians, and the criteria for evaluation being hidden in the Instituto Nacional para la Evaluación de la Educación (National Institute for the Evaluation of Education) (INEE). More results will follow, but it is too early to say exactly what they will be.

Bibliography Coordinación Nacional del Servicio Profesional Docente (CNSPD). Programa de Promoción en la Función por Incentivos en Educación Básica (Mexico City : Secretaria de Educación Pública, 2015). Financial Times (2 June 2015). ‘Mexico takes gamble on suspending key pillar of education reform’. Available online: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/2b1780d8-089811e5-b38c-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3iKGa3bwZ (accessed 7 August 2015). Financial Times (22 July 2015). ‘Teachers’ union raises stakes in battle with Mexico’s Peña Nieto’. Available online: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/640d606e-3044-11e5-8873775ba7c2ea3d.html#axzz3iKGa3bwZ (accessed 7 August 2015). Flores Andrade, Anselmo. ‘Fundamental aspects of General Law of Professional Teaching Service 2013 in Mexico’. Iberofórum 17 (2014): 174–202.

Improving Educational Quality through Professional Teacher Development

73

Government of Mexico. Ley General del Servicio Profesional Docente (LGSPD) (Mexico City : Secretaria de Servicios Parlamentarios, 2013). Ortiz Jiménez, Maximino B. Carrera Magisterial: Un proyecto de desarrollo profesional, Cuadernos de Discusión 12 (Mexico City : Secretaria de Educación Pública, 2003). Rodríguez-Gómez, Roberto. ‘El proyecto educativo SEP-SNTE y la prueba ENLACE´. Revista Mexicana de Investigación Educativa 20, no. 64 (2015): 309–24. Available online: http://www.ses.unam.mx/integrantes/uploadfile/rrodriguez/Rodriguez2015_ ElProyectoEducativo.pdf (accessed 1 September 2015). Senate of the Republic. ‘Dictamen de las Comisiones Unidas de Educación y de Estudios Legislativos, con Proyecto de Decreto por el que se expide la Ley General del Servicio Profesional Docente’, p. 16, cited in Flores Andrade (2014) p. 197 Unesco Institute for Statistics, http://uis.unesco.org/country/MX. Wikipedia contributors. ‘Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores de la Educación´. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Available online: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Sindicato_Nacional_de_Trabajadores_de_la_Educaci%C3%B3n (accessed 7 August 2015). Wilson, J. M.G., and G. Jungner. Principles and Practice of Screening for Disease (Geneva: World Health Organization, 1968). Available online: http://apps.who.int/ iris/bitstream/10665/37650/1/WHO_PHP_34.pdf (accessed 1 September 2015).

5

Mexico: Obstacles to Educational Reform Bonifacio Barba

Analyses of the current situation The 2013 Mexican education reform occurred under a weakened political regime at all levels. It showed signs of a failed state since it was unable to deliver basic services and guaranteed public security and human rights as stated in the Constitution. The partyocracy has proved incapable of representing the interests of the electorate; instead, the parties have become self-serving power elite. The context of the reform was a democratic transition frustrated at the end of the last century by the persistence of authoritarian and corporatist practices (Meyer 2013). The apparent democracy has not allowed access to political processes as guaranteed in the Constitution. This means that the public continues to live in what Loaeza (2013) describes as the authoritarian reformism in the period between 1970 and 1982. Educational matters such as quality and equity are inseparable from the complex and conflictive historical process of the formation of the constitutional democratic state in Mexico. The same obstacles to social and political advance have plagued the development of an educational system. In the history of Mexico, political and administrative interests have impeded the establishment of the right to education. At the same time, these interests have stymied the development of the transformative power of education and its role in achieving the whole set of human rights. In order to analyse the impediments of the current education reform, I will divide the chapter into four sections. In the first one, we will briefly describe previous reforms; in the second, I will present the 2013 education reform; in the third, I will discuss its hindrances; and in the fourth section, I will lay out

Mexico: Obstacles to Educational Reform

75

proposals that would facilitate a smoother and more effective implementation of the reform.

1 Education development in Mexico Education has played a key role in the formation of modern Mexico. In order to create the educational services that were relevant to the modern Mexican nation, it was necessary to transform the pre-existing colonial structures through institutional reform. In summary, the national project demanded to transform the past through the creation of the new. In the immediate independent period in 1821, the diversity of visions and values about the future of the country generated great instability (Vázquez 2010). Building new government and administrative institutions was often slow and ineffective in spite of the efforts of the new statesmen. In education, between 1821 and 1865, there were no less than ten attempts to develop educational policies and plans (Meneses 1983) that were mired by inexperience, discontinuities, lack of resources, ideological disputes and lack of a tradition of social participation during the colonial period. Following the triumph of the republican government over the Empire of Maximilian in 1867, there began a period of stability during which new education policies were established. The 1867 Education Law was the foundation of the educational policies until 1910 during the Porfiriato. However, education provision only reached the urban middle- and upper classes, and for this reason the liberal thinkers at the turn of century made popular education in rural and urban areas an inexorable demand. In the decades after the Mexican Revolution (1910–40), a new phase of capitalist modernization accompanied the creation of a one-party state, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI in Spanish). This period marked a rapid social transformation inspired by the ideals of the Revolution, which included education projects that were transformed into public policies that soon lost their idealistic coherence. They were administratively centralized under a strong presidential government. The Cardenas’ educational enterprise (1934–40)1 was the most coherent. Based on the amendment of Article 3 in 1934 and the Education Law in 1940, the first general law in the twentieth century provided norms for the whole public education service that came into force after the Cardenas administration.

76

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

Since the 1940 education reform, every federal administration has initiated its own education reform, albeit under different names (e.g. education reform, education modernization, etc.). This includes the current president Peña Nieto’s 2013 education reform. The history of the institutionalization of education provision since the Mexican Revolution has had two key characteristics: its expansion and diversification and the strong state control. From the perspective of social justice, the most salient feature is the struggle for educational rights to gain access to education relevant to their economic and social needs. This would imply incorporating social actors in the decision making.

2 Education reform through evaluation The proposal to reform the law of education has three antecedents. The first was Enrique Peña’s promise to run a democratic presidency that guaranteed the right to education. The second was the demand of various social groups made to all presidential candidates in 2012 to commit themselves to respond more fully to broad social needs. The third was Enrique Peña’s signing the Pact for Mexico upon taking office. The central target of the pact included two social demands: to further the transition to democracy and economic growth. Among the five principal reforms was that of education. It included improving quality and equity, creating a National System of Information and Education Management, improving the National System of Education Evaluation and professionalizing the teaching body (Presidencia de la República 2012). Even before Enrique Peña’s reforms there were in place the legal provisions to make the changes he proposed (Articles 1, 3, 4, 25 and 26) and the General Education Law which had already been approved by Congress. The only thing lacking constitutionally was the legislation necessary to differentiate between distinct types of teacher contracts (Peña Nieto 2012). This made teachers see the reform as prejudicial to their labour contract which in turn provoked protests. President Enrique Peña took seriously the growing demands for improvements in education quality by the society at large and the need for a comprehensive evaluation of their performance by the teachers, and went ahead with a constitutional change to support the needed education reform. Unfortunately, for reasons already mentioned, the changes were just constitutional and, as such, did not impact on classroom practice. There is a parallel between Peña’s Pact for Mexico and that of Salinas’ (1988–94)2 modernization agenda in that both sought legitimacy at home and recognition abroad.

Mexico: Obstacles to Educational Reform

77

The constitutional reforms were focused on three fundamental issues. The first was the improvement of education evaluation, giving autonomy to the National Institute of Education Evaluation, situating its responsibility in the Article 3. The second was the attempt to make school management more active in organizational, pedagogical, human resource and evaluation matters and in so doing improve student performance. The third issue of the constitutional changes focused on new norms for teachers’ professional development in the General Law for Teacher Professionalization. Its aim was to select, promote and reward best practices among teachers and head teachers impartially. Once the constitutional changes and the New Law of Education were passed at national level, they had to be sent to the states for them to adapt them to their laws and for their approval. This was no easy task as I will show below. In a few words, the reform initiated by Enrique Peña gave evaluation an unjustifiably exaggerated role over other equally important aspects.

3 The obstacles in education reform The education reform was constrained by the same shortcomings that had beset the Pact for Mexico. The pact reclaims the right of the state to lead and provide a secular education (Pacto por México 2012).3 The pact also includes the responsibility to improve the quality of education and to form democratic citizens. This opens the way for political education of all students. It has often been asked why it is so difficult to attempt an education reform in Mexico. In general terms, Enrique Peña and his education secretary (Chuayfett 2015) seem to be serious about their intention to reform education. But they have come up against resistance during its implementation at state level. Consequently, there are social actors and researchers who claim that that the reform has been thwarted. There is no doubt that the reform has and continues to face obstacles. That was expected, but now it is important to ask: What are the most serious obstacles to the reform? I will mention some of them, classifying them by their type.

Political obstacles The education reform was part of the larger political arrangements focused on the Pact for Mexico. As a result, it faced the same problems as the other reforms also linked to the pact. The ruling party did not have the support of all the other parties, but in the end it managed a majority vote in favour of the pact. As

78

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

mentioned above, some governors opposed the reform, just as they had done with the modernization reform of 1992–3. Even within some of the supporting parties there were some groups against the Pact, especially those belonging to the left. Another of the most obvious difficulties was the rejection by activist teachers, who had curtailed the children’s right to education through their prolonged industrial action. This section of the teachers managed to challenge the federal government and ignored some of the governors’ call to return to the classroom. This confrontation exposed the federal government’s clumsiness for choosing as its interlocutor the secretary of interior instead of the education secretary. Another stumbling block was the rejection of the National Coordinator of Education Workers (CNTE) to take up the new constitutional duties of the National Institution of Education Evaluation (INEE). This opposition was accompanied by thousands of legal appeals against the government for alleged violation of their workers’ rights. This opposition ran out of steam after the federal court denied their claims. The teacher groups that, defending their workers’ rights, suspended their teaching for weeks and months on end, faced a dilemma when they put their own rights, which they considered breached, above those of their students. In contrast to the dissident position, the federal government secured the support of the official National Union of Education Workers (SNTE in Spanish) through recourse to its time-honoured practice of corporatist agreement with the lifetime leader Elba Esther Gordillo. Her later imprisonment for alleged fraud did not jeopardize the interests of the current leader, who has settled his differences with Enrique Peña and continues to subject the union members to government control. The political slant of the reform derailed its original purpose and turned it into an obstacle to its own success.

Legal and administrative obstacles In spite of the tough political negotiations and opposition from many quarters surrounding the pact, the education reform was rushed through Congress and eventually went ahead to the surprise of many in the Congress including those who had supported it from the outset. The legislative processes just described and the failure of the governmental apparatus to implement legal and constitutional changes demonstrated the lack of institutionalization in the educational system. Carlos Mancera,4 already mentioned,

Mexico: Obstacles to Educational Reform

79

highlights how little the government and its administration is able to implement its decisions for the benefit of the schools. Carlos Ornelas (2012) sees the same process as a false centralization under the sway of the SNTE. Attempts to devolve decision making in this situation proved ineffective according to Ornelas (2012). The same author (2008) argues that the internationally promoted decentralization process to improve education has not been successful in Mexico. This failure led Enrique Peña to fall back on the default mode of centralization. The federal centralization of teachers’ recruitment in the secretary of education is a good example of it. The poor institutionalization of education as a system is acknowledged by the supporters of the pact on the grounds of governmental efficiency. An unexpected legal obstacle emerged when some state legislatures failed to adapt satisfactorily to their existing legal framework. In eight cases, the president had to step in, and drawing on federal legislation, bring the states in line (Ramírez 20014). This took the reform process by surprise first, because the governors had already accepted the reform in principle and, second, because the Senate had already given a six months’ period to make the necessary adjustment.5 At first blush, the difficulties described might appear to be exceptional or special cases. But rather they are symptomatic of the more fundamental issue of how even a government committed to reform can make changes legally binding, which paralyses society’s capacity to advance. The only positive outcome is the increased and sustained activism of social groups committed to the rule of law, particularly the right to education. In 2015, before the mid-term elections, a group of associations invited political parties to commit themselves to educational improvements; half of those invited turned down the invitation, especially those belonging to the left. This distain occurrence showed the gap between mere compliance with the law and real commitment to education change that was missing among party leaders. In spite of attempts to give legal weight to education reform, the pace of change has been slow. Civil society associations focused on education and participated in the 2015 mid-term elections by inviting the political parties to commit themselves to improve education. Ironically, the least responsive were again the left parties. This aside, what was evident among the political parties was that they were only interested in a formal compliance with the law. The legal and administrative difficulties can only be fully understood within the context of Mexico’s complicated social and political environment. Specifically, the legal and constitutional bases for protecting human dignity and the right for education (Articles 1t 4 and 3) are weak, which undermine government attempts to protect the right to education. This is in a stark contrast to the unremitting

80

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

defence of the economic elites in favour of the free market and their rejection of monopoly regulations that ignore the economic, social and cultural rights for the population as a whole. Government inaction with respect to the right to education indicates that against its declared intention to reform this sector, it shares with the elite the position that there is no need to educate the mass of the population. The coincidence of a presidentialism out to restore authoritarian control and weak public political opposition generates a hostile environment for education equality and the formation of citizens. In these circumstances the authorities turn blind eye to teachers flouting the law. Furthermore, the government at federal, state and municipal levels, with few exceptions, has a short-term vision circumscribed by limited administrative periods. Apart from the National Development Plan and related documents there is no sign of a coherent vision for the nation in a contemporary world based on the development of human rights of all citizens. A modern state requires a government to provide the basic conditions to satisfy societal needs and work with society to define them. In other words, one expects a government that represents the interests of all social and economic actors (Aguilar 2012: 311). Recent developments related to the previous paragraph are the government responses to the teachers’ strikes of 2015 that affected the future of the education reform. The first was the Supreme Court decision on 29 June 2015, which legalized the open contest for teacher recruitment and promotion. In so doing, it placed the right of children to education above teachers’ rights as workers. The second response was the state government of Oaxaca’s decision with the support of the federal government to assume control of the education authorities of that state, thereby removing from the CNTE the functions that it had held inappropriately since 1992.

Economic obstacles Any educational reform needs new efficiently managed resources. Surprisingly the pact makes no mention of this additional required expenditure. The same omission holds for the National Plan of Development that proposes education equity (Presidencia de la República 2013: 67, 123). The traditional underfunding and misuse of funds in education that has been analysed by the non-governmental organization (NGO) Mexicanos Primero (2013) has further reduced because of the economic slowdown and fall of oil prices.

Mexico: Obstacles to Educational Reform

81

There is another similarity between the current reform and that of 1992. There has not been a thorough fiscal reform that matches federal control of funds and the devolution of the management of services to the states. Under these circumstances, how can we expect state governments to provide educational services effectively? Corruption and mismanagement documented by the federal auditing authorities should also be taken into consideration.

Barriers to social involvement Social issues are tied up with the obstacles covered in the previous sections. In what follows, I focus on the specific issue of participation of social actors in education. The majority of the population affected by the educational reform are possibly unaware of their education rights and have no say into its governance. Many NGOs are working with these sectors of the population to help them understand their rights and in so doing enabling them to make their legitimate demand on the education they receive. Most recently, the NGOs have raised their voices in states where teachers’ protests have left the children without schooling, and parents have stepped in attempting to organize their own educational services but, paradoxically, they have received little or no support from the authorities. Two other obstacles to social participation stem from, on the one hand, the barriers placed by the SNTE on such social involvements and, on the other, the circumscription of parental participation by strict government controls. This constraint is made worse by the centralized political administration that subjects the running of local councils of social participation under the control of the National Council of Social Participation. There is nothing new about barriers to social participation. The Participation Councils, established in General Education Law in 1993, were innovative at that time, and the law included a whole chapter on the issue. However, its independence was curtailed by the rules set for its functioning. This was acknowledged by the current reform, as stated in Article 2 of the reform (Secretaría de Educación Pública 2014), which defines social participation as ‘bodies of social participation in education, consultation, orientation, collaboration, support and information, according to the needs to support and extend the service and improve quality and equity in basic education’.

82

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

Carlos Ornelas (2014) notes that remnants of corporatism remain in the new National Council of Social Participation by its inclusion of union members (SNTE) in the council, thus injecting labour issues where they have no rightful place. This aside, councils of social participation could play an important role to further education improvement and help to resolve problems among educational stakeholders. Another dimension of the state programmes involved with education and poverty alleviation is the political manipulation of resources for these programmes through clientelism practised by the officers responsible for these programmes. It was mentioned earlier on that the number of NGOS promoting education improvement has grown. With this in mind there is one NGO, Ojo Ciudadano, one of the ninety-six component groups of Mexicanos Primero, whose specific purpose is to demand that the SEP and SNTE be made publicly accountable.6

Obstacles to management and reform implementation All the above obstacles spring from poor management in the implementation of the education reform. In the first annual report, Enrique Peña declared that his administration ‘strengthened educational policies to advance social, political and economic development in our country, through education activities and put forward other midterm policies to become a more efficient education system’ (Peña Nieto 2013: 285). He does situate the education reform with all is legal components and programmes in the new laws: General Law of the Teaching Service, the Law of the National Institute of Education Evaluation and the National Development Plan. He does not mention implementation, but he mentions his concern to continue with the reform. In the second annual government report (Peña Nieto 2014), he reaffirms that ‘the Education Reform is now an ongoing reality with two main objectives: to guarantee the right of Mexicans to access quality education and to make education the motor to transform Mexico’ (2014: 207). In this respect, he highlights among other achievements the progress of social participation, the launching of the Programme for Teacher Professional Development focused on the school and on student performance and the creation of the National Coordination of Teaching Service and the first open contest for teacher recruitment. The INEE whose functions have become central to the educational reform has made no comments on these developments.

Mexico: Obstacles to Educational Reform

83

The INEE report for the same year, that is, 2014 (INEE 2015b), focused on the teachers by virtue of their importance in the education reform. It describes the characteristics of the teachers at all obligatory levels, their conditions of work, their training and the results of the first new entry exam. It reveals the shortcomings of the student teachers and also recommends improvements for the teaching profession and the schools but avoids mentioning the obstacles in relation to the education reform. The main obstacles to improving the teaching profession lie in the institutional and social conditions of the teachers. For example, it is a fact that 59 per cent of the female students in the teacher colleges come from low-income families, well below the welfare minimum as defined by CONEVAL (INEE 2015b: 156), a fact which necessitates scholarships in order for the students to complete their studies. Another fact that INEE identified is that only 12 per cent of teachers in the private teacher colleges (210 out 484) are employed full time. In the first open contest for teacher recruitment in June 2014, only 40.4 per cent obtained satisfactory results (INEE 2015b: 157). This is where, INEE considers, that there is more need for improvement (Ibid, 163). INEE makes an important observation that ‘there is no relation between the significance that teachers give to achieving the goals of the purposes of the national educational system and the teacher profiles, their working conditions and their professional needs’ (ibid.: 163). This signals an important contradiction between official intentions in the formation of teachers and the declared commitment to school autonomy. To summarize, INEE has been parsimonious with its criticisms of the obstacles to the education reform, but its evaluation data is very revealing. However, in a statement given in February 2015, INEE comments that in spite of ‘undeniable advance in education, there have been some incidents, especially in recent months that could jeopardize the Education Reform’, such as in the case of teachers in various states opposing the reform. In some cases, the protests have imposed some agreements that contravene the law. Another violation has been allowing head teachers and supervisors to be promoted without them having passed the exams, which goes against the whole trust of promotion according to merit (INEE 2015a: 2).

4 The right to education: A perspective that justifies the education reform The education reform has many constitutional and operational intricacies. I have discussed some of the obstacles that it has faced. Some are specific to the

84

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

reform, some are related to governance and others are about the social conditions of teachers but are more endemic to the system, like teachers’ resistance. The viewpoint from which to judge the reform in a would-be democratic state should be one in which the reform would contribute to the delivery of education for all and in this way promote the growth of human development in Mexico with economic and social justice. Now, as in the past, this reform lacks continuity and coherence in its strategies and in practice, notably in teacher and educational staff evaluation and the improvement of teacher training in such a way as to bring about education equity and the right to education among other things. Political circumstances have been a major reason for failures to make the education reform a reality. To begin with, many governors opposed the pact for Mexico; the left faltered in sustaining its vision of broad-based socioeconomic reforms, and when it gained power, it proved to be as unscrupulous as the other dominant parties. The centre-right National Action Party (PAN) failed to supersede in its policymaking the old ‘cronyist’ and clientelist practices. In the light of what I have discussed about the clear legal and strategic aspects of the reform, some basic recommendations are outlined below in conclusion: 1. Continue the political and economic support for the school management initiatives, promoting raised standards of professional competence among teachers, head teachers and supervisors. 2. Open up school governance to social participation and strengthen it as much as possible as part of the necessary democratic support to achieve the goals of the education reform. The independent social activism in favour of education is a growing force that could be seen especially during the most recent national elections of 2015 when citizens’ groups made demands on the candidates for better education. It would be senseless and contradictory for the government, with the declared commitment to guarantee the right to education, to ignore this social demand. 3. It is of prime importance that the authorities of the Mexican Republic – executive, legislative and judicial, and at national, state and local levels – transcend party lines and a narrow short-term vision, taking to heart the constitutional commitments they made to safeguard human rights upon taking office and create the conditions for governance and social justice that are necessary to provide a new equitable education worthy of an open society.

Mexico: Obstacles to Educational Reform

85

4. Another pressing concern is for the government to evaluate its own management and administrative performance openly and self-critically. This process should be free of interests and be entirely impartial.

Notes 1. This is the longest period that the Mexican Revolution has been considered to last. According to some experts, this culminated with Cardenas’s social reformist government. Others set it between 1910 and 1920. 2. In this search for legitimacy and support, the economic and especially the energy reform have been the most criticized because they most touch the political, economic and social Mexican sensibilities and because its impact on development and social welfare lacks safeguards. 3. For the Mexican political left and some of the centred the secular state is a necessary condition for recognizing and protecting human rights. The secular character of the Mexican State was established in Article 3 of the Constitution published on 30 November 2012. The secular nature of the state dates back to the nineteenth century. 4. Mancera considered ‘that school conditions have deteriorated to such an extent that the reform had become the last link in the chain of command’ (2014: XLII). In other words, the primordial function of the school as an institution in its own right had been subordinated to bureaucratic logic, being less and less able to fulfil its purpose of developing creativity in their students. 5. The agreements for the education reform were signed on 3 December 2013 by the education secretary, the thirty-one states and the Mexico City authorities. These agreements committed the signatories to follow the norms regulating the teaching profession, to apply the guidelines to strengthen the autonomy of school management and to implement the education reform curriculum (Peña Nieto 2014: 207). It is worth noting that the state of Oaxaca did not update its legislation in the time set by the Senate (ibid). 6. Véase el sitio electrónico http://www.mexicanosprimeros.org/index.php/educaciónen-mexico//nuestra-opinion/ítem/el-ojo-ciudadano

Bibliography Aguilar, Luis F. ‘Gobernabilidad y gobernanza’. En La perspectiva mexicana en el siglo XXI, José Ramón Cossío y Enrique Florescano (Coords.), 309–43 (México: Fondo de Cultura Económica/Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes/Universidad Veracruzana/Secretaría de Educación de Veracruz, 2012).

86

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

Álvarez, Isaías (Coord.). La educación en México. Proyectos nacionales. Diagnóstico y perspectiva, 2 Vols (México: Limusa-Instituto Politécnico Nacional, 1999). Chuayffet, Emilio. ‘Reforma educativa: la educación, constructora de destinos’. Educación futura, 17 de marzo de 2015. Disponible en: http://www.educacionfutura. org/reforma-educativa-la-educacion-constructora-de-destinosemiliochuayffet/(accessed 27 November 2016). Instituto Nacional para la Evaluación de la Educación (2015a). La Reforma Educativa avanza: INEE, Comunicado de prensa n. 7, 25 de febrero de 2015, disponible en: http://www.inee.edu.mx/index.php/sala-deprensa/boletines-de-prensa/573boletines-de-prensa/boletines-2015/1924-comunicados-2015 Instituto Nacional para la Evaluación de la Educación (2015b). Los docentes en México. Informe 2015, México: INEE. Loaeza, Soledad. ‘En el reformismo autoritario (1970–1982)’, en Ibíd., La restauración de la Iglesia católica en la transición mexicana, 85–118 (México: El Colegio de México, 2013). Mancera, Carlos. ‘Reforma educativa: ¿qué se puede esperar hacia adelante?’, en Adrián Gallardo (coord.), La Constitución transformadora, XLI–LXIII (México: Fundación Colosio, 2014). Meneses, Ernesto et al. Tendencias educativas oficiales en México, 1821–1911 (México: Porrúa, 1983). Mexicanos Primero. Mal gasto educativo, 2013. Disponible en: http://www. mexicanosprimero.org/images/stories/malgasto/malgasto_estado-de-la-educacionen-mexico_2013.pdf (accessed 14 February 2015). Meyer, Lorenzo. Nuestra tragedia persistente. La democracia autoritaria en México (México: Debate, 2013). Ornelas, Carlos. ‘Educación y participación social’. Excélsior, 12 de marzo de 2014. Disponible en: http://www.excelsior.com.mx/opinion/carlosornelas/2014/03/12/948225 (accessed 27 November 2016). Ornelas, Carlos. Educación, colonización y rebeldía. La herencia del pacto CalderónGordillo (México: Siglo XXI, 2012). Peña Nieto, Enrique. Segundo Informe de Gobierno, 2014. Disponible en: http://www. presidencia.gob.mx/segundoinforme/ (accessed 27 November 2016). Peña Nieto, Enrique. Primer informe de Gobierno, 2013. Disponible en: http:// d5d3d27e1f3d539a162f-a00104427ebc661a8d17f062b85c9f9a.r74.cf2.rackcdn.com/ Mexico_en_Paz.pdf (accessed 27 November 2016). Peña Nieto, Enrique. Iniciativa de Decreto que reforma y adiciona diversas disposiciones de la Constitución Política de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos, 10 de diciembre de 2012. Disponible en: http://pactopormexico.org/Reforma-Educativa.pdf (accessed 27 November 2016). Presidencia de la República. Pacto por México, Acuerdos, 2012. Disponible en: http:// www.presidencia.gob.mx/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Pacto-Por-M%C3%A9xicoTODOS-los-acuerdos.pdf (accessed 27 November 2016).

Mexico: Obstacles to Educational Reform

87

Presidencia de la República. Plan Nacional de Desarrollo 2013–2018 (México: Gobierno de la República, 2013). Disponible en: http://pnd.gob.mx/(accessed 27 November 2016). Ramírez, Fernando. ‘Admite SCJN controversias contra Morelos y BCS por reforma educativa’. El Financiero, 27 de mayo de 2014. Disponible en: http://www. elfinanciero.com.mx/sociedad/admite-scjn-controversias-contra-morelos-y-bcspor-reforma-educativa.html Secretaría de Educación Pública. Acuerdo número 716 por el que se establecen los lineamientos para la constitución, organización y funcionamiento de los Consejos de Participación Social en la Educación 2014. Disponible en: http://conapase.sep. gob.mx/work/models/conapase/Resource/84/1/images/ACUERDO%20716.pdf (accessed 27 November 2016).

6

Mexico: Assessing the Current Educational Reforms Rodolfo Ramírez

On 1 December 2012, just as Enrique Peña Nieto became president of Mexico, he announced the constitutional reform to improve the quality of compulsory public education. This was to affect more than thirty million students in more than 200,000 preschool, primary, secondary and high school levels. There was nothing new in this kind of initiative: in 1982, Jesús Reyes Heroles, secretary of education at that time, proclaimed an ‘educational reform’ which has been repeated in the rhetoric of subsequent educational policy and plans. It was also included in the three national agreements between government, the national teachers’ union, SNTE (Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores de la Educación) and other agents involved in education policy in the last two decades: Acuerdo Nacional para la Educación Básica (1992), Compromiso Social por la Calidad de la Educación (2002) and Alianza por la Calidad de la Educación (2008). The current reform was part of a set of presidential agreement (Pacto por México) with the three main political parties (the ruling party; the Institutional Revolutionary Party, PRI; the National Action Party, PAN; and Democratic Revolutionary Party, PRD) to promote a set of legal and political reforms considered to be indispensable for the economic growth of the country and to establish a society of rights and liberty. The mass media received the education reform announcement enthusiastically as did the largest political party leaders and intellectuals. According to various polls, a large proportion of the population was also in favour. This ran counter to the opinion widespread in the media over the previous six years that the public education policy had been failing and was been questioned by the society at large. For their part a large proportion of teachers of basic education took a

Mexico: Assessing the Current Educational Reforms

89

different view from the media and the public. They held serious doubts about the reform and even opposed explicitly. This led them to protest not only in the states where the Coordinadora Nacional de Trabajadores de la Educación was strong, but also across the country. The reform contained two new related proposals: ●

●

First, the state retook the leadership of the educational system, by resting control of hiring, firing and promoting teachers from the union (SNTE).1 Second, the decisions related to teacher selection, tenure and promotion were made dependent upon impartial processes of evaluation.

Particularly, the second of these measures simultaneously returns control of the education system to the federal authorities, through eliminating the union’s power to distribute tenures positions. In so doing the authorities aim to achieve the long-sought-after education quality: henceforth, only those with ‘relevant’ qualifications would be allowed to work in the classroom and as head teachers and inspectors. This was the core component of the reform. The reform to the constitutional articles 3 and 73 on 26 February 2013 made the state the guarantor of preschool, primary, secondary and high school education quality, which was the major aim of the reform. This justified the changes in labour regulations and gave a key role to evaluation as the key to the new education policies: 1. The reform modified the mechanisms for entering the teaching service and promotion to the positions of head teacher and supervisors, and especially to tenure through evaluation and competition. This was supposed to guarantee that the personnel have the ‘relevant knowledge and capacities’ for the post. 2. It established in Article 3 of the Constitution the norms for regulating specific duties of the teachers as distinctive from the other state workers covered under Section B of Article 123 of the Constitution that deals with the civil service, empowering Congress to create this new, distinct professional teaching service. 3. It also made the National Institute of Education Evaluation (INEE) an independent body and expanded its responsibilities, with the idea that ‘evaluation of quality, performance and education results’ would set the norms for policy education. It is expected to assess learning at all the basic education levels throughout the country and also to give guidelines for the education policy based on the results of its evaluations.

90

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

Apart from these measures, the reform charged the legislators and education authorities to add supporting measures beyond those merely to do with labour regulations. These included school management, increasing the number or fulltime schools, creating a national educational information and management system and prohibiting the consumption of junk food considered ‘prejudiced student health’. All these, except the last one, were included in the Pacto por México (Presidencia de la Republica 2012). It is noteworthy that none of these changes refer either to the purposes, goals and contents of compulsory education or to teacher training; in other words, they do not address substantive issues of education reform agenda. In this chapter I analyse the key of the current reform: the new labour regime for the teachers in public schools. I go on to consider the possibilities of achieving a better education for the children and youth of Mexico.

The new labour regime of the teaching profession and the role of evaluation The fundamental changes introduced by the reform were specified in the General Act of the Professional Teaching Service (LGSPD) and seek to establish ‘a legal regime designed for teachers, head teachers and supervisors in public basic education’ (Presidencia de la República 2013). The reform also included the Act for the National Institute of Education Evaluation and a broaden reform to the Genera Act of Education 1993. However, it was the proposed new labour legislation that sparked the widespread opposition movement, least by teachers from section traditionally loyal to the official union (SNTE) in the states of Quintana Roo, Veracruz, Campeche, Zacatecas and Jalisco, in addition to the states where the dissident union (CNTE) has had long-standing influence since the 1980s, notably Oaxaca, Chiapas, Michoacan y Guerrero.

The new labour rules The regime set up a career path for teachers and head teachers that from selection to retirement is subject to evaluation at key stages by the INEE. The main points are as follows: 1. The selection of teachers would be accomplished exclusively via open competition that ‘guarantees that the teachers have the relevant knowledge

Mexico: Assessing the Current Educational Reforms

91

and capabilities required for the job’ (LGSPD, Article 21). Successful applicants would go through a two-year trial period that includes tutorials from more seasoned teachers and an evaluation at the end of their first year’s teaching. Any deficiencies would be addressed by specially designed courses. At the end of the induction period the evaluation of their performance would determine their possibility to remain in service. Those who fail would be suspended from any public educational activities without compensation whatsoever (Ibid, Article 22). 2. The selection of head teachers and supervisors would also be carried out through open competition among all tenured teachers with more than two years in post (Ibid, Article 29). Just like the teachers, the new head teachers would be given a contract of two years, an induction period during which they would have to attend ‘the programmes of leadership and school management’. At the end of this twoyear period they would be evaluated to ‘determine if they comply with all the requirements for headship’ (Ibid, Article 27). The ones who fall short in the evaluation would be returned to normal classroom duties; the successful ones would be granted tenures at their post. Although those aspiring to be supervisors need a minimum of two years in service, those chosen for this post would be granted tenure without having a trial period – this, in spite of the greater responsibilities and skills that the post carries compared with teachers and head teachers (Article 29). The reasons for this exception to the general demands for other teaching posts are not explained at any point in any official document. 3. Tenure of all teachers and head teachers in service and of the newcomers would be evaluated every four years. If they fail, they will have two more chances. The ones who obtain insufficient marks in these two opportunities will attend special programmes to overcome their weaknesses (supposedly detected by the evaluation). The ones who do not obtain a good-enough result in the third attempt would be removed from service (Ibid, Articles 52 and 53).2 In this way, tenure after two years as stipulated by LGDSP might last only six years with an additional two chances in a subsequent four-year period. ●

●

The LGSPD also acknowledges the specific function of pedagogical coaching, which has been provided over several decades by thousands of teachers – be they school, district or regional supervisions – in updating courses or innovation in

92

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

education and academic support by federal and state authorities where these teachers were ‘commissioned’. This means that they were assigned to those tasks or programmes, but kept their teaching post and salary.3Along with defining the terms of the pedagogical post in motion, a new recruitment procedure among other things, those already in position could reapply. Just as in the case of head teachers, the pedagogical coaches would undergo a one-year trial period accompanied by courses relevant to their duties over which they would be evaluated. However, there would be one difference: they will retain their post and salary as in-service teachers and retain their benefits according to ‘available resources’ (Ibid, Article 41). If after two years they achieve the required results, they would obtain tenure, and if not, they will return to their classroom duties. The reform also establishes a payment-by-results programme instead of the Teachers Professionalization Programme (carrera magisterial) established in 1993, which is also based on the evaluation of the teachers’ performance through indirect means: by student results in a national multiple-choice exam that counted for 50 per cent of the evaluation and also a multiple-choice exam for teachers. In the new labour regime, the salary increments will be decided by the attainment levels in the evaluation as a whole. The level of the increments depends on the post.4 The law also offers other options for one-off ‘salary enhancement’ that does not change your duties and responsibilities and is subject to available resources.

The end of tenure and the eradication of the union involvement in teacher professionalization These new rules henceforth only applied to teachers among all state workers. Previously, teachers shared the same labour regime with their bureaucratic peers under the law established in 1946 and ratified in 1963. This had the following implications: 1. In the first place, the new law took away the union’s right to give tenure post up to 50 per cent of new teachers (the other half was assigned by the secretary of education of each state). In the last two decades, on the face of shortages of new posts, these became coveted assets bought by corrupt union members and authorities. In many states, it was common practice for teachers to bequeath their posts to their children who had undergone teaching training. In 2008, authorities and union leaders agreed to put all teaching posts to tender. In spite of that, the black market persisted.

Mexico: Assessing the Current Educational Reforms

93

2. In the second place, the reform eliminated the job security that the law gives to all other state workers after six months, providing they had any complaints against them. The LGSPD got rid of job security by making post continuity dependent on the results of their evaluation every two years, with two more opportunities that could extend their contract up to six years. 3. In the third place, the reform excluded the union from any decision about teacher professionalization, turning it into a mere observed one (Ibid., Article 33). 4. Finally, the reform put an end to the use of education positions for union and political purposes. This ended the long-standing agreement between the union and the government that implied a considerable waste of public resources whose size and extent had never been fully assessed. The law states clearly: ‘The persons that decide to accept to work in a post or commission that impede the exercise of their functions as teacher, head teacher or supervisor, should leave the teaching service without payment while they remain in the other post or commission’ (Ibid., Articulo 78).

Support to teachers and service conditions In addition to changes in the labour regime, the backbone of the reform, it specifies two closely related measures to support teaching. The first is the ‘local school management’ that not only gives schools independence for the management of resources – that presumably come from the government – but also allows them to design and implement their plans for improvement based on their own internal evaluation. However, until now this measure had only materialized as a training programme for 10 per cent of supervisors from each state who were expected to coordinate the monthly school technical council meetings (which included all teaching and support staff ). The irony is that supervisors were expected to instruct the councils to follow the prescriptions of the Secretaría de Educación Pública (SEP). In one fell swoop, any autonomy was cancelled out. Worst still, it is a fact that topics and activities for the internal evaluation and preparation of ‘the improvement roadmap’ should follow the priorities established by the director of the programme. The promised new resources to repair their schools and improve their teaching conditions had not materialized either. The reform has also created the School Technical Support Service (SATE), which the law defines as the ‘set of specialized advices to teachers and headteachers to improve their practice and the overall operation of the school’. This service will also train teachers to conduct internal evaluation and how to use

94

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

external ones (Ibid, Article 17 and 18). This system could only work if the needed skill set of all involved is adequate, which in turn depends on the effectiveness of the evaluative filter designed to identify these abilities among the current persons in the posts and the newcomers. If these conditions are not met, it will be merely changed in order to stay the same.

The assumptions or conceptual basis of the reform: The faith in evaluation To date there has not been an explanation of the foundations or conceptual basis of the reform as would normally be expected according to public policy protocol. This should include a diagnosis of the current conditions of education and the definition of the problems it faces and how they could be overcome to improve its quality. In the constitutional reform, in the legislative process and in the mass media announcements, it is possible to find traces of a diagnosis wrapped in ambiguous ‘politically correct’ phraseology that fail to identify the factors or agents that created the problems. They only indicate some explanations and emphasize the desired results. The following statements were taken from the presidential initiative (Presidencia de la Republica 2012), which sketches some elements of a vague diagnosis: -The Mexican State has made enormously progress to fulfill its constitutional responsibilities. However, society and its educational stakeholders have expressed demands, disagreements and proposals that need to be taken into account. -The education evaluation … has provided new tools for understanding more clearly how much we have to improve student learning. … The challenges are especially serious when addressing students in conditions of poverty. -One of the worst obstacles that face the educational system ‘has been the irregular and harmful practices that damages teachers’ dignity’. -It would be unjust to attribute poor educational attainments to one single factor as it has frequently and wrongly been the case. -Currently, teaching positions have been assigned at all levels of the system in a way that has not procedures that guarantees that the best people for the job are appointed.

The same thing happened with the definition of quality education to which the reform aspires. The presidential initiative reiterates broad national responsibilities as ‘the ones that correspond to the constitutional aims produced

Mexico: Assessing the Current Educational Reforms

95

within the established framework’. By contrast, the ‘Pact for Mexico’ defines the reform purposes as ‘improving the learning quality as it would expressed in tests like PISA’. A precise description of the ‘guiding principles’ exposed by the president when he announced the constitutional reform (Peña Nieto 2013) leads us to deduct the elements of the general diagnosis from which he started: First, achieve that our students are educated by the best teachers. Our children and youth deserve well-trained and responsible teachers. To achieve this, we will create the Teachers Professionalization Service. Second principle is to make the evaluation an efficient mechanism for improving teaching quality. In order to do this, the reform gives to the National Institute for Education Evaluation the constitutional responsibilities for education quality Third principle is to improve the conditions for the whole formation of all students in the country. For this end, the reform strengthens the independent management of schools.

The reform strategy The cornerstone of the reform is the evaluation of all agents, processes and results of the education system, especially the teachers’ performance to achieve quality education. a. To improve education quality that is the goal of the reform, it is necessary to have teachers who have demonstrated that they possess the relevant knowledge and abilities to impart basic education and provide the conditions in which teachers work. b. The key measure for this purpose is the evaluation of performance (especially the teachers in front of a group, but also the head teachers and pedagogical coaches). This measure, in its summative assessment, would guarantee the entrance and permanency to the teaching service of teachers with the necessary knowledge and abilities (specified parameters, profiles and evaluation markers) for effective performance in the classroom. c. Formative evaluation would be the basis that determines the necessary updating of training programmes tailored to individual needs along with technical support. Both strategies applied to newcomers as well as those already in service. d. Along with the above, presumably there would be other actions to influence education quality, such as improved material conditions and teaching materials (which turned out to be distribution of tablets, or equivalent, to

96

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

some primary students). Furthermore, the reform gave the school the right to manage its own (public) resources aimed at improving the overall basic infrastructure. e. Continuous evaluation of the ingredients, processes and results of the educational system together with the INEE’s directions on education policy (that authorities must comply to or must justify the reason for not doing so) establishes a mechanism for permanent improvement of basic compulsory education. If faith in evaluation as the driver for the improvement of learning was nothing new in Mexico,5 certainly what was novel was conditioning teachers’ tenure upon their performances as measure by evaluation. It is a fact that until this moment tenure had never been questioned by any of the previous reforms. Neither does Mexico’s scanty experience in evaluation indicate that it is an enormous task that it has set upon itself to evaluate more than a million in-service teachers. This challenge demands far more precision and a national external body to evaluate schools and should include the following: a. Identify carefully who lacks what has been termed teacher ‘performance levels’ and the relevant dispositions to teach different disciplines at distinct levels. They would have to undertake refresher courses, and if they cannot reach the required standards, they would be dismissed. By the same token, those outstanding performers should be rewarded. b. Select the ones who have developed special aptitudes for leadership, supervision and pedagogical coaching and remove the ones who have been in these positions but are not up to the task. c. Identify carefully deficiencies of all educational personnel and provide the necessary reorientation programmes. How to guarantee that an evaluation with such serious consequences would be fair and technically reliable as was promised in official proclamations and the concomitant laws and rules on the teaching profession? The answer should take into account all the factors of a huge, diverse and unequal system and not just those that the teachers do on their own. The reform evaluation will determine entry, promotion and tenure in the teaching service. Every year there would a competition for new entrance and for promotion. At least every four years the teachers would have to undergo performance evaluation. This means that if a twenty-two-year-old teacher enters the system and the retirement age is sixty-five, she/he would be in service for

Mexico: Assessing the Current Educational Reforms

97

forty-three years. The number of applicants could reach the figure of 300,000 at all levels each year. But the situation is more complicated than this because the overall figure should be broken down into their respective levels (early education, primary and secondary) and school types (such as general, indigenous and multigrade), as well as according to subject area. Under these circumstances, the promised evaluation should be one size fits all tests but several to suit the relevant knowledge and skills demanded by each educator’s particular function. Such an ambitious evaluation as proposed in the Mexican reform has never been attempted in any other part of the world – not even in countries where government has explicitly placed evaluation as the driver of educational improvement by student and teacher testing. Such an approach has not yielded the desired teaching or learning results. On the contrary, this kind of testing is counterproductive, distorting educational processes, as was the case with the Teacher Professionalization Programme (carrera magisterial) between 1994 and 2015 and with national test (ENLACE) for the students in the last decade (Martin and Guzmán 2008; Ramírez 2013; Rockwell 2013). In fact, other countries have turned to a wider range of evaluative methods recognizing that multiple-choice tests cannot capture the complexity of teaching and learning. As Rockwell points out: In the USA and increasingly in other countries, there is a growing consensus that teacher performance evaluation should go much further than a mere testing of knowledge. We need to include ways to assess how teachers apply their knowledge through various means of the distinct aspects of teaching from teacher training to their classroom work including the input from head-teachers, supervisors and teacher trainers.

While the reform was being heatedly debated in the Congress, not enough time was allocated to the analyses about the impact that the reform would have on teachers as had been proposed. The academy, by contrast, put forward warnings about the challenges the reform presented, especially the difficulty of a comprehensive evaluation to grasp the complexity of the task of teachers in the classroom. As Olac Fuentes (2013) says: If teacher evaluation is supposed to produce useful, fair and constructive information, it should be centred on the teacher himself and in the classroom. Nevertheless, an evaluation of this kind is not easy task, it only could be rolled out gradually and it should not produce general statistics rapidly just to satisfy the public at the cost of distorting the real picture of what goes on in school and classroom. (2013: 54)

98

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

Elsie Rockwell (2013: 81, 85) points out: In order to legislate in any field is necessary to understand the subject matter. In this case, it is necessary to understand the work of the teacher, the core of the inter-subjective cultural work, which is not comparable to other jobs in other sectors, like the industry or services. … Only through experience in the classroom it is possible how to obtain students attention and coordinate their work in all their dimensions: physical, emotional, moral and cognitive. This effort and skill cannot be measured with paper and pencil tests.

It is true that from the beginning, as can be seen in the presidential reform initiative,6 the injustice of evaluating through student performance results in standardized multiple-choice tests was recognized, and it was necessary to consider other factors impacting on teaching. Rockwell also comments: There are many conditions that need to come together in order to improve education provision. It goes without saying that external circumstances like poverty and inequality are influential. Then, there are internal, school factors, particularly those prevailing in marginal zones. Any evaluation needs to recognize these obstacles teachers have to confront. For all the above it would unjust to attribute poor educational results to the teachers as it has frequently and wrongly occurred. Teachers have expressed their disagreement with justification with those types of evaluation that lack a complete assessment of their performance and ignoring the complexity of the circumstance in which they work.

Sylvia Schmelkes (2013), who would later be appointed president of the INEE Council, pointed out, in the middle of the conflict that preceded the approval of LGSPD: ‘Teachers evaluation could include many aspects and be based in many diverse instruments. However, to evaluate their performance there one aspect that should not be left out and it is precisely the knowledge of the form how they perform in the classroom.’ She referred to a proposal she elaborated with Carlos Mancera,7 for the Organization for Economic Development: We propose to make periodical visits to the work place by a pair of carefully selected evaluators who had been properly trained to conduct in situ evaluation. The usefulness and trustworthiness of the evaluation will depend on the meticulous selection and training of evaluators. This an essential condition for teachers evaluation. … The evaluators chosen and trained to especially evaluate in situ, should preferably look at the school as a whole, in order to evaluate all the teachers working there and stay on over a period of not less of a week and

Mexico: Assessing the Current Educational Reforms

99

possibly two in large schools to collect all data relevant to the evaluation. This information will be analyzed by the evaluators and by a third who does not know the school, but also especially trained.

Building such a demanding system of evaluation according to the legal specifications and with prior knowledge of the failures in other countries demanded enormous technical capacities from the institutions responsible to implement the process. But the difficulties of this task were compounded by a lack of experience in evaluation in all sectors in Mexico. If the authorities wanted to follow strictly the best practice of teacher evaluation, they should clearly have considered how to fulfil the demand of thousands of competent evaluators in collecting information from a classroom over a period of several days during teaching time, which is frequently interrupted, a norm in Mexican schools. The point here is that in order to capture faithfully what teachers achieve, we need parameters that capture the full range of their efforts. This intervention requires sensitive and skilful interpretation that goes beyond mere standardized observation schedules. A comprehensive assessment should include class observation, observation of the interaction between teacher and students, samples of students’ work, the classroom ethos and the opinion of teacher and students. The evaluators’ assessments have enormous repercussions on teachers’ careers, and for this reason evaluators should be well trained, sensitive and conscious of the responsibilities entrusted to them (Ramírez Raymundo 2013). A detailed documentation on working conditions should be a precondition (one of the first goals of the reform, which is so far not fulfilled). It was also necessary to have institutions capable of coordinating and designing the process in collaboration with teachers as it was perfunctorily carried out in the early discussions on the technical and institutional implications of the reform. They touched upon the key issues of evaluation: Why evaluate, what is going to be evaluated, who evaluates and who trains the evaluators (Ramírez 2013)? It was an ambitious project whose high-minded tenets were soon ditched. They lacked clear definitions, the necessary instruments and institutions and properly trained evaluators who would need more than the few months assigned. The problem was that the reform was launched hastily without the needed institutional framework. Two years post the reform implementation (it started in September 2013), the two chief advances were limited to the centralization of the teacher recruitment and promotion by the federal government, and the

100

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

creation of the National Coordination of Teachers Professionalization, with the INEE was given more responsibilities. At the same time the measures described above were hurriedly set in motion. Nevertheless, the reform established in law a strict calendar of activities which demanded deep changes with serious consequences without a trial period and, what is more, without the necessary technical preparation and staff training demanded by such a measure. This aspect of the reform took two years for its full implementation, including the new labour legislation and the centralization of teacher pay and advancement that had been transferred to the state administrations previously, with the exception of Mexico City.8 In this short period, the National Coordination of Teacher Professionalization and the new INEE structure were established. This implied having to throw together on the run such functions as teacher service provision and evaluation.

The reform potentials and challenges At first blush, the measures discussed above appeared to continue the policies initiated by the government of Felipe Calderón (2006–12), in the Alliance for Education Quality (ACE) that was agreed with SNTE. There, the principle of open competition was established for teacher recruitment in the Teacher Professionalization Programme (PNCM) and conditions were measured on their students’ attainments by a national multiple-choice test together with a national teacher test.9 In 2011, student attainment accounted for 50 per cent of teacher evaluation. The supposition here was that student performance was entirely dependent on the teacher irrespective of student family’s socio-economic conditions, educational level of the parents, the conditions of the school and the education level, importantly, the educational level the students attained with the previous teachers (Martin and Gúzman 2008). Calderon’s strategy to improve education rested upon multiple-choice testing of learned facts that sought to convince the public that ‘it will measure the results of each teacher and when the results are disseminated the pressure would increase on the ones with low results. At the same time, we would offer incentives, cash bonuses and points in their career. We would offer remedial courses to the ones who do not know how to teach and we also include parents do their part.’ It was expected that the test results will improve over in just a few cycles. However, this strategy runs into three fundamental obstacles: its technical shortcomings,

Mexico: Assessing the Current Educational Reforms

101

the rampant corruption in its implementation and its abuse by both the SNTE, for political positions and financial benefits, and the federal government, for political gains and trumpeting its supposed achievements (Ornelas 2012; Ramírez Raymundo 2013). How has the current reform changed the course of the previous one? In the first place, by making teacher evaluation a federal government responsibility carried out by INEE, the reform took away the power of negotiation from the SNTE. In the second place, it raised the impact of evaluation, because henceforth it not only determines economic incentives as had been the case since 1993, but also dictates the conditions for promotion and the terms of job security. In the third place, evaluation was not to be limited to students’ performance in standardized tests. Evaluation of teachers’ performance, particularly in job security, has been the main bone of contention to date, not least because teachers do not trust the education authorities. And this, in spite of the reform, is claiming to offer an ‘evaluation fair and sensitive to cultural differences and social inequality’. The promise of a fair and sensitive evaluation, included in all official speeches about improving educational quality, was accompanied by the increase in power of INEE as an independent constitutional body free from the influence of the educational authorities. At the same time, paradoxically, it was a relief to the co-responsibilities in key stages of the evaluation process. INEE is not the key factor – profiles, parameters and indicators – to evaluate and the whole process of selection, promotion and tenure has been handed over to two organizations: to a marginal infant office of the SEP, the National Coordination of Professional Teaching Service, and to a private testing agency, the National Coordination for Higher Education Evaluation (CENEVAL). The latter specialized in coordinating multiple-choice tests in various sectors. This agency was sponsored by the National Association of Universities and Institutes of Higher Education (ANUIES), and began its life by evaluating first high school students. It has subsequently branched out into evaluating all kinds of institutions such as the Police Academy and the National Electoral Institute, among others. In the rush to set in motion teachers’ evaluation, the backbone of the reform, fundamental issues such as what really was going to be evaluated were swept aside. How to evaluate teachers left behind the original idea of teacher observation and was substituted by scanned documents sent to a centre to be processed by evaluators trained online by unknown institutions and summarily certified by INEE. Multiple-choice tests continue to have the most weight in the evaluation. The results of the first evaluation have not been made public at the

102

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

time of writing. Because of all of these there are no good reasons for trusting in the reliability and even less in the evaluation of objectivity and sensitivity towards cultural diversity. All the reform’s promises, including INEE, are in question. The race to show results in a six-year term, the lack of institutional capacities (including the blunted INEE supposedly the guarantor of the new evaluation), the lack of technical capacities to evaluate complex processes that the reform raised and the feeble public debate (that stonewalled a serious discussion of the reform) have led to the whole reform being subjected to the legitimization needs of the dominant government cadre.

Conclusion Evaluation of learning, teachers’ performance and the other components in the education system are necessary but not sufficient to improve educational quality. In other countries where evaluation has been the sole method, the results have been disappointing and have demoralized teachers and bamboozled them with the daily torrent of papers and tests without improving their practice. What comes out of all of these is that resorting to mere control and demands will not suffice. We need to have strategies to improve education conditions from below and with institutional support. The current reform has not been based on a diagnosis and neither has made explicit the connections between a labour and administrative reform and the quality of learning. If we assume, we must insure that they have the right conditions to do it, not only with good infrastructure and equipment, but with a conducive institutional ethos that includes competent and sensitive head teachers and advisers who are indispensable for the finely tuned process of learning. This should be the main purpose of any intervention that seriously seeks to improve educational quality. This cannot be rushed to fit the six-year political timetable. The reform not only lacks a diagnosis but also assumes a hegemonic narrative that some civil societies of entrepreneurial linings, like ‘Mexicanos Primero’, are taken on board. Their discourse lays the fault and the problems in the education system at the door of the teachers for their incompetence and corruption. In one fell swoop they disqualify teachers in basic education, most of whom are women, and create a climate of mistrust and impotence among them. This has to be reversed in order for any reform to prosper, particularly in the pedagogical field. By disqualifying teachers, all the reform did was to antagonize them, the very

Mexico: Assessing the Current Educational Reforms

103

people needed to take forward the administrative changes (like the centralization of teachers’ salary). The reform initiated did not address the fact that poor children are provided least material and pedagogical resources in schools. Three years from the beginning of the reform, the pedagogical initiative lost its way. The 2011 curriculum continues in use with its confused pedagogical tenets. The most they have been able to do is correct the innumerable errata and some other minor improvements in the textbooks. In the way it was set out, the reform has the potential to achieve the necessary administrative shake up, recover resources that were siphoned off from education budgets, reduce corruption in recruiting teachers and promote them to higher posts. All these would represent a great advance by a system in crisis, where its resources have been embezzled since 1972 for political ends by leaders of SNTE in cahoots with government officials. In order to transform the curriculum and educational practice and create a stimulant school ethos where real team of teachers commit themselves to the daily innovation necessary to create a new education proposal, based and centred on the development of intellectual abilities, this will need new strategies for teachers’ training. These two fundamental elements are absent from the current reform, making it merely an administrative and labour reform. Today, the reform is seen in the schools as a threat. There is a general sense of fear and teachers are stressed out. In this environment, pedagogic innovation to improve students’ learning is out of the question. It is equally powerless to improve test results, which is the indicator the reform promoters really care for in order to get a better ranking in the international league tables.

Notes 1. ‘The State guarantees quality in compulsory education through providing appropriate learning methods and material, school organization, infrastructure and the properly trained teachers that guarantees the highest students’ achievements’. 2. This norm applies with some adjustments, according to constitutional rights, to ensure that these new norms are not retroactive. Though teachers could be removed from their teaching responsibilities but not dismissed, they would be reassigned to other responsibilities or given the option of early retirement (Ibid, transitory Article 8). 3. The National Teachers Professionalization Programme (CM) since 1993 had acknowledged this function through its ‘third category’; the first was for in-service teachers and the second for head teachers and supervisors. However, there were no provisions for promotions.

104

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

4. Benefits obtained in carrera magisterial could not been rescinded under the new arrangements (Ibid., transitory Article 10). 5. From 1993, with the carrera magisterial and subsequent modifications made in 2011 under the Alliance for Quality Education, the students’ test results have continued to account for up to 50 per cent of teachers’ scores together with the teachers’ own test results. 6. This is the presidential initiative presented to Congress to reform the Constitution in educational matters, Diario de los Debates, 11 December 2012. 7. ‘Specific policy recommendations on the development of a comprehensive in-service- teacher evaluation framework’. http://www.oecd.org/edu/ school/48481142.pdf 8. In 1992, the federal government, the state governors and the national teachers’ union signed the Basic Education Modernization Agreement that among other things delegated basic education services and teaching training to the state educational secretariats. This was done in order to bring down educational services closer to their point of delivery. 9. The ACE anticipated creating open competition mechanisms for teachers, head teachers and inspectors. The last of these is yet to see the light of day.

Bibliography Fuentes Molinar, Olac. ‘Las tareas del maestro y los desafíos de la evaluación docente’. Rodolfo Ramírez, coordinador, La reforma constitucional en materia educativa: alcances y desafíos (México: Instituto Belisario Domínguez del Senado de la República, 2013). Martin Christopher y Elsa Guzmán Flores. ‘El impacto de los exámenes nacionales en la política y la práctica educativa en México e Inglaterra’. Cero en Conducta, 23, no. 54 (México: Abril, 2008). Ornelas, Carlos. Educación, colonización y rebeldía: la herencia del pacto CalderónGordillo (México: Siglo XXI, 2012). Peña Nieto, Enrique. Discurso durante la promulgación de la reforma constitucional en materia educativa, 25 de febrero de 2013. Disponible en http://www.sep.gob.mx/es/ sep1/DiscursoEPN250213#.VrSzl_EWElA (accessed28 November 2016). Presidencia de la República. Pacto por México (México: Presidencia de la República, 2013). Presidencia de la República. ‘Iniciativa del titular del poder ejecutivo federal con proyecto de decreto que reforma y adiciona diversas disposiciones de la Constitución Política de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos, en materia de educación’. Gaceta Parlamentaria (México: Cámara de Diputados, 11 de diciembre de 2012).

Mexico: Assessing the Current Educational Reforms

105

Presidencia de la República. ‘Iniciativa de Ley General del Servicio Profesional Docente’. Gaceta Parlamentaria (México: Cámara de Diputados, 16 de agosto de 2013). Ramírez Raymundo, Rodolfo. ‘La reforma constitucional en materia educativa: ¿una nueva estrategia para mejorar la calidad de la educación básica?’. La Reforma Constitucional en Materia Educativa: Alcances y Desafíos, Rodolfo Ramírez, Coordinador (México D.F.: Senado de la República, 2013), 123–40. Rockwell, Elsie. ‘La complejidad del trabajo docente y los retos de su evaluación: resultados internacionales y procesos nacionales de reforma educativa’, en Rodolfo Ramírez, 2013 (Ibid): 77–109. Schmelkes, Sylvia. ‘La evaluación del desempeño profesional docente’, en Rodolfo Ramírez, 2013 (Ibid): 111–22.

7

Mexico: Summary and Conclusions Christopher Martin, Charles Posner and Elsa Guzmán

No reform, no matter how far-reaching and comprehensive, is worth its salt if it cannot be implemented. The four preceding chapters have concentrated on the inconsistencies of the current reform package. Each author has suggested that part of the problem is an endemic case of institutional paralysis. Hence, we must spend some time examining how and why the system itself impedes, paralyses and even nullifies even the finest of reforms. We do so by trying to see what actually goes on at the school level, the point where any educational policy’s worth has to be assessed. We conducted systematic field research and gathered comprehensive set of almost 200 interviews carried out in eleven states with key personnel and stakeholders: state secretaries of education, director general of education, directors of preschool education, directors of primary education, directors of secondary education, coordinators of the key subjects of mathematics, science and Spanish along with local experts in education, parents and/or representatives of parental bodies, business leaders and trade union secretaries and representatives. This was backed with action–research interviews at the level of schools in the same eleven of the thirty-two states. Let us for the moment assume that the reforms or at least the impetus behind the reforms, despite much criticism and, indeed, misinterpretation, are on the whole worthy of implementation. For the moment let us leave aside the problems that many commentators have addressed, which is that successive Mexican governments have failed to consult with stakeholders at all levels in their construction. One of the reasons for this not being done is that the government assumes that now that impediments against the powerful trade union that could veto programmes have been removed there are no longer any major barriers to implementation, or that consultation could just replace union opposition with state administrations’ resistance and civic contestation. This has indeed occurred in the past few years in the states of Oaxaca, Guerrero and

Mexico: Summary and Conclusions

107

Zacatecas, among others. Other sources of opposition come from within the educational system. Corporatism and clientelist practices are the very stuff of bureaucratic relationships and frequently override purely technical, rational intentions behind policy reforms. As such it is worth asking whether an administrative favourable context and adequate mechanisms for implementation exist. The answer to the question is both yes and no. Yes, because institutions and institutional processes do exist but the problem is that there are too many of them and they lack coordination. For example, when a state government wished to set up institution for educational research and development, it found that there were already just under twenty such bodies, some local and some federal, that had been set up at various times over the past thirty years. Their functions overlapped, and they were manned directly and indirectly by different interest groups with allegiance to sometimes competing forces. Many were ghost institutions but even with that status they could still prevent a new organization from entering their territory. That is, they could make it impossible for any new initiative to be introduced. No, in part because the incoherence within state ministries and between state ministries and the federal government is such that it is impossible to delineate responsibilities properly. The overlapping of functions is one reason, but given that many of these institutions are bodies that employ political cronyisms irrespective of the validity and utility of a programme, they are blocked at least until the existing groups can negotiate their way into the new institution and process. This incoherence extends down to the level of the school. But cronyism extends beyond this particular manifestation. In the same way that Merilee Grindle found that interpersonal loyalties prevailed over rational bureaucratic relations in her 1977 study of CONASUPO,1 the government subsidized food distribution body, so the same has been found in the educational authorities. This means that any reform is filtered through political networks. An example is the reading programme set up in the Fox era (2000–2006). At local-level conflicts between political groups as well as between different bureaucracies effectively stymied children’s readers arriving at significant number of schools. As implementation means negotiation here, scientific political horse-trading that more often than not often supersedes argument overrides if not nullifies the best of new plans and proposals. Also, as the decisions are made at the highest level of the federal government, frequently in collaboration with international institutions, there is a danger of ignorance of the real as opposed to the official system of negotiation.

108

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

These problems were highlighted by two OECD reports as well as internal discussions within the Secretaría de Educación Pública. Almost ten years have passed since the Mexican government accepted a list of twelve recommendations proposed by an OECD team. These were prepared with the structural problems that we listed above in mind. Successive government have cherry-picked the list, excluding those proposals that had to do with structural reform such as a greater involvement of stakeholders, the enhancement of autonomy of decision making and the provision of extra resources to poorly performing schools. Even those reforms in the government invested much time and effort such as the establishment of curriculum standards like so many other reforms were abandoned. Significant advances still remain to be made in developing collaborative programmes for schools leadership, regional autonomy and involvement of parents in school governance, which have been so successful in other countries. Based on the 2010 study mentioned above we outline below findings from the study that speak of fundamental obstacles to the implementation of the reform policies as experienced by those directly involved in it.2 The findings of this report dovetail nicely with the conclusions of the earlier chapters. If a new viable, transparent, robust and sustainable reform is to be successfully implemented, there must be institutional backup. This requires a thoroughgoing reform of the agencies responsible for education, better and more relevant training of the agents responsible for delivery, a more effective use of devolved institutions and an improved articulation between them and the centre.

1 Devolution Until recently there has been a considerable and inexorable shift of tasks and responsibilities from agencies of the federal government to newly created bodies in the states to take on responsibility for basic education. Currently some of these devolved tasks are being recentralized. Nevertheless, our research elicited strong views on devolution. Training programmes were initiated at state level. New institutional approaches to research and development were established. The result is that we now have in most states a sufficiently large group of experienced researchers and practitioners to constitute a critical mass for the introduction and maintenance of those kinds of reforms that are required to develop and sustain a relevant curriculum, pedagogy, systems of evaluation and viable and sustainable curriculum standards as well as standards of achievement.

Mexico: Summary and Conclusions

109

Many of the states are champing at the bit in their eagerness to play a greater role in educational organization, management and delivery. However, not all states are ready and possibly will never have the resources on their own to take charge of the system to the extent that is required. Most of our respondents saw further devolution of powers to the states and consortia of states as something approaching a panacea. Undeniably, states on their own or in combination with other states must be able to set up their own or independent procedures for research, development and administration. This must be done within a very broad and general set of standards fostered and coordinated by the federal government and after sufficient consultation between state authorities and educational stakeholders and in the light of feasibility studies. These state variations are the key to deal more successfully with problems such as intercultural education, relative poverty, other socio-cultural differences, very different productive bases, labour markets and different traditions of educational management and school organization. Variations between states are probably greater than variations between local education authorities in Britain or academies (regional education authorities) in France. One can improve educational delivery by, in a sense, localizing the curriculum, pedagogy, systems of evaluation and standards to fit the needs and possibilities of each state within broadly agreed parameters. Opinions gleaned from the Scott et al, study indicated that the decanting of power to create and sustain reforms should include the following: ●

●

●

●

●

●

Individual state’s ability to modify within reason the curriculum to suit local needs and possibilities. Appropriate pedagogic approaches to be organized and practised in each school in line with their needs and possibilities on a state and regional level. Amplifying and adopting within set parameters appropriate systems of evaluation to encourage rather than police learning (see Ramírez, earlier in this section). Within nationally set guidelines a viable system of standards of achievement is required. Collaborative research and development programmes based on variations of the action–research model should be established through appropriately organized entities as part of constructing and solidifying reforms. Development of relevant training programmes for school heads, teachers, trade unions, supervisors, administrators, advisers (ATPs) and parents. This could be done through independent institutes of educational research and development.

110 ●

●

●

●

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

The power to set up directly coalitions for all of these purposes with a group of other states without the direct involvement of the federal authorities. Encouraging a state that is performing well in one of the many areas of delivery to cluster with states that are performing less well. Provision of appropriate funding through a system of block grants without the federal treasury intervening in the process and second-guessing needs. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, devolution should not stop with the official authorities but include parents, the business sector and the community (see below). This process was set out in the National Agreement on Basic Education (ANMEB) and the subsequent Education Acts (1992 and 1993, respectively).

2 Rethinking local and national administration It is a matter of concern that communication between the federal authorities and the individual states is sometimes poor. Further, it is worrying that the communication itself is almost exclusively from the federal authorities to state officials with little in terms of ideas going from the level of the state to the federal government. The experiences and views from school level that feed upwards through the system are even less. It is equally a matter of concern that there is little real communication between states that does not in the first instance have to be channelled through the federal government. Additionally, there are a bevy of federal agencies that can communicate to local authorities, and there is no real evidence of coordination among them in order to deliver a coherent message. Within the states themselves, in many cases there is a federal and a state ministry, or its equivalent, with, again, little real communication between them. Indeed, they are often in conflict, as Carlos Ornelas in his chapter in this book points out. Many states have developed the know-how and expertise to develop their own systems of research and development. In many cases, their work, because it is based upon knowledge of local conditions and local possibilities, is superior to that of the federal government that simply does not have the knowledge or personnel to even know what is going on in terms of good practices in the states. As mentioned in our introduction and which is corroborated by Ramírez and

Mexico: Summary and Conclusions

111

the Turners, decision makers and senior administrators at federal and state levels seldom spend time in classrooms. Unfortunately, even parts of the academy tend to shy away from direct extended field experience. Another important observation is the poor articulation between preschool, primary and secondary school directors and equally poor communication between them and those who put reforms into practice. Equally, the role of supervisors and advisers is unclear. They, too, suffer from lack of contact not only within administrations but also among their peer group. As such they tend to be a law unto themselves at local level with the teachers under their supervision. In this capacity, but lacking technical leadership abilities, their leadership rests on their gatekeeping with respect to favourable or unfavourable conditions of work and benefits. This leads to frustration and confusion in the schools themselves and disillusionment among many capable educators. Therefore, it is important that the following be considered: ●

●

●

●

●

That before initiating even the process of conceptualizing new programmes by the centre, the federal government should consult with the states in a meaningful way in order to elicit their ideas based upon their experiences. That spaces be created for state agencies to communicate directly with each other in order to set up new programmes. That associations of states be established in which a leading state or school or a group of schools, which have developed good practices, share them with other states. That within each state clear line management be set up with a workable division of labour and systems to coordinate work at all levels. That seminars and workshops be set up on a state basis and through nationally convened meetings both for associations of peer organizations and for the discussion of new programmes, their feasibility, their development and their evaluation.

3 School management: Development of parent groups with resources and real powers In the 1980s, tentative steps were taken to involve parents in their children’s education by requiring states to provide help to establish organizations to represent parents. The 1993 Education Act made the Social Participation School Councils law. Under the current government, the devolution of school

112

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

management to local level has taken a further step towards giving stakeholders a greater say in their education. Under the new regulations, the school is empowered to seek additional resources for various purposes and to organize its chief functions according to its needs and circumstances. Two obstacles stand in the way of the successful operation of this potentially valuable measure. The first is the danger of schools being cast adrift, without sufficient resources, to carry out the extra tasks expected of them. Any way one looks at it, schools are already overloaded with administrative tasks (Alba Martinez Presentation to CENB conference 20011). Extra ones increase the chances that schools carry out increased activities with less and less care. The second issue is that school management can hardly be local, while schools remain subject to state and federal control on the key school-related issues such as the hiring of teachers, their salaries, the curriculum and national tests. The school councils continue to be run through the schools appointing the most vocal, well-known and compliant parents, making them more of a rubber-stamping process. Parents with distinct views are routinely excluded from participation or they exclude themselves from voicing their opinions. Additionally, although recent reforms in the councils have permitted parents and other community members to be consulted on educational and not just financial or practical matters, rarely does this happen. Teachers do not take kindly to what they consider interference in their professional turf (Martínez Bordon, Brach González and Martínez Valle (2007); Martin and Guzmán (2016)). As a result the parents and their National Parents Association representatives, who were interviewed, knew little of what went on in the school. Many spoke of exclusion from the school premises and the impossibility of arranging meetings with school heads and even teachers. We know from the experiences of other countries that parents can play an important role in making the school more effective, and in México itself there are good examples of parents working side by side with teachers, hence diminishing the fear held by many teachers that the parents would challenge their authority by intervening in educational matters that should not be their concern (inter alia Martin in Barba and Zorrilla, 2008). We know that if parents are fully consulted and hopefully play a part in the operations of the school, the school itself becomes a more solid institution and both heads and teachers benefit from the work done by parents. We therefore strongly recommend that all state authorities take advantage of the move towards a more coherent and independently monitored system to

Mexico: Summary and Conclusions

113

engage parents in discussion about the meaning and essence of these standards. This could help educational performance and serve as the basis for more cooperation to achieve educational aims. Such an expansion in the role of the parents in school implies provisions to be made so that the school becomes a more welcoming place and that teacher and head teacher evaluations include evidence of parental involvement. Additionally, it is important to organize seminars and workshops for the parents to keep them informed of educational changes, like the introduction of new standards or changes to the curriculum, pedagogic methods and systems and practices of evaluation. One possible way forward is to strengthen the alreadyexisting school councils. Another possible way forward is through the work of institutions of higher education, once they involve themselves in basic education or through the establishment of institutes of education that have as part of their brief the organizations of centres for educational leadership specifically created to do such work.

4 Pedagogical incoherence and teachers’ real working conditions Many interviewees, particularly the teachers, in the Scott et al. study, report how difficult it was to understand the jargon of the latest pedagogical reforms. We have already mentioned the contradiction existing between the official rhetoric of competencies and the reality of the high-stakes testing that has become the chief driver of the curriculum and teaching in general. Besides the incongruence of these two approaches, upgrading teaching methods and approaches to student learning is all too frequently folded into the production of new curricula and textbooks, rather than being incorporated as a distinct area for upgrading in teachers’ colleges and upgrading courses. Even in university courses (increasingly the preferred training institutions for educators), pedagogy is taught in the abstract through learning to use the text books. As such, teachers complain that they have never learnt how to connect the theories and instructions they have received to the classroom reality. Since this is diverse, typically substandard and with students from poor backgrounds, the lack of attention to practical pedagogy is a serious concern whose negative results appear routinely in the poor showing of México in the PISA and other league tables.

114

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

5 The internal political and administrative limits of the reform Each of the chapters in this section points to the central aspect of the reform, namely the professionalization of teachers. Over the past two decades international agencies have emphasized the centrality of teachers in improving educational quality. They are the single most important factor. From the late 1990s educational policy has echoed this aspect with the teacher professionalization programme (carrera magisterial), the increasing articulation of teacher evaluation to student tests (ENLACE) and the later ‘Evaluación Universal’ and now with the unified hiring and the centralization of teacher hiring and promotion via the INEE. The pitfalls of this tendency have already been mentioned in the introduction and are fully analysed in the contributors’ chapters. The point we wish to make here in the context of the overall reform efforts, which are the central concern of this section, is that if the understandable focus for teacher selection and promotion is henceforth to be based on apparently impartial, merit-based criteria, so must the rest of educational administration and governance. Unfortunately, this is not the case. The states and the union which have been increasingly sidelined resist or even sabotage impartial procedures, and use the powers they retain to undermine the efforts of teachers recruited under the new dispensation. The administrations at state and federal levels continue to recruit and promote through clientelist practices and do not undergo any of the rigorous evaluation procedures and retraining that are required of the teachers. Perhaps the greatest incongruity of all is that the very evaluation institution which had subjected teachers to the first of its reformed evaluations admits that 70 per cent of the schools lack qualified teachers, 4,900 schools lack classrooms and others lack basic infrastructure. Most suffer from the irregular practices mentioned above. Until these fundamental preconditions for latching and learning are rectified, the multiple-choice tests of teachers’ abilities would seem somewhat irrelevant.

Conclusions Finally, what we have done in this section is taking advantage of the experience of noted researchers and practitioners as well as in-depth reports to present the problems inherent in the latest round of educational reforms in México. We have therefore opened a discussion about why it will be exceedingly difficult

Mexico: Summary and Conclusions

115

to implement them because of the persistence of a retrograde and incoherent official system and the all-too-pervasive survival of a corporative system that by its very nature hinders, if not precludes, reform. The Mexican de facto system is both a highly centralized and incoherent system. It punishes initiative and enterprise at all levels and contrasts with the highly decentralized Finnish system so very much more successful than the Mexican educational system by any measure. What we have not done is to write out a list of proposals about how the impediments to the development of a successful system of curriculum, pedagogy and evaluation can be overcome and how new mechanisms can be created, converted or refined to accomplish such a task. The first reason for not doing so is that this was to be an operation in which ideas and proposals are generated from the schools, communities and stakeholders at a local level if implementation can ever be successful. The other reason is that in the thirtytwo states there is now a sufficiently large nucleus of young researchers strongly committed to enhancing educational achievement, and it is for them and not the México City-based advisers and researchers to take the next step.

Notes 1. Grindle, Merilee S. Bureaucrats, Politicians, and Peasants in Mexico: A Case Study in Public Policy (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1977). 2. This study was part of an Institute of Education team led by David Scott and backed up by Félix Álvarez Gómez. The team produced a report based on interviews conducted in eleven states of the republic. Of particular concern were the curriculum, pedagogy, school organization and community participation. We cannot in this limited space present our findings and conclusions. This will be the subject of a book to be published later this year.

Bibliography Grindle, Merilee Serill. Bureaucrats, Politicians, and Peasants in Mexico: A Case Study in Public Policy (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1977). Martin, Christopher J. ‘Las innovaciones de la educación popular en el mundo jerárquico de las políticas públicas’. In Valorando las innovaciones de la educación popular en México, edited by Margarita Zorrilla and Bonifacio Barba (Siglo XXI, 2008).

116

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

Martin, Christopher, and Elsa Guzmán, ‘Parental Participation in Schooling: A divorce of convencience’. Sinectica, 46 (2016): 1.19. Martínez Bordon, Arcelia, Teresa Bracho González y Claudia Osiris Martínez Valle. Los Consejos de participación Social en la Educación y el Programa Escuelas de Calidad: ¿Mecanismos sociales para la rendición de cuentas? (CIESAS y Universidad Autónoma de Veracruz, 2007).

Part Two

Central America and Panama

8

Costa Rica: Education as a Tool for Social Mobility Luis Carlos Morales Zúñiga

Introduction Because of a unique conjuncture of political, economic, social and cultural forces, Costa Rica, perhaps alone of the Latin American countries, had the opportunity to design and put into effect a system and practice of education as an instrument to bring about growth and social mobility. Because of the absence of such policies in other Latin American countries, we focus on the theme of education as a tool for upward social mobility. In terms of background, modern Costa Rican history is conventionally divided in two periods. First, the period between 1949 and 1980, which began with the ‘Foundation of the Second Republic’ and ended in 1980 with the advent of one of the country’s most severe economic crises that was made worse by the social disaggregation and civil wars suffered by other Central American countries. The second period ran roughly from 1980 to 2000 and was characterized by adherence to new economic policies and related social and political changes that challenged the existing system. During this period, the role of the state evolved from something approaching a welfare state akin to European models to one that emphasized the tenets of the so-called ‘free market’ with its concentration on foreign investment, technology and tourism and a corresponding diminution of the role of the state (Korten 1997). From 1949, when the army was abolished, a new configuration of the state called the ‘Second Republic’ emerged. From that time the focus shifted to an emphasis on the development of a modern and more equitable polity hallmarked by social welfare including a new concept and practice of education to hasten the development of modernism. During this period of accelerated social and

120

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

economic development, a strong middle class was created, and this new middle class became the spokesperson and defender of a system and practice of education that allowed its progeny to develop their social capital. For them, education was both the key to social reproduction and what was called ‘national growth’. However, after 1980, the country faced a tough economic crisis, and progressive social policies were weakened as policies based on economic and financial liberalization took hold. In addition to these changes, during the 1980s the Central American region as a whole suffered from the effects of a decade of civil wars. These also had consequences for Costa Rica, which faced, among other phenomena, a significant increase in immigration as large numbers fled their native countries to seek refuge in what appeared to be a haven of peace and opportunity. At the same time, there was a notable decrease in Costa Rican exports of traditional products that had underwritten the earlier period of expansion and a resulting period of worrying economic instability. These changes directly affected the Costa Rican educational system. One outcome was that the pronounced social mobility that had underwritten the expansion of the middle class and provided a means for those whose parents were engaged in the primary sector to move to less onerous employment came to a dramatic halt around 1980 and was not resumed during subsequent years. In more recent times, the external and internal context has changed again. There are no longer civil wars in Central America. Costa Rica has achieved a relative political and economic equilibrium and the welfare index is superior to that of other Latin American countries. However, the educational system has not recovered its capacity to provide the upward social mobility it provided from 1949 to about 1980. Theoretically, social mobility implies a chance to move from one point to a higher one in the social structure. According to Hout (2015: 102), social mobility is a social phenomenon that has atleast four major characteristics: The accumulated knowledge to date emphasizes four points: (1) Framing the question as one of mobility – the difference in social standing from one generation to the next – raises the wrong questions. Replacing that focus on difference with the idea that social origins may be either a large or small constraint on adult success leads to clearer and more policy-relevant research. (2) People move both up and down in relation to others and their own origins. Economic advancement and differentiation play a very large role in the ratio of upward to downward moves. The stagnant wages and declining employment opportunities in the middle of the income and occupational distributions may be a bigger factor in Americans’ life chances than most discussions admit.

Costa Rica: Education as a Tool for Social Mobility

121

(3) Social origins include many factors. Although like goes with like to a first approximation – parental education correlates most with offspring education, parental occupations with offspring occupations, and parental incomes with offspring incomes – it is better to think of origins as a complex of family-related factors, including the structure of the family itself. (4) Origins have more impact on success for some groups than others.

As noted by Hout (2015), social mobility is a complex area of study. There are many different variables that are not easily controlled by the researcher. In this study, we will use measures of unemployment and labour conditions as the main variables to understand social mobility. The reason is that if a society that does not offer opportunities for good employment conditions or even jobs, even if there are high indexes of education in a society where upward social mobility is not possible, something is wrong. Therefore, this chapter intends to clarify from a sociological perspective what the chief characteristics of contemporary social mobility are in Costa Rica and its relation to education. Then, we will try to delineate the reasons why the educational system in the country is no longer functioning as an instrument for upward social mobility thus beginning to question the utility of contemporary educational systems and practices. This is important because an educational system based on the premise of developing material and human capital has functioned in Costa Rica longer than in any other Central American country. In other words, its path of development has been relatively unimpeded by revolutions, civil wars, civil disorder and abrupt changes in policy that have bedevilled other Central American countries. For that reason, it is possible to draw lessons from the development of its educational system and its failures and successes.

The Costa Rican educational system: A brief historical review Every educational system – as Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Claude Passeron point out – has to be reinserted into the logic and history of its own social formation (1990), which means that there is a dialectical or two-way interrelationship between sociohistorical reality and the structure, organization and practice of educational systems. Consequently, it is not possible to abstract socio-educative phenomenon from its correlative historical background. The last statement is as much a generalization as is every theoretical axiom. The only applicability of this construction can be observed if we focus on a specific and concrete educational system, which is, in this case, the Costa Rican

122

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

experience. This country has had its own social and political dynamic, in some ways similar but in many other ways significantly different from that of the other Central American countries. The years 1948 and 1949 constitute a significant watershed in Costa Rican history, not just because of the abolition of the army but because of the redefined state’s new role and its intervention in the economy and society through an enhanced participation in policymaking. The social dynamic that led to the rise of the interventionist state is the sociopolitical variable that distinguishes Costa Rica from the highly conflictive polities of the Central American region that were under dictatorships and experienced internecine civil wars during almost all the second half of the twentieth century (2003). Costa Rica was seen as a haven free from such destructive conflict. These changes modified the purpose, definition and the functioning of the educational system. In such an ambiance, educational institutions, innovations and practices made upward social mobility possible. We can summarize these changes as follows: The abolition of the army: After a bloody civil war in March and April 1948, José María Hipólito Figueres Ferrer (1906–90) and his National Liberation Army took power and began a social and political metamorphosis that transformed the country into an entity that outsiders called the ‘Switzerland of Latin America’. Once Figueres and his followers took political control, the abolition of the National Army was one of their first actions. There are different opinions about the real causes or motivations behind this action. However, more sanguine studies have led to the view that perhaps Figueres Ferrer knew that a standing army could be a threat to his own government, because if he took the power by means of a coup d’état, someone else could eventually do the same thing (Muñoz 2014). Establishing a system of social security: At the beginning of 1940, President Rafael Angel Calderón Guardia, Figueres Ferrer’s predecessor, signed into law what became known as the ‘Social Guarantees’, a package of progressive reforms whose main purpose was to improve the quality of life by dealing with three important issues: education, health and labour conditions. As part of a package of educational reforms in 1940, the University of Costa Rica, which is currently the biggest university in the country, was founded. The aim and programme of the new university was for the first time to offer higher degrees in professional development, research and hence provide more opportunities for whitecollar and professional employment.

Costa Rica: Education as a Tool for Social Mobility

123

At the same time, the government launched an ambitious system of healthcare and welfare called the Caja Costarricense de Seguro Social. This new institution was funded by the state, employers and workers to provide social security, healthcare and retirement pay for elderly. This was a new policy that had an immediate and great impact on the quality of life that led to an increase in life expectancy and a reduction in the mortality rate (Gutiérrez 2003). Another important innovation was a new labour code unheralded in Latin American countries that enhanced and established a series of new rights for the working population such as a legally defined working day with maximum hours, a minimum income, paid holidays and the right to protest without losing one’s job. The establishment of independent Institutions After 1949, fully autonomous institutions were set up to protect people at social risk and to promote national industry, agriculture and education.1 Their specific function was to contribute to economic and social development. For an in-depth analysis of these institutions the interested reader is referred to Jorge Rovira’s work on this period of Costa Rican history (1983). Democratization The 1948 coup d’etat and civil war were the last of their kind. Since that time Costa Rica has enjoyed a stable democratic system of the kind defined by Alain Touraine (1993). All these changes laid the basis for an educational system. Educational institutions and practices were now imbued with a new set of tasks closely related to the economic, social and political development of the country. As a result of all these changes, the educational system was recast, providing not only a universal coverage for every level, from elementary school to college education but a radically different system of curriculum, pedagogy and evaluation. Data confirms these changes. In the year 1950, the population of the country was 812,056, and there were 978 elementary schools and 56 high schools. Preschools did not exist until 1980. In that year, when the population reached 2,300,000, there were 415 preschools, 3,113 elementary schools and 381 high schools (Molina 2007). As a consequence of the growth of the educational system combined with the other social and economic policies, the country experienced a notable increase in social mobility. For that reason, the Costa Rican sociologist Rovira Mas (2004) called this period one of social orientated development, characterized by higher employment and improved indices of health and welfare and marked by economic growth and social development.

124

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

There is no doubt that the expanded educational system in Costa Rica after 1950 played a major role in making such economic and social progress possible. However, the economic crisis of 1980–2, the civil war in Central America from 1980 to 1990 and the neo-liberal economic reforms applied in the country after 1982 under the guidance of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank created a new context not as conducive to development and equity as the period from 1949 until 1979. The entire political, economic and educational system was changed to reflect this new configuration. But, what is happening now with the new context for education and social mobility in Costa Rica? In this our focus is now to understand the current Costa Rican experience.

A theoretical point of view on social mobility In general terms the concept of social mobility has been studied throughout the development of the social sciences from the perspectives of sociology, economics and statistics. In this review, we will examine the two major approaches that are fundamental to attempting to understand the dynamics of social mobility: Marxism and functionalism. Karl Marx attempted to understand the operation of social structures and the logic of the operation of social classes in the framework of capitalist societies. In his work, he outlined a theoretical overview of the possibilities of social mobility, which are subordinated to the economic structure, and the power relations between social classes. From the Marxist point of view, capitalist societies are composed of a ruling or dominant class and the dominated classes, making the upward social mobility a conflictive phenomenon and subsuming the phenomenon to power relations between social classes (Marx 1975). Societies are inherently unstable and conflictual until the source of that conflict, the social hierarchy and the unequal distribution of material and symbolic resources is destroyed. The theoretical stances of Talcott Parsons and the structural functionalism he inspired offer a very different perspective. The fundamental works of Parsons are The Structure of Social Action (1949), The Social System (2013) and Family Socialization and Interaction Process (1956). The theory is based on a concept of consensus rather than antagonism conflict that is characterized by the view that human societies are interrelated systems of groups (individuals) in which each group has a specific function according to the needs of each society as a whole. In structural functionalism, a society is a

Costa Rica: Education as a Tool for Social Mobility

125

self-maintaining system of interlocking roles, customs and beliefs underwritten by social stratification. Its functionality is hallmarked by the assignation of the individual to different positions and different remuneration with a strong sense of commitment to their roles. Given that the central element of Parson’s theoretical position is that stratification is absolutely necessary for the good functioning of society, this, of course, places limits on social mobility. Hence, a key concept in the work of Parsons is stabilization, and especially the idea of social stabilization underwritten by a shared central value system. This occurs when individual actions are given in a framework of rules, ideas, values and ways of thinking shared by those who act, and these actions are behaviours framed within what would be expected. That is to say, to achieve the stabilization of the social system, the action of an individual must be consistent and in the best cases gratifying to the rest of individuals who make up the social system. In this sense, the actions are favourable, and they should be, to achieve the mutual coexistence, and the possibility of a fully functioning society. A society in which the actions are not regulated and standardized tends to instability, and therefore is not functional for any of the actors. If a society achieves stabilization, it is because its members have internalized a set of values, ways of doing and thinking that are common to the collectivity; and after these ways of thinking have been internalized, such evaluative standards tend to become naturalized and also gain an ontological nature. For these reasons, the theory of Talcott Parsons has been considered as a conservative conception of society not allowing sufficiently for social change. Equally too rapid social mobility is not seen as something desirable and, indeed, dispensable (Ritzer 2007). Contemporary debates in the field of social theory then come to the conclusion that there is no single linear process of social mobility, but that there are different processes, depending on the social space in which we find ourselves, but especially in function of the capital that is at stake. In accordance with Tufiș and Alwin (2015: 2), there are at least two ways of studying the social mobility: There is no best way to approach the conceptualization and measurement of social position, and each of the above strategies has strengths and limitations depending on the research question being tackled. In the landscape of available options for conceptualizing and measuring social positions, the multidimensional approach (Alwin & Wray, 2005) and the micro-class approach (Weeden & Grusky, 2005) seem to be the most complex and to have a better conceptual grounding. The former would be better suited to capture social status

126

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

in conceptual frameworks that take into account various capitals (cultural, material, social, human, honorific) and it is also better adapted to capturing situations of status inconsistency. The latter is designed to delimit classes with a high degree of structuration that would more accurately capture the relationship between class and life conditions, in comparison to conventional big-class schemes. However, these two approaches also have extremely high demands in terms of required data in order to construct these measures and we do not always have the available indicators.

The problem, as can be seen from the approach of the authors, is in the data which are necessary to establish the positioning of the individuals in the social structure and, in addition, how to determine their movements through that structure. This theoretical position is really close to the conception of the social reality of Pierre Bourdieu (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992). Bourdieu’s theory has several core concepts that give consistency and have an explanatory capacity. It focuses on social reality and is, at the same time, a theory of the knowledge of the social. Within this theory we can consider some fundamental concepts. First, Bourdieu develops the concept of social field, which is a system of relations and interactions of force, in which the social actors move. The field is defined and delimited by a capital, something that is considered valuable in each particular field. For example, in the political field it is access to power; in the scientific field it is valued knowledge; and in the artistic field it is talent or virtue. Secondly, we have the concept of habitus, which is a set of practices that the social agents have internalized. It is the set of ways of doing, thinking and acting that an agent assumes due to a durable position in a given area of the field. Thirdly, the agent presents the concept of capital, which we have already mentioned is something that has value in the field for example, and therefore is something the agents who are in the field are trying to steal or achieve (Bourdieu 1993). The relationship that exists between these concepts is what gives form to the social theory of Pierre Bourdieu, because we have different social fields, in which the social agents (individuals) move, developing strategies to reach the capital that is at stake, or preventing others from reaching. The field of education is a good example of this theory, because in this field there is a capital at stake, that is, the culture, knowledge and academic degrees, and there are individuals with skills and differentiated strategies to regulate the distribution of capital that is at stake, which allows them to move in the field or in the social structure.

Costa Rica: Education as a Tool for Social Mobility

127

In the case of the contribution our aim is to delineate indicators and variables that are very specific and defined in order to establish these movements. Among such variables is, first, cultural capital, whose indicator is schooling, which is related to access to the educational system. The second variable is material capital that we will take into account as an indicator of the access to employment, as well as the salary that people get from that employment. Hence, in terms of this study social mobility is taken to be the result of the combination between access to cultural capital by means of the educational system and access to a well-paid work, and with good working conditions. Therefore, we will have upward social mobility when education enables access to a good job, with good working conditions. This will be the fundamental relationship that we will study in more detail in the next section, on the contemporary Costa Rican case.

Education and social mobility in contemporary Costa Rican society As we have discussed above, education has played a key role in the historical development of Costa Rican society. Since the abolition of the army in 1948, the groups in power have stated that the money that would have been allocated to maintaining a permanent army would instead be used for social welfare and, above all, for providing an adequate system – from preschool to college. This commitment is part of every government’s discourse about education. Since the advent of an ideology based upon social welfare replacing a permanent army, the idea of the individual and social utility of education has deeply penetrated into the collective unconsciousness as nowhere else in Latin America. The shared political discourse about the utility and commitment to education has become something of a catechism. There are three components to the popular conception of education. The first is an idea that in Costa Rica the only army that exists is an educators’ army, as declared by the former president Jose Figueres Ferrer when he abolished the army on 1 December 1948. He declared, ‘I do not want an army of soldiers, but one of educators’ (Figueres 1989). Since that time, and up to the present day, this idea has been very important in how the Costa Ricans see themselves, and even in the way Costa Rica is viewed from outside. The second collectively held supposition is that if you want to be someone in life, you need to study. While it is impossible to locate the origin in this

128

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

widely held assumption to any particularly person, it dominates thinking about education. When young people are asked about their motivations for study, they invariably reply that they are studying in order to be someone in life. This idea has strong implications sociologically, at the level of socialization and educational socialization, as it means first that studying is something that has to be done because it defines us as individuals, and second, that, if study means to be someone in life, by contrast, a person who does not study is no one. The third assumption can be expressed in the commonly heard phrase, that is, if a person does not study it is because he/she does not want to. One implication is that those who abjure study will not go on to be someone in life. Another implication embedded in the social consciousness is that the educational opportunities offered by the state or private system are open to all to be taken advantage of. Hence, not to study is incomprehensible and if one does not study it is because one does not want to be someone in life. One can, of course, go even further in the analysis of the implications of these popular ideas. If we ask ourselves, what does it mean to be someone in life? To be someone in life means having schooling and everything that the school offers: academic degrees, a job and purchasing power. Hence, historically, Costa Rican society has seen education as a means of upward social mobility, and without doubt it played that role for a long time. However, the question that guides this study precisely is if currently education allows the same access to a job, security of employment and good working conditions. A question one must ask is how the Costa Rican concept of the strong correlation between upward social mobility and education fares at the present time. Costa Rica is one of the most highly educated countries in Latin America. The average number of years spent in education of the population over the age of eighteen is well above all other countries in the region and surpassed only by Panama. The fact that the adult population has had atleast a year’s more schooling than that of other Central American countries is not to say that the educational Table 8.1 Average schooling of the population over eighteen years, 2008 (percentages) Central America Total

6.4

Costa El Rica Salvador Guatemala Honduras Nicaragua Panama 8.3

6.8

4.9

5.8

Source: The Fourth Report on the State of the Region. CONARE (2011).

5.9

9.5

Total

Costa Rica: Education as a Tool for Social Mobility

129

landscape of Costa Rica is the ideal. When we look at the quality of education and also its relationship to social mobility and employability, we find a somewhat more disturbing picture and one that is not necessarily improving. To start with it is important to refer to recent data concerning the evolution of social mobility in order to develop a panoramic view of the relationship between education, professional training at the university level and the Costa Rican labour market. Pre-primary and primary education last for six years. Coverage is all but 100 per cent at this level, although this masks the problem of accessibility to schools particularly in rural areas where class sizes also tend to be larger. The youth literacy rate is 98 per cent. While on average the teacher–pupil ratio is 1:17, it is much greater in more deprived areas. Moreover, despite the advent of government programmes like ‘justness of gender’ programmes for indigenous education and special needs education given to just over the 10 per cent of the population with disabilities designed to compensate for inequality, many still cannot afford school uniforms and there is a paucity of books in rural areas. Teachers are less inclined to work in such schools. Pre-primary education that naturally gives a head start is received by 73 per cent of the relevant age cohort but, again, those in attendance in rural areas are lower. These programmes have made a difference as the ratio of girls to boys has increased in favour of girls and is now 110.3. But in state education, on the whole the length of time spent in the classroom is only 3.5 hours, whereas in private schools it is between 7 and 9 hours each day. Despite this, over recent years enrolment in private primary schools has declined from 13 per cent in 2001 to an estimated 10 per cent in 2012. The recorded dropout rate has also declined from just over 5 per cent in 1995 to 1.7 per cent in 2013. Another problem is that many schools must work on a shift system: a morning session and an afternoon session, causing all the problems that occur when there is not a continuous day. Also, in many rural areas one teacher must cover all subjects and age groups. Forty-one per cent of schools operate in such a way as Muñoz (2014) has pointed out. Secondary schooling is of five or six years’ duration depending on whether a pupil is placed in the academic (five years) or the technical stream (six years). As elsewhere, as since being in the technical stream lacks prestige and parents with financial means take their progeny out of state schools and put them into secondary schools that tend to specialize in preparation for higher education where the chances of enhancing their cultural capital are greater.

130

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

The first three years of secondary education are devoted to general education after which the pupils are separated into academic and technical streams. About 62 per cent of the relevant age cohort receive secondary education. The dropout rate at 10 per cent in 2013 was considerably higher than that of primary schools. However, it was a decline from an estimated 17 per cent in 1995. The ratio of girls to boys was 123.6 overall. However, in 2012 about 19 per cent of the teachers were not trained at a university or equivalent institution. Although in principle education is free, many cannot afford the required school uniforms and many rural schools lack such facilities as books and interconnectivity. In the state sector the average school day spent in the classroom is 3.5 hours, whereas in private schools attended by about 10 per cent of the eligible cohort classroom time spent is double. The repetition rate according to the United Nations is 5.3 per cent at the primary level and 9 per cent at the secondary level. The dropout rate from secondary schools declined from 17 per cent in 1995 to about 10 per cent in 2013. In primary schools during the same period it declined from over 5 per cent to 1.7 per cent. If schooling is concerned with promoting equity and stimulating talent, the Costa Rican system suffers from a number of points where children who already do not have cultural capital suffer; those in private education with more times spent in the classroom and greater concentration of academic subjects have a distinct advantage. Those in urban areas and those not subject to a shift system are also advantaged. Those with parents who push academic learning rather than finding a job as soon as possible also prosper more than a child from a rural area with little or no cultural capital and no financial support to buy learning materials; studying in a shift system are those who find that the school does not allow them to apply and recognize their own systems of knowledge. While Costa Rica has advanced more than other Latin American countries in terms of educational coverage, the area called ‘quality of education’ has yet to receive the attention that it requires. While the disadvantaged meaning marginal groups are relatively fewer than in many other Latin American countries, they are nonetheless great. Attention has more recently shifted to higher education that has expanded enormously. The private sector has grown much more rapidly than the state sector and specializes heavily in academic subjects that are relatively cheap to teach and also to a growing clientele that cannot find places in the state sector. The disjuncture between demand for education and supply for the job market has become worrying, and for that reason we will concentrate on that sector.

Costa Rica: Education as a Tool for Social Mobility

131

According to the latest Report on the State of the Region (CONARE 2015), in Costa Rica there are sixty-three institutions of higher education. Of these only five are public, five are international and fifty-three are private. With approximately 4.5 million inhabitants this represents a large number of institutions of higher education. Moreover, in 2013, as Figure 8.1 indicates, the number of those receiving university degrees increased to 46,347 – a substantial increase since 2005. The growth of private institutions outstripped that of public universities. The problem is that many of today’s graduates find a mismatch between their training and what is on offer in the job market. What makes the situation more critical is not only the need to find employment but the need to pay off loans for their studies as well, in order to aspire for an acceptable standard of living. Previously, there was no such mismatch. According to the Fifth Report on the State of the Region (CONARE 2015), 80 per cent of the students who incurred such loans to finance their studies were located in health sciences, offered by private universities. Part of the mismatch, as Figure 8.2 indicates, is the relationship between the type of work people do and their level of education. The percentages of employment by level of education show on the one hand that the education without doubt remains essential for the processes of upward mobility; therefore, the higher the level of education, there is a greater chance of getting a job which requires a good level of education, and it will be better paid than those that require a lower educational level; and on the other hand, 60000

45000

30000

15000

0 2005

2007 Total

2009 Public universities

2011

2013

Private universities

Source: The Fifth Report on the State of Education, CONARE, 2015

Figure 8.1 Certificates awarded by the higher education institutions in the period 2005–13.

132

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

Percentage numbers

100

75

50

25

0 2005

2007 No education Incomplete primary school Total

2009

2011

Complete primary school Incomplete high school

2013 Complete high school College education

Source: The Fifth Report on the State of Education, CONARE, 2015

Figure 8.2 Employment rate by level of education 2005–14.

data shows that higher education in Costa Rica does not necessarily guarantee a job, because over the course of the series that shows the historical chart, from 2005 to 2014, the percentage of people who have a university education and employment does not exceed in any case 75 per cent. Therefore, one of the conceptual relationships that we have set as a way to capture the social mobility, the relation between education and employment, in the case of Costa Rica, introduced negative data, which shows that only 75 per cent of university graduates have the chance to get employment and that percentage decreases as the level of education decreases. Moreover, we have the open unemployment rate, which is understood as the percentage of people who are immediately available for work, but cannot find employment, and that allows us to have a more accurate view of unemployment by the educational level of the people. Figure 8.3 shows the data of open unemployment by educational level from 2005 to 2014. In the case of open unemployment according to educational level, the data show two characteristics. The first is that the overt unemployment is higher in the groups with a lower educational level, and the second feature is that in all educational levels, despite having had some declines especially in 2008 and 2010, the general tendency is that the open unemployment increases gradually. As with the previous data, it is clear that the upward social mobility that the Costa Rican society expected is not as giving as it would like to, and that despite

Costa Rica: Education as a Tool for Social Mobility

133

Percentage numbers

16

12

8

4

0 2005

2007 No education Incomplete primary school Total

2009

2011

Complete primary school Incomplete high school

2013 Complete high school College education

Source: The Fifth Report on the State of Education, CONARE, 2015

Figure 8.3 Open unemployment rate by level of education 2005–14.

education scoring differences of social mobility with respect to the educational level, in not all cases it turns out to be the means by which people succeed in improving the life chances. In addition, while overt unemployment is lower for university graduates than for those who did not attend institutions of higher education, as the graph earlier shows, higher education is no longer a guarantee of getting a job. The data demonstrate that the hitherto positive relationship between education and upward social mobility is no longer as it was and education is no longer a guarantee of social promotion. In individual terms, it has become more difficult for university graduates to satisfy basic needs, and in economic and social terms it can lead to increased instability. A well-educated unemployed cohort is often a source of social problems and unrest. *** Other elements that affect social mobility are structural problems like the frequency and rate of school dropouts, as we have seen above, and the differences in the quality of education offered by public and private education. These aspects of education in Costa Rica are real problems for upward social mobility, because the success and the possibilities to have a better quality of life depend on the type of education that every person can access. These phenomena can explain some structural and functional problems, because it is not only a matter of distribution but also a matter of the purposes

134

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

of the educational system: such as an important part of the entire social system, and it has to do with the idea that society has for personal development of each individual. Regarding dropouts, data from the Fifth Report on the State of Education (2015) indicate that the country’s total dropout rate is 9.4 per cent. However, behind that general percentage are significant differences, based on whether a school is a private or a state school and whether pupils attend during the day or the evening. This indicator is important because it shows that the chances of upward social mobility through educational success are different depending on the type of education received. The dropout rate from private schools is about one-tenth that of state schools. Young people who attend afternoon and evening classes are four times more likely to drop out than those being educated during the day. Just over one-quarter of those attending evening classes drop out. The differences are glaring. Access to private education, and especially quality private education, is reserved for families who have a high purchasing power, as most elite colleges require considerable investment in economic terms, and most of the population cannot afford it. On the other hand, the night school is the destination of those who, because of economic necessity, must work during the day. It is important to note that most of those enrolled in these institutions have already dropped out of daytime education and are also older, some having families to support and often having had to work long hours. They are in effect what we call ‘double dropouts’. Given the fact that the strong correlation between remaining in school and socio-economic background goes against the state’s policy of providing equal opportunities for all, a new programme designed to lower the rate of dropping out of school called ‘AVANCEMOS’ was put into effect in 2007. It consisted of providing socio-economic support for the most disadvantaged young people with the aim of allowing them to continue their educational careers. The outcomes of this programme have not been entirely positive. Research undertaken by Vargas, Gonzalez and Rodriguez (2013) indicate that although

Table 8.2 Average dropouts by education type in Costa Rica (percentages) Country total 9.4%

Private education

Public education

Daytime education

Night education

1.3%

11.7%

7.8%

26.9%

Source: The Fifth Report on the State of the Education. CONARE (2015).

Costa Rica: Education as a Tool for Social Mobility

135

the overall dropout rate declined from 12.9 per cent in 2014 to 9.9 per cent, a measure of classroom success shows that at approximately the same time the rate of success had fallen from 86 per cent in 2003 to 79 per cent in 2013. This implies that it is necessary to look carefully at the relation between retention rates and school success. It is probable that many lower-achieving students remain in school only in order to continue to receive financial support. That is, remaining in school does not mean that a young person who does so will be successful in academic terms. This phenomenon was observed by Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Claude Passeron (1979) in their study, when they pointed out that educational reforms focused on the economic aspect of the problem are bound to fail, as the cultural capital is a determining factor in school success: Thus, the mechanisms which Ensure the elimination of working-class and lowermiddle-class children would almost Efficiently operate as (but more discreetly) in a situation in Which a systematic policy of providing scholarships or grants made subjects from all social classes formally equal vis-à-vis education. (p. 27)

The scholarship programme designed to allow and encourage young people from relatively under-deprived backgrounds is both relatively modest and cannot fully compensate for the economic, social, cultural and even psychological factors that impede their progress. These key components behind social mobility have not been sufficiently studied nor countered in the Costa Rican context. In the case of Costa Rica, it is clear that education success and the accumulation of cultural capital necessary to achieve social mobility are conditioned to the already-existing cultural and economic capital of the family. Normally one focuses upon this in terms of access to higher education but as Bernstein maintains it is equally as true for all levels of education. The factors weigh heavily in terms of access to the labour market. In truth, there is relatively little upward social mobility, and this will continue until the system and practice of education deals with this problem. However, a consideration of social mobility must also take into account a change in function that is often confused with a change in habitus. One must take into account changes in the socio-economic structure and productive formations that the country has experienced. Like many Latin American countries, Costa Rica has undergone a process that has been based on the transformation of traditional rural production system into a new system that is urban, based on technology, tourism, export of non-traditional products and services, which necessarily implies a reorientation of the education system.

136

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

This new direction is characterized by specialized training that allows new generations to acquire the knowledge and tools to be able to enter what is a new labour market. However, it is important to note that every new production structure has not only new functions and hence a new occupational structure but also its own dynamics, characteristics, hierarchy and social mobility system. Thus, a society can move from one productive structure to another, which is a form of social mobility, but this new production structure also has high, low and middle socio-occupational layers. In Costa Rica, this form of mobility is clear; in the tourism, technology and tertiary sector in general, there is a sociooccupational hierarchy. The interesting thing is that this hierarchy and the possibilities to up the social scale depend on education and cultural capital that social agents have acquired. That is, education remains a determining factor in social mobility, regardless of the production structure. This means that the chances of being located somewhere in the socio-occupational structure, and move to another point ascending, depend largely on the educational factor.

Final considerations As we have suggested in the preceding section, the long-standing Costa Rican belief that study leads to social promotion and enhancement of life chances no longer describes the relationship between education and society. The long-held view that through educational achievement one can secure one’s life chances and find a guaranteed niche in the labour market no longer holds. Higher education no longer offers such guarantees. While there is still a positive correlation between employment and level of education, it is no longer as significant as it was in the recent past. Even for those who have benefited from further and higher education the rate of unemployment is about 10 per cent. That is, there is no longer a guarantee that further and higher education can secure a job. Sociologists of education must begin to offer an explanation for these developments. In order to begin to understand this phenomenon, it is important to realize that while there are many variables at play, it is possible to begin by listing four basic reasons that possibly have led to this change: 1. The number of universities: As we have indicated earlier, in Costa Rica there are currently a total of sixty-three universities catering to an ever-increasing

Costa Rica: Education as a Tool for Social Mobility

137

number of students seeking to train as professionals. The number of degrees awarded has also greatly increased. As a result, the number of professionally trained graduates entering the labour market is higher than ever. But this has not been matched by a corresponding increase in the number of positions available. For that reason, it has been suggested that policies be put into motion that promote technical as opposed to professional education, which for a variety of reasons has not been a key element in the development of educational policy (CONARE 2011). The problem here is, how does one convince prospective students and their families that a technical education is as good as a professional one? This issue must be addressed with alacrity. 2. Education and the labour market: As we have suggested earlier, there is no regulation of the relationship between university education and the labour market in Costa Rica. The government, international bodies and enterprises have yet to estimate and plan for how many professionals can be absorbed into the labour market. Further they have not identified what sectors require or do not require new entrants. Private universities cater to wishes and any person can study any subject. The only filter is whether they can pay the fees required. Given the large number of private universities that exist, there are obvious imbalances between the supply of professionals and demands that the market sets for certain areas, for example, there is an oversupply of social scientists and educators, while there is a shortage of engineers (CONARE 2011). 3. Poor working conditions: Several authors have focused on the deterioration of working conditions experienced in recent times in most capitalist countries. It goes hand in hand with a reduction in social security and other elements of the welfare state. In Costa Rica the idea of a job for life, security of employment, has been replaced by the emergence of flexible contracts of work, part-time employment and a higher level of unemployment among those callings that hitherto offered security. As we have seen, this has had an effect upon social promotion and even aspirations. Analysts like Deranthy (2008) have pointed out that the contemporary labour relations are based on insecurity, risk and subject to casualization. This has also been stressed by Zygmunt Bauman (2000), who argues that contemporary societies have increasingly tended to the unstable and the creation of anxiety and uncertainty particularly among those social groups previously spared those problems. Hence, in Costa Rica, obtaining and holding on to a job is subject to greater uncertainty than in the past and education no longer offers the guarantees it did until recently.

138

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

4. Problems in the primary and secondary education: According to the Fifth Report on the State of Education (CONARE 2015), primary and secondary schools have less than adequate results. This is exemplified by the low scores the country achieves in the tests of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) applied to fifteen-year-olds. In particular, the scores in mathematics and reading comprehension are poor. Moreover, primary and secondary education in Costa Rica are not geared to provide a vocational education but are designed to train students to climb the academic ladder towards further and higher education. For that reason, young people whose education terminates at the end of primary school or during or at the end of secondary education are ill-prepared for the labour market, and levels of unemployment are correspondingly high. Costa Rica has then, a number of important problems that must be resolved quickly if future problems are not to be incurred. While it undeniably has one of Latin America’s finest educational systems in terms of coverage, stability, delivery and quality, an increasing imbalance between offer and demand in the labour market is a growing problem. This problem could well be the harbinger of similar problems that will arise in other Latin American countries once they achieve near-universal enrolment in their primary and secondary school system. The country has enjoyed an institutional stability rare in Latin America and relatively unmarked by the clientelism that has been the hallmark of relatively stable countries like Mexico, Chile and Argentina. The lesson of Costa Rica is that education has been, and will continue to be, one of the paths to development, and to achieve social welfare and equity, but this is contingent on developing educational policies and practices that allow the country to optimize the performance of the educational system, in order to achieve not only social mobility but also social welfare with which it is entwined.

Notes 1. These institutions are Instituto Nacional de Aprendizaje, 1965 (National Learning Institute), Instituto Nacional de Vivienda y Urbanismo, 1954 (National Housing and Town Planning Institute), Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad, 1949 (Costa Rican Electricity Institute), Consejo Nacional de la Producción, 1956 (National Council of Production), Instituto Costarricense Acueductos y Alcantarillados, 1961 (Costa Rican Institute of Aqueducts and Sewage System).

Costa Rica: Education as a Tool for Social Mobility

139

Bibliography Bauman, Zygmunt. Liquid modernity (Cambridge, England: Polity Press, 2000). Benhabib, Jess, Alberto Bisin and M. Mi Luo. Wealth Inequality and Social Mobility (2015). In 2015 Meeting Papers (No. 364). Society for Economic Dynamics. Boudon, Raymond. Education, Opportunity, and Social Inequality: Changing Prospects in Western Society (1974). Bourdieu, Pierre, and Jean-Claude Passeron. The Inheritors: French Students and Their Relation to Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979). Bourdieu, Pierre, and Jean-Claude Passeron. Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture. Vol. 4 (Thousand Oaks: Sage, 1990). Bourdieu, Pierre and Loic J. D. Wacquant. An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992). Bourdieu, Pierre. Sociology in question. Vol. 18 (Thousand Oaks: Sage, 1993). Clark, Gregory. The Son also Rises: Surnames and the History of Social Mobility (Princeton: Princeton Universito Press, 2014). CONARE. Cuarto Informe Estado de la Región en Desarrollo Humano Sostenible (San José, Programa Estado de la Nación, 2011). CONARE. Cuarto Informe Estado de la Educación (San José, Programa Estado de la Nación, 2013). CONARE. Quinto Informe Estado de la Educación (San José, Programa Estado de la Nación, 2015). Deranty, Jean-Philippe. ‘Work and the Precarisation of Existence’. European Journal of Social Theory, 11, no. 4 (Los Angeles, London, New Delhi and Singapore: 2008). Figueres, José, and Alfonso Chase. Escritos y discursos: 1942–1962: edición homenaje al 80 aniversario de su nacimiento (Costa Rica: Editorial Costa Rica, 1989). Gutiérrez, Guido Miranda. La seguridad social y el desarrollo en Costa Rica, Vol. 2 (EUNED, 2003). Hall, Carolyn, Hector Pérez Brignoli and John V. Cotter. Historical Atlas of Central America, 166–7 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003). Hout, Michael. ‘A Summary of what we know about Social Mobility’. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 657, no. 1 (2015): 27–36. Korten, Alicia. Ajuste estructural en Costa Rica: una medicina amarga (Editorial DEI, 1997). Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. Collected works. Vol. 10, Marx and Engels: 1849–1851. Lawrence & Wishart, 1975. Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. The German Ideology: Including Theses on Feuerbach and Introduction to the Critique of Political Economy (Collected works, Vol. 10, London: Lawrence & Wishart). Molina Jiménez, Iván. ‘Educación y sociedad en Costa Rica: de 1821 al presente (una historia no autorizada)’. Diálogos Revista Electrónica de Historia, 8, no. 2. (2007): 148–356; specifically p. 211.

140

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

Muñoz, Mercedes. ‘Costa Rica: La abolición del ejército y la construcción de la paz regional’. Historia y Comunicación Social, 19, 375–88 (2014). Neelsen, John. ‘Education and Social Mobility’. Comparative Education Review, 19, no. 1 (1975): 129–43. Parsons, Talcott. Social System (London: Routledge, 2013). Parsons, Talcott. The Structure of Social Action, Vol. 491 (New York: Free Press, 1949). Parsons, Talcott, and Robert Bales. Family Socialization and Interaction Process, Vol. 7 (New York: Psychology Press, 1956). Ritzer, George, and Jeff Stepnisky. Contemporary Sociological Theory and its Classical Roots: The Basics (Boston: McGraw Hills, 2007). Rodríguez, Marvin, and Yensi Vargas. ‘Análisis evaluativo de las transferencias condicionadas en Costa Rica: Programa Avancemos, periodo 2007–2013’ (ponencia presentada en el 3er. Congreso Internacional de Investigación Educativa ‘Educación y Globalización’, Instituto de Investigaciones en Educación, Universidad de Costa Rica (2013)). Rovira Mas, Jorge. Estado y política económica en Costa Rica, 1948–1970. Colección Debate (1983). Rovira Mas, Jorge. ‘El nuevo estilo nacional de desarrollo de Costa Rica 1984-2003 y el TLC’. In TLC con Estados Unidos. Contribuciones para el debate. ¿Debe Costa Rica aprobarlo?, edited by María Florez-Estrada y Gerardo Hernández, 309–46 (San José: Instituto de Investigaciones Sociales de la Universidad de Costa Rica, 2004). Touraine, Alain. ‘Situación de la democracia en América Latina’. In Democracia y democratización en Centroamérica, edited by Regine Steichen Jung and Víctor Acuña Ortega (San José: Editorial de la Universidad de Costa Rica, 1993). Tufiș, Paula A., and Duane F. Alwin. ‘Current Views on Social Class, Status, and Mobility’. International Review of Social Research, 5, no. 1 (2015): 1–3.

9

El Salvador: Past, Present and Prospects of Education D. Brent Edwards Jr., Pauline Martin and Irene Flores

1 Introduction The education system in El Salvador has traversed a number of turbulent periods in the past 200 years. Colonialism, oligarchic control, military regimes, efforts at modernization, civil war and international organizations have all left their mark. While the system remains at the centre of political, economic and social forces – each with its own impact – stakeholders from the school level to the central Ministry of Education (MINED) continue to dedicate themselves to the improvement of education. In what follows, we explain both the historical constraints on the system and more recent reform initiatives. We also characterize the overall organization of the education system in addition to detailing a number of more specific aspects, such as student enrolment, multigrade schools, curricula, teacher and principal training, parental involvement, student and teacher evaluation, and education financing.

2 Country and educational context in historical perspective El Salvador is a small country with a total area of 8,123 square miles and a population of 6,108,000, which makes for a very high population density. Official statistics from the 2007 census establish that 37.3 per cent of the population lives in rural areas and that there are 13,310 indigenous persons in the entire country, a statistic which indicates the much more subtle nature of racial differences in El Salvador than in the other Central American countries. It has a very young population, with 37 per cent of the inhabitants under eighteen years of age, and 22.6 per cent between the ages of ten and nineteen (UNICEF 2014a).

142

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

Throughout its history, El Salvador has been constrained economically and politically by certain conditions. For much of its history, from the 1600s onwards, the land that now makes up this country has been used primarily for coffee and sugar crops and has been owned by few individuals, colloquially known as the fourteen families. One historian characterized the indigenous and peasants of the 1920s as a ‘hungry, wandering labour force to be used at will by the oligarchy’ (La Feber 1993: 72). The local oligarchy has, in turn, been dependent on foreign economies – first, the Germans and the British, and, later (beginning in the 1930s), the United States – both to purchase El Salvador’s crops and to provide basic imports. The stability necessary to maintain the status quo was ensured by the military, which massacred 30,000 Indians and peasants in an uprising in 1932 and thereafter either held the presidency or backed all presidents until 1979 (La Feber 1993). The educational model of the oligarchic period effectively maintained class positions and consolidated the prevailing political and economic model (Cruz and Henríquez, forthcoming), despite liberal attempts beginning in the 1880s to modernize education, increase coverage and make it free from the church (Gonzalez, 2013). Twenty years after the creation of the Salvadoran republic, the first government office for education was opened in 1841, the same year that the first university was founded and a systematic attempt was made to open schools in towns with a population of more than 150 persons (Avilés 1995). In 1858, the first teacher institutes (known as ‘normal schools’) were founded to prepare teachers in pedagogy and morality, a strategy similar to the rest of Latin America, but with very little budget assigned and an inability to train enough teachers to meet the demand, even into the twentieth century (González 2014a). From this early time, public policy was strongly influenced by the Catholic religion as a moral and spiritual force that guided both public and private educational practice and curriculum (González 2014b). An international mission of professors from Germany provided support in 1924 to strengthen pedagogy courses and to introduce the model of three-year, full-time study for teachers to become certified (Picardo and Pacheco 2012). During the 1960s, quality of life for the average Salvadoran worsened – despite promising rhetoric from the United States around its Alliance for Progress programme, which was supposed to bring a peaceful revolution to Latin America through private investment, socio-economic reforms and support for moderate politicians. Instead, the oligarchs pushed peasants off their land (just as they had done in the 1920s), causing the number of landless families to triple between 1961 and 1971, at the same time that the top 1 per cent of Salvadoran families

El Salvador: Past, Present and Prospects of Education

143

earned more than the top 50 per cent of the poorest. Not surprisingly, rebels began to emerge in 1970 and their ranks continued to swell during the 1970s as the military-controlled government prevented the emergence of political alternatives and promised but repeatedly failed to deliver meaningful reforms. Increased mobilization of people against military governments during 1970s was accompanied by increased repression against peasants, unions, the Catholic Church and even educators: ‘Between 1972-1977, 150 teachers suspected of union activities vanished, three dozen others were killed, and the head of one teacher was placed in front of a school as a lesson for would-be reformers’ (La Feber 1993: 245). During this period, three different educational reforms were promoted that responded to national political, cultural and economic interests, including the 1968 educational television effort with heavy international support (Cruz and Henríquez forthcoming; Lindo-Fuentes and Ching 2012). Teacher training continued via the normal school model, with a total of sixtyseven public and private training schools until the reforms of 1968, which not only closed them and established one single Alberto Masferrar Normal City for training teachers (Avilés 1995) but which also introduced television as a method for delivering instruction and expanding access (a reform which weakened the role of the teacher and also contributed to the development of a contentious relationship between teachers and the MINED) (Avilés 1995; Cruz and Henríquez forthcoming; Lindo-Fuentes and Ching 2012). Civil war subsequently engulfed El Salvador during 1980–92. On one side were multiple revolutionary groups fighting for socialist reform of the economy and society that combined to form the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN). On the other side was the Salvadoran government, which received tremendous economic, social and military support from the United States because of the larger context of the Cold War. The magnitude of this support is evident when one considers that – during 1980–92 – El Salvador received $6 billion in aid from the United States, an amount forty times greater than the aid it received during 1963–79 (Robinson 2003). During the civil war period, education was basically forgotten as a priority and abandoned in many areas of the country (Gómez Arévalo 2011). In one single political move, the Alberto Masferrar Normal City was closed in 1980 for political and financial reasons, as teachers tended to be involved in the cry for change. This action is credited with the weakening of teacher training and the subsequent fall in education quality that is still felt today (Picardo and Pacheco 2012). Teacher training was initially handed over to unprepared technical institutions, then panned out to thirty-two private universities with diverse approaches and

144

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

plans, until a plan and supervision programme was implemented as a part of the post-war 1994 educational reform that returned teacher training to the MINED (Pacheco 2013). As the war carried on, a new group of businessmen rose in prominence thanks in part to support from the United States (Foley 1996; Quán 2005). In 1989, Alfredo Cristiani, of the right-wing Republican National Alliance (ARENA) party, was not only elected president but also turned his focus to stabilizing and liberalizing the economy and to finding a peaceful end to the conflict, out of a recognition that war was bad for the economy (LeoGrande 2000). Indeed, although Peace Accords were signed in 1992, reforms immediately prior to and following the end of the war were primarily in the service of business interests. The financial sector and the service industry have done well, agriculture less so (and, by extension, not rural Salvadorans) (Rosa and Foley 2000). By and large, reforms enacted have not addressed the underlying structural issues that led to civil war in the first place (Rosa and Foley 2000; van der Borgh 2005). As will be discussed further in a later section, not addressing the underlying economic problems has contributed to current social problems such as poverty, international migration, unemployment, gangs and violence. In the post-war period, three major education plans have been introduced and implemented (to varying degrees) that respond to the priorities of the political parties and international partners of the time (Edwards 2013; Edwards, Victoria and Martin 2015; Cruz and Henríquez forthcoming). These reforms and plans are the Ten-Year Plan (1995–2004), Plan 2021 (2004–9) and the Social Education Plan (SEP) (created for the 2009–2014 period, and continued for the 2014–2019 period). The first of these focused on increasing coverage (e.g. by creating a community management model and by improving infrastructure), improving quality (e.g. by focusing on curricular reforms and teacher training), modernizing institutions (e.g. by enacting legal reforms and decentralizing tasks to departmental offices throughout the country) and emphasizing values education (MINED 1995). In the second strategy document, Plan 2021 focused on raising the level of education (e.g. by setting an objective of eleven years of schooling for all and by introducing alternative delivery models) and on enhancing the competitiveness of the education system (e.g. by creating programmes for the introduction of science and technology in schools and English-language learning), among other goals (MINED 2007b). Recently, the government’s SEP – a very philosophical document – has focused on teaching disciplines (rather than individual subjects), teacher groups (as opposed to individual teachers), teaching students about their surroundings and developing

El Salvador: Past, Present and Prospects of Education

145

an inquiry-focused, ‘full-time’ school (that should exhibit a school–family– community connection) (MINED 2009). Education in El Salvador has been a historical construction, product of a vision of human development that responded to the interests of the elite and a mechanism that perpetuates social inequality (Gómez Arévalo 2011; Cruz and Henríquez forthcoming). Nevertheless, certain aspects of the present system, as described in the next section, are geared to transform the education system into a positive force for all Salvadorans.

3 Overall organization of the current education system The organization of the education system is a result of the legal framework established in the 1983 Constitution of the Republic of El Salvador, which states that education is an inherent human right as well as an obligation and aim of the state, which should guarantee its existence, development and diffusion (Article 53). The Constitution also states that citizens have the right and duty to study kindergarten and primary levels in order to be trained as ‘useful citizens’ (Article 56). Other important aspects of education defined in the Constitution are that education should be democratic and free from discrimination related to religion, civil status of parents and race; teacher training is the responsibility of the state; and parents have the option of choosing private education. The objectives and structure of the education system in El Salvador are established by the General Education Law passed in 1996, with eleven revisions to it through 2014. According to law, three forms of education exist: formal, non-formal (structured and experiential) and informal (spontaneous and unstructured). Formal education is regulated by the MINED and includes five levels: early childhood, preschool, elementary, secondary and higher education. Literacy is also characterized as a ‘public utility’ due to its high social importance. Table 9.1 describes each level of formal education. For all education levels, there are both private and public providers, with 18 per cent of students up through secondary level enrolled in private schools, mainly in urban areas (MINED 2014b). The General Education Law sets the guidelines for other aspects of the educational system, for example special education is offered in both specialized institutions and regular schools depending on students’ needs. Artistic, physical and sport education is defined and objectives set in this law. One of the revisions

146

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

Table 9.1 Levels of formal educational services Levels

Normative attendance age

Grades

Early childhood

0–3

–

Preschool

4–6

Primary

7–15

Secondary

16–17

Higher education

18–

Emphasis

Family and communitybased care and education (nutrition, stimulation, socialization, socioemotional development, language and cognitive development and so on) Kinder 4, Kinder 5 and School culture preparation, Kinder 6 (traditionally early literacy and math called preparatory awareness, social and level) natural environment awareness. First to ninth divided in National curriculum (core three cycles (first–third subjects), social values. grades; fourth–sixth; seventh–ninth) First and second year of National curriculum (core high school; a third and specialized subjects), year for technical social and democratic degrees. values Technical and university Professional-oriented degrees (undergraduate education: technical twoand graduate) provided year degrees; licentiate by universities, five-year degrees; and specialized institutions some specialized graduate and technical schools. programmes.

to the law establishes that all levels of formal education up to secondary are free in the public sector and students cannot be denied access to education for lack of uniforms, pregnancy or during the period of nursing a child, though this may happen unofficially. Another revision to the law defines that the MINED must have a gender equity policy, and that education must be free of sexist stereotypes, including sexist language. Salvadoran sign language is recognized by law as the official language of students who are deaf so educational services must be provided in their language. It should be noted, though, that legal requirements discussed in this paragraph are not consistently enforced or adequately provided by the education system.

El Salvador: Past, Present and Prospects of Education

147

Adult education includes basic literacy, night and weekend classes for all eleven grades. As a response to the high dropout rate, in 2006, under Plan 2021, flexible education modalities, such as blended classes (where classroom time is combined with independent work outside of school) and accelerated classes (a curriculum design that allows completing grades in less time) were created for young adults at the secondary level so they could finish their schooling. In 2012, as a part of the SEP, an online, 100 per cent virtual high school degree was introduced. In the 2014–15 period, 50,455 students in third cycle of primary and secondary studied in flexible modalities, including 722 high school students completely online (17 of who live outside of El Salvador), 714 in detention centres and an additional 5,360 youth and young adults in technical courses (MINED 2015). Higher education has its own law, and 69 per cent of students attend private institutions. In general, higher education is characterized by low enrolment, saturation of certain degrees and questionable academic standards. For example, 57.7 per cent of students who finish high school do not continue on to higher education; specifically, 50,000 high school graduates of a total of 83,776 in 2014 did not continue. There are a total of forty-one higher education institutions for this population, with twenty-four universities (one public), ten specialized institutions (six public) and seven technical institutes (three public). In general, there are few degrees offered, and there is saturation in areas such as economics, administration, law and marketing, which affects the job market. The exception is the public, national university, established in 1841 as mentioned above, that offers 76 academic degrees and is attended by a total of 46,799 students (MINED 2013). Only 2 per cent of professors have a doctorate, while 23 per cent have a master’s degree. Separately, 80 per cent of faculty in private universities are not full-time. As of 2015, the Salvadoran education system has a centralized structure with the MINED as the highest authority for all educational levels. The organizational structure includes two vice ministries: Vice Ministry of Education and Vice Ministry of Science and Technology. The next level of the organizational structure compromises national directors who oversee managers for specific programmes or areas that are administered at the central level. Geographically, there are fourteen individual departments throughout the country, each with a departmental director who oversees schools (K-12) in their department. The departments are responsible primarily for administrative tasks, while curriculum and other policy decisions are centralized and determined at the national level. More recent revisions to the organization of the MINED are discussed in a later section.

148

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

4 Nuts and bolts of the education system 4.1 Student enrolment, retention and dropout The Salvadoran education system can boast increases in coverage and gender parity since the early 1990s, spurred by actions to improve education by committed government officials, international institutions and non-governmental sectors of society (Rivas 2008). El Salvador has advanced in the enrolment of girls to the extent that in 2015 in every educational level after kindergarten the net coverage rate of girls was higher than boys. Boys may be more likely to support their family’s economic activities and may be more likely to abandon school because of gang-related issues, particularly once they enter Grades 7–9. Net enrolment rates and absolute enrolment by educational level are summarized in Table 9.2.

Table 9.2 Enrolment by educational level, sector and geographic location No. of students by sector and zone

Net coverage, by sex

Education level

Private

Public

% Rural

Total

Net coverage

Female

Male

Early childhood

4,441

4,222

028%

8663

1.4%

1.4%

1.4%

Kindergarten

41,037

191,939

047%

232,976

58.6%

59.7%

57.5%

Primary education (Grades 1–6)

97,382

675,839

054%

773,221

86.4%

87.6%

86.0%

Junior high (third cycle, Grades 7–9)

52,7306

329,993

044%

382,729

64.9%

67.9%

62.0%

High school (two years general, three years technical)

56,082

158,586

013%

214,668

37.5%

39.7%

35.4%

Night school primary education

0

4,217

011%

4,217

Special education

84

2792

004%

2,876

Higher education (2013 data) universities

114,366

48,212

–

162,578

Specialized institutes

2,819

5,861

–

8,680

Technical institutes

3,735

1,070

–

4,805

Sources: MINED (2013, 2014a).

El Salvador: Past, Present and Prospects of Education

149

As of 2014, a total of 1.35 million students were enrolled in K-12 public schools, with another 250,000 in K-12 private schools. This data evidences several challenges for the system. First of all, the coverage of early childhood education is overall very low and provided mostly by the private sector and in urban areas, indicating that families are mainly responsible for education in the 0–3 years range. Kindergarten enrolment has increased and rural net rates are at 47 per cent. Although primary education has the highest rate of enrolment of all education levels, it is disturbing that the 86.4 per cent net enrolment rate still implies that 181,955 children of primary school age are outside of the school system (MINED 2014a). One of the greatest challenges indicated by the enrolment table is the discontinuity of enrolment between levels, that is, the number of children who, upon completing sixth grade, do not advance to third cycle (seventh to ninth grade) and the even greater number of students who do not attend high school. The school system does not retain 100 per cent of students who successfully complete a level and does not guarantee that they continue studies in the following level. Other special student situations are that 5.9 per cent of enrolled students in primary education also work in addition to studying, 1.4 per cent of students in the regular system have some kind of special needs and 15.24 per cent of students with disabilities study in special education schools (MINED 2014a). A few key statistics related to internal efficiency are represented in Table 9.3. In Table 9.3, high school presents more difficulties than primary education, beginning with low enrolment as shown in Table 9.2. But the dropout rate is high, the passing rate lower than primary education and 10.6 per cent of students are overage by one year or more. These rates provide particular challenges to teacher, as students are more heterogeneous with the need to modify curriculum to take into account different interests, rhythms and previous knowledge, in classrooms with few resources and support systems (Hernández 2014).

Table 9.3 Indicators of internal efficiency of the Salvadoran school system Educational Level Primary (Grades 1–9) Secondary (two- or three-year programme)

Repeaters

Dropout

Passed

Overage

5.8 4.9

6.4 8.5

90.3 86.5

10 10.6

Sources: MINED (2014a). Data not available by sex.

150

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

The net enrolment rate in El Salvador, at 86.4 per cent in 2014 for primary education (Grades 1 through 6), represents a setback from the previous decade, when net enrolment reached 92.6 per cent in 2005 (Rivas 2008). For children out of school, the reasons they do not attend school vary by urban and rural context as well as age but are related to external factors such as poverty, migration, violence and internal factors like lack of interest, poor education quality and low relevance of instruction (Rivas 2008; PNUD 2013; UNICEF 2014a). Children do not attend school if they need to work, decide to leave the country or the social violence and gang activity makes it dangerous to attend school. Children may also be discouraged from continuing in school if the instruction is of poor quality, the school atmosphere is hostile or they cannot see the importance of studying. Particularly in the early grades, parents’ attitudes about school may exclude children from studying (UNICEF 2014a). The situation of social violence, internal and external migration and economic causes are some of the explanations for school dropout rates that have increased in 2014 and 2015. Recent media reports place school enrolment for 2015 at 55,446 students fewer than previous years (Flores 2015), and by the end of the 2015 school year, a total of 35,000 students had abandoned school (Peñate 2015). Although no official explanations have been offered, analysts mention poverty, violence and migration as the prime causes. Although the MINED gave students identification numbers in 2008 to track them, data is not analysed to see if dropouts have moved to another school, simply abandoned their studies or left the country. The top four reasons reported by the 11,074 students who abandoned school in 2014 are change of residence (64.85 per cent), migration (47.38 per cent), gang violence (27.13 per cent) and choosing to work (20.12 per cent) (MINED 2014c).1

4.2 Multigrade schools One of the main characteristics of rural schools is the implementation of the multigrade strategy or alternative classroom. This is when one teacher attends several grades simultaneously, taxing resources and teachers’ time. The following chart, in Table 9.4, represents the numbers of schools and students attended with this modality. Although the legacy of the programme known as Education with Community Participation (more on this later) has left 10 per cent of schools with four teachers or fewer, the MINED has not defined a specific strategy for attending to the needs of multiple-grade schools; nor has the MINED created a department

El Salvador: Past, Present and Prospects of Education

151

Table 9.4 Multigrade schools No. of schools

No. of students enrolled

No. of teachers

Private

Public

Total

Private

Public

Total students

1 2 3 4 Five and more Total system

0 12 15 45 686 758

427 738 579 412 206 4,662

427 750 427 750 594 2,948

0 136 268 157 148,357 150,118

985 30,556 38,792 39,511 887,788 1,005,832

985 30,692 39,060 40,868 1,036,145 1,155,950

Source: MINED (2014a).

assigned to support them. In these cases, teachers are also principals and attend multiple grades and administrative duties at the same time.

4.3 Curricula One of the main resources for improving educational quality in diverse contexts is the curriculum. The curriculum in El Salvador is characterized as centralized, uniform without mechanisms for follow-up or quality control. The effectiveness of curriculum is difficult to judge, as standardized testing is a luxury in such a tight-budgeted education system. The General Education Law (from 1996) establishes the curriculum as national, for both public and private institutions, established by the central MINED, but allowing for flexible adaptation when necessary. In 1994, with education reform, a curriculum foundations document was drawn up that is still the basis for curriculum today, although several modifications have been made since then. The national curricular document – Curriculum Foundations for National Education – presents a humanist, constructivist and socially committed approach to education. In 2007, the curriculum was extended to a competencies approach, taking the definition from Spain, as the capacity to confront with a guarantee of success simple and complex tasks in a determined context. In 2009, with the SEP, the national strategy document for the first left-wing government, curriculum changes were proposed (e.g. a focus on disciplines rather than subjects and classroom libraries rather than textbooks) but no new curriculum documents drawn up. The curriculum documents can be very solid and of good quality, but the main challenge is teachers actually using them, though teachers have several tools

152

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

on hand. In addition to the Curriculum Foundations document, two resources were established for the competencies approach: ‘Curriculum at the service of learning’ and ‘Evaluation at the service of learning’. These attempts were to guide how to implement the competencies approach in the classroom, through planning and assessment; however, no teacher training was developed to explain how to apply the new approach. Funding was received from Japanese cooperation for math and from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) for language arts, in both cases to develop instructional sequences and new materials for all grades (MINED 2007a). Teachers rely on the syllabus or ‘programme’, a detailed document created centrally by the MINED that presents objectives, contents and performance indicators organized in units by subject to plan their classes. However, the present syllabus provides very few methodological or assessment guidelines, so traditional methods prevail. Since not all subjects and grade levels are guaranteed to have textbooks (which are obtained from national publishing companies) due to budgeting issues, dictation methods are often used to transfer concepts, rote learning is widely used and assessment methods are based on memorization. The structure of learning objectives has changed to reflect competencies but the teaching methodology has not necessarily changed. In addition, the design is circular, so many topics are repeated year after year – supposedly with different levels of difficulty, but students can find their classes very repetitive and not very challenging. Since 2000, due to the attention to quality and decentralization (MINED 2005b) schools have been instructed to draw up their own adapted curriculum according to each context and needs as a way of promoting more school autonomy and establishing a unique school identity. The School Curriculum Project, or PCC, was based on models from Spain and required schools to draw up their own adaptation for curriculum as well as school administration and specific improvement projects. This was promoted in the schools until about 2013 and, although flawed in its technical implementation (MINED 2005b), it raised awareness of the need for locally adapted curricula and school-wide participation in its definition. More recent initiatives related to school management are discussed below. Although no major changes have been made in subject areas and general curriculum since the 1995 educational reform, new topics such as sex education have finally been included. Cross-cutting themes, identified in the 1995 curriculum document, are always a challenge to include as well as special projects that funders propose, like traffic safety, child’s rights, gender, human rights, values education and so on because of lack of teacher training and few

El Salvador: Past, Present and Prospects of Education

153

curricular support materials (Edwards, Victoria and Martin 2015). In general, there is a need for resources to make curriculum and its implementation stronger, such as good-quality textbooks, support materials, infrastructure and technology. Teacher training is also key, as will be developed in the next section.

4.4 Teacher and principal training, job placement and pay The quality of teachers and their capacity to respond to the diverse needs of students in challenging contexts is a key factor for education quality. Yet the decisions and design of teacher training have responded to political interests in the last half-century, as mentioned above, which have negatively affected teacher quality and the quality of the education system in general. One of the urgent needs at present is to raise the quality of teachers in service and redefine the strategy for initial teacher preparation. In addition, the process for assigning school principals does not include special training or qualifications in administration or management. The Constitution establishes that the state may exclusively take charge of teacher training. The General Education Law establishes the MINED as coordinator of teacher training and as supervisor of institutions that train teachers. After the educational reform of 1994, a centralized, rigid three-year teacher training curriculum was put in place as a way to counter poor and unsupervised training in universities, as mentioned in the context section. Presently, there are sixteen higher education institutes and universities that train teachers in a three-year programme with a centralized curriculum designed and monitored by the MINED. Upon completing the course of study, which combines general pedagogy, specific specialty areas, teaching practice and general interest courses (such as human rights, environment, inclusive education and family and gender violence prevention), students (i.e. teachers in training) submit to a final, national exam to test academic and pedagogical competencies. Given that high school graduates, after eleven years of study, are of an average age of seventeen, teacher graduates may be as young as nineteen or twenty as they prepare to enter the teaching profession. The Academic and Pedagogical Competencies Evaluation (ECAP) is the exit exam for new teachers and was applied for the first time in 2001, as a final, standardized filter that students from the variety of teacher training institutions should pass. Failing the test not only means that students will not be teachers, but they will also not graduate from their higher education institute. The results of the test, from the very first year, have not been satisfactory, and have

154

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

forced teacher training institutions to review their teaching strategies and the quality of their programmes, although the quality of the test is also questioned since the bank of test items was not renewed for many years, affecting the internal reliability of the test (Cuéllar-Marchelli 2015). During the period of 2001–12, the failure rate of the ECAP oscillated between 66 per cent in the first year and 17 per cent in 2011 (Pacheco 2013), then 8 per cent in 2013 (CuéllarMarchelli 2015). The law that regulates teachers (the Teaching Career Law or Ley de la Carrera Docente) establishes three main requirements for teaching in both public and private institutions: a teaching degree, inscription in the MINED’s professional tenure programme and lack of other impediments to the profession. The process of assigning posts in public schools and therefore lifelong job security is a centralized process where school directors are limited to doing the pre-selection of candidates and waiting for the national selection board to assign teachers (Hernández 2014). The young and recently trained may have to wait as long as ten years to be assigned to a position in a public school, since the law gives priority to those who graduated first. As a recent example, in 2013 the selection board assigned a total of 890 teaching positions on a national level for which 57,787 applications were received (Hernández 2014). In total, there are 56,386 teachers working in the national education system, the majority 45,730 (43,437 are listed in the budget as permanent) in the public sector and 12,355 in the private sector (MINED 2014b). Article 5 of the Teaching Career Law defines that it is a responsibility of the MINED to plan and prepare a sufficient and necessary number of teachers to cover educational needs. However, the MINED has also calculated that there are approximately the same number of school teachers unemployed, that is, graduates who are not working in the public education system, which represents a serious oversupply in the market. One of the ongoing challenges is that of teachers not working in their subject area, that is, being assigned a teaching position in an area different from their specialty, even though the Teaching Career Law establishes a specialty area as a criterion for placement. For example, based on the 2013 school census data, only 6 per cent of math teachers in the primary level have a degree in that subject area; the same for 60 per cent of kindergarten teachers; and almost 20 per cent of elementary teachers are actually trained for secondary social studies (Hernández 2014). Another challenge is the class load as teachers are present in schools only twenty-five hours a week, of which at least twenty hours are spent on teaching class. Moreover, some teachers work double shifts, both morning and afternoon.

El Salvador: Past, Present and Prospects of Education

155

(As is common in Latin America, the school day for elementary school students in El Salvador only lasts a maximum of five hours, thereby allowing schools to be used for two different shifts, with each shift accommodating a different group of students.) Teacher salaries are based on education level and years of service, as defined by law. Level one salaries correspond to teachers with at least a five-year university (i.e. ‘undergraduate’) degree and above, while level two is assigned to teachers with a three-year degree. For every five years of service, an automatic pay raise is applied, independently of performance, ongoing education or other professional activities, and according to law, salaries are reviewed every three years. In 2011, a 6 per cent to 10 per cent raise was applied, in 2013, it was 5 per cent and 7 per cent for each level, respectively, and in 2015 there was a general 5 per cent raise for both levels. Table 9.5 states monthly salaries for each level and category of the career scale. As a comparison, unskilled workers earn an average monthly wage of $157, office employees $333, other professionals $711 and management-level employees $970 (Pacheco 2013, citing government statistics from 2010). One of the challenges of the pay scale is attracting the best talents, because beginning salaries are relatively low. The pay scale is also very flat, with a difference of about 60 per cent after more than thirty-five years of service. The characteristics of the career track do not encourage ongoing professional development or improving performance because it is based only on years of service, which may explain why 80.4 per cent of teachers have only a three-year degree or less because there is little incentive to complete the five-year degree (Hernández 2014). The career track also encourages permanence or longevity in the system, making teaching a lifelong option, when perhaps mobility to other careers would provide opportunity to hire new teachers and offer other options for burnout or simply new horizons. Low salaries, difficult working conditions and other situations contribute to low professional prestige and low social regard for teachers. The Teacher Professional Development Policy of 2011 describes in its context analysis several aspects that affect the way society perceives and values teachers. For example, teachers lose authority and support for their role from students; teachers also feel that they are not recognized as professionals who have to work in difficult situations and that they lack attention for emotional, mental and physical health of teachers to maintain motivation, energy and commitment. There is furthermore lack of institutional support to put innovations and trainings into practice, not to mention a technological divide between students and teachers (MINED 2012b).

$852.33

$774.85

$789.20

$717.45

$836.83

$920.52

15– 20

$887.04

$975.74

20–25

Category 2

Source: Based on Cuéllar-Marchelli (2015), with 5 per cent increase applied in 2015. Amounts in US$.

$717.45 Level one salary (five-year university degree, master’s or above) Level two salary (three- $652.23 year teaching degree)

10–15

0–5

Years of service

5–10

Category 6 Category 5 Category 4 Category 3

Category

Table 9.5 Monthly salaries according to career scale

$940.26

$1,034.29

25–30

Category 1C

$996.68

$1,096.34

30–35

Category 1B

$1,066.44

$1,173.08

More than 35

Category 1A

156 Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

El Salvador: Past, Present and Prospects of Education

157

School administrators are key in education quality in face of the multiple challenges to education. The Teaching Career Law defines school administration as principals, vice principals and the school council (in Spanish, Consejo Directivo Escolar – more on this below). The requirements for principals and vice principals are few: basically five or three years of experience respectively as a teacher, passing the selection process (which includes an aptitude and knowledge test and interview) and a clean record. No advanced degree is required, even though their administrative and pedagogical functions are numerous, as defined by law, and even though the new education model of community participation (see below) requires inter-school coordination and resource raising, among other tasks. Only two training programmes for principals have been offered in the post-war period, both with international funding and technical assistance: a 2003 in-service course for principals funded by Spanish International Cooperation Agency and in 2011 a USAID-supported orientation course designed for new principals on basic school administration topics and tools. Maintaining and strengthening the quality of teachers and principals in service should be a priority, due to challenges in their initial training, deficient work conditions and constant changes in education plans and priorities, all as described above. Even though in-service training has been declared the centre of education plans since 2014 (MINED 2014b), efforts for continuing education have been sporadic and disperse, with no evaluation of impact or return on the investment (Hernández 2014). For more on teacher training in El Salvador, see Edwards, Martin and Flores (forthcoming).

4.5 Decentralization and parental involvement Decentralization generally as well as school- and community-level management have been consistent themes since at least the early 1980s. In 1981, the government initiated a strategy of deconcentration by creating 384 nuclei (similar to small school districts), 6 sub regions and 3 regions, but this approach was stifled by the intensification of the civil way, the lack of clear policy regarding the division of responsibilities, antiquated legal frameworks that caused bottlenecks in the work of relevant central ministries and the reluctance of senior officials to relinquish control (Hanson, Garns and Heymans 1986). Also during the 1980s, government-provided education in rural areas was offered irregularly or not at all; as a result, many communities began to provide education by hiring a local person to teach what they could, and in FMLN-controlled areas, a system of ‘popular education’ was developed

158

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

with about 1,000 teachers and 20,000 students (Hammond 1997). The popular education schools taught a critical perspective to students using pedagogical methods inspired by Paulo Friere and liberation theology; they were also run by ‘civilian community councils’ and enjoyed the ‘active involvement of parents and community members who contribute their labour to make up for some material shortages’ (Hammond 1997: 354). In the post-war context, while the government refused to accommodate the popular education system, it did – ironically – support a model of communitybased management inspired by these schools, with support from UNICEF, UNESCO and particularly the World Bank (Edwards 2015). This model was known as Education with Community Participation (EDUCO), and it would not only be scaled up across El Salvador (especially in rural areas) but would also go on to become a well-known model that was promoted widely and adapted in numerous countries around the world (Edwards, forthcoming-b). The essential features of this model were that a democratically elected council of five parents was given the legal responsibility for hiring/firing and paying teachers in their community schools and for purchasing school supplies. It should also be noted that EDUCO teachers could not belong to the teachers’ unions – one reason for which the model was popular with many reformers, within and outside El Salvador. Schools in non-rural areas also created school councils, starting in 1997 (MINED 1999). The difference, however, is that these councils were comprised of the principal, two teachers, three parents and two students older than twelve years (elected democratically). Unlike EDUCO schools, the councils of traditional public schools could not hire/fire teachers. However, like EDUCO schools, traditional school councils have been responsible for managing the financial and human resources of the school, and for maintaining the school structure and environment (MINED n.d.). It should be noted, though, that the councils in traditional and EDUCO schools began to be modified starting in 2011, as explained further below.

4.6 Processes of evaluation and feedback2 A school system needs evaluation and feedback in order to achieve ongoing improvement. Nonetheless, the General Education Law establishes only three types of education evaluation: curriculum, learning achievement and institutional. The central MINED offices have a unit assigned to evaluation and monitoring, although the office tends to be restructured with every new

El Salvador: Past, Present and Prospects of Education

159

administration. In recent years, data and reports are much more available – including online – as the government promotes transparency and accountability practices. The General Education Law provides the legal framework for doing sample and/or census learning assessments in order to give feedback to the system in primary education; this law also requires a standardized evaluation for students graduating from secondary education. In the primary level, the Achievement Test (known as PAESITA), is generally given in third, sixth, and ninth grade every two or three years, although in reality its frequency depends on the interest of education officials and the availability of funds. Given for the first time to a sample in 2001 and 2003, it was then taken by 100 per cent of students in 2005 and 2008; in 2012, a representative sample of students took it (MINED 2005a). In secondary education, the Learning and Skills Test for Secondary Education Graduates (PAES) is given yearly to all candidates for graduation and the score is combined with other assessment grades for a final achievement score. The PAES originally had no academic weight for graduation purposes but presently is 25 per cent of the final grade of the last year of high school, a change that seeks to pressure students to take it seriously. The PAES design has been periodically changed, so results are not comparable longitudinally. The development and administration of these tests is expensive (unofficial estimates place the cost at $600,000–$800,000), and they require qualified specialists in standardized learning assessment, which the country lacks. Some schools and departmental offices of education establish other periodic evaluation methods for immediate feedback on learning and to define strategies for improving the subject areas that have lower results. During Plan 2021, MINED officials generated interest in testing on an international level. Thus, in 2006, El Salvador participated in the Second Comparative and Explicative Regional Study (SERCE) sponsored by UNESCO for third grade (in math and language skills) and in sixth grade (in math, language and science). In all subjects, students’ means scores were less than the regional average, except for third grade reading (UNESCO 2008). In 2007, El Salvador participated in the International Tendencies in Math and Science Study (TIMSS), a worldwide study, for fourth and eighth grades in math and science (MINED 2007a). In mathematics, El Salvador placed thirty-second out of thirtysix countries for fourth grade and forty-fifth out of forty-eight countries in eighth grade, while in science, students placed thirtieth out of thirty-six countries among fourth grade students and forty-first out of forty-eight countries among eighth grade students. Since then, El Salvador has not participated in any

160

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

international test, not even the Third regional study of UNESCO, TERCE with the rest of the Central American countries. In other areas, the Teacher Career Law establishes periodic teacher performance evaluation as a responsibility of the technical units of the MINED. However, in practice, any teacher evaluation is performed by principals, with no standard instruments and no consequences other than suggestions for improving practice. Generally, the only feedback and support teachers have are through teamwork on the school level and other networks that have been promoted but not required. The technical-pedagogical assistants assigned to schools on a departmental level do not have coaching or follow-up as part of their role; rather, they serve more as administrative support for school principals and as communication liaisons between schools and departmental offices. The final type of evaluation – of educational institutions – has made little headway after first being introduced in the Ten-Year Plan of 1995. Evidence of this is that it was not put in practice until the 2000–2 period through the Stimulation of Institutional Education Work Plan, in an attempt to promote teamwork and quality improvement in schools (Rodríguez 2003). Presently, only secondary education institutions are periodically evaluated, although the current MINED has plans to implement a complete evaluation system including ten areas in one fell sweep.

4.7 Education financing The financing of education is key in obtaining desired results and in the case of El Salvador, the budget assigned to education has doubled in the last ten years, reaching US$914.3 million in 2015, which corresponds to 3.5 per cent of the gross national product (GNP) (Cuéllar-Marchelli 2015, 93). In the period 2001–2011 11.75 per cent of the government’s education budget came from the central government, while 5.81 per cent from loans and 0.44 per cent from donations – though it should be noted that families, as of 2009, were spending just as much as the government on education via matriculation fees, uniforms, food and so on (Rivas 2013). The typical investment in education during that period assigns 58 per cent of spending to salaries and remunerations, while 20 per cent is assigned directly to schools for expenses, 13 per cent for goods and services and the rest on capital investments, fixed assets and others (Rivas 2013). However, as of the 2014–15 school year, salaries of teachers and administrators consumed 70 per cent of the overall budget and 73 per cent of the operating budget (MINED 2015). Once other programmes are accounted for (e.g. school grants, school supplies and school snacks), only 6 per cent of the operating budget remains,

El Salvador: Past, Present and Prospects of Education

161

but that is already committed to other expenses such as payments for teachers killed during the civil war. The overarching point is that, in terms of finances, the MINED still struggles to procure the resources necessary to carry out significant reforms or initiatives aimed at ameliorating systemic deficiencies. It is for this same reason that international funding, whether in the form of donations or loans, has been particularly influential historically.

5 Context, reform initiatives and challenges as of 2015 Through 2014, El Salvador is considered a lower-middle-income country, with a Gross National Income calculated at $3,950 per capita, according to the World Bank. The economy generates a gross domestic product (GDP) of $25.22 billion, with services accounting for 62.2 per cent of economic activity, industry 27 per cent and agriculture a mere 10.8 per cent. As an economy that transitioned from agriculture to services, the sector depends on remittances sent from family members outside of the country, for a total of $4.2 billion in 2014, which in comparison is equivalent to 17 per cent of the GDP. The growth rate in general has been sluggish, fluctuating between 1.4 and 2.2 per cent in the period between 2010 and 2014. Although considered a middle-income country, in 2013, 29.6 per cent of the population lived on less than the value of the national poverty line, a number which had fluctuated between 30 and 40 per cent since 20053 (World Bank 2015). Several situations provide special challenges for schools and teachers. The economic and social situation of families, considered the first source of education, is also a potential source of success or lack thereof in education, depending on the capacity of parents to provide support (PNUD 2013). To that end, statistics show that 38.5 per cent of children in El Salvador suffer some type of abandonment: of a population of 2.2 million between the ages of zero and seventeen, 40 per cent live in one-parent homes, and 18 per cent of these are due to migration; 10 per cent also lost a parent due to death and the rest to separation (MINEC, 2013). In El Salvador, the probability of being poor as an adult is 1.4 times more if the mother has only primary education, in comparison with mothers who have a high school education. On the university level, only 20 per cent of students come from a one-parent home (PNUD 2013). In the post-war period, the disintegration of families and other social institutions such as churches, schools and communities is cited together with lack of access to education and completion of school as factors that contribute to social exclusion,

162

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

which can fuel frustration and can contribute to violence (Umaña 1998) and youth gang membership (Cruz 2007). The context of social violence and an increase in organized gangs also affect adolescents and their schooling. The general homicide rate has averaged 58 per 100,000 in the period 2010 to 2012,4 but averages for more recent years will surpass that number by at least 75 per cent (calculations based on Salvadoran Legal Medicine Institute data.5) According to UNICEF, El Salvador is the country with the highest homicide rate in the world of minors younger than nineteen, at 27 per 100,000, in 2012 (UNICEF 2014b). During 2005–13, the Salvadoran Legal Medicine Institute registered close to 6,300 homicides of minors, 89 per cent between the ages of fifteen and nineteen years and 87 per cent of which were young males (UNICEF 2014b). One out of five schools cite direct problems with youth gangs, while 56 per cent recognize gang problems in the surrounding area of the school (MINED 2014c). Within the MINED itself, modifications have been made to the organizational structure. There are now national directors for different educational levels, including early childhood, elementary, secondary, and youth and adults. These changes also include a new national director of Prevention and Social Programmes. This director is responsible for social and supplementary programmes such as school meals, uniforms, students’ supplies and so on, as well as the efforts for violence prevention. From a social perspective, while the structure of the MINED allows for the provision of important resources and services to the population, the structure itself also becomes a distraction that takes attention away from the core responsibility of providing high-quality education to the whole country. Unfortunately, technical difficulties and politics often reduce the impact of reforms on important social issues like gender equity (Edwards, Victoria and Martin 2015) and peace education (Quintanilla de González and Solórzano Contreras 2014). Another great challenge to the education system is the deficient infrastructure and lack of instructional resources. The MINED reports that only 40 per cent of its schools are in good condition, meaning 2,980 are not (MINED 2014c), while Cuéllar-Marchelli (2015) finds that 3,300 schools do not have adequate conditions and 837 are in vulnerable zones for natural disasters. MINED census statistics from 2013 show that 24 per cent of public schools do not have running water, 6 per cent lack electricity and only 16.8 per cent have internet (Hernández 2014), although that last figure increased to almost 20 per cent in 2014 (MINED 2014c). In addition to effecting general student well-being, lack of basic services can negatively impact student learning and teacher motivation (Hernández 2014).

El Salvador: Past, Present and Prospects of Education

163

Since 2009, the SEP has been implemented by the MINED with three basic principles: inclusive schools, school as the centre of culture and extended hours for extracurricular activities. The increased interest in school inclusion and the right to education is necessary, but has placed additional responsibilities on schools with limited infrastructure, resources and training, and no support staff such as social workers, psychologists or counsellors. Nevertheless, a central idea behind the SEP is that all children and adolescents have the right to go to school and to receive a quality education, and that education requires participation, family involvement and community support for schools. To give form to the above-mentioned principles, in 2011, the Salvadoran education system commenced an ‘Integrated Systems’ approach as a part of the SEP, accompanied by an emphasis on ‘Fulltime Inclusive Schools’. Together, these two concepts are operationalized under the label of Integrated Systems of Fulltime Inclusive Schools (Sistemas Integrados – Escuela Inclusiva de Tiempo Pleno). The integrated system aspect is embodied in practice through the creation of networks of up to ten schools in close geographical proximity, in order to facilitate the sharing materials and human resources. The notion of fulltime inclusive schools is reflected in (ideally) (i) expanded services beyond the general curriculum topics (e.g. sports and recreation, music, arts, science and technology – delivered through additional hours of schooling and in hopes of reducing violence) and (ii) more participation of local sectors (e.g. community members, local business owners, churches, NGOs) in the life of the school as a way to enhance social cohesion strategy, respond to local needs, strengthen governance, and improve quality – though it is not always clear at each level of the education system how the various ideals of this model are to be woven together in practice. Pedagogically, the model above envisions a transformation of all the school’s activities and initiatives, including administrative processes, to strengthen learning. Each school should elaborate a pedagogical project based on their learning needs, and the groups of schools organized in Integrated Systems should work together around one project. This strategy is oriented and assisted by the technical assistants from the MINED’s departmental offices. As a new model of educational planning, the challenge is always putting it in practice, follow-up and evaluation of its effectiveness. Despite the lack of clarity, this model of Integrated Systems of Fulltime Inclusive Schools began in 2011 with twenty-two schools, and then expanded to thirty-eight schools in 2012, with technical assistance and funding from Italy, World Bank and USAID (MINED 2012a). By mid-2015, 259 integrated

164

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

systems were created and benefited 2,082 schools in 92 towns (MINED 2015). Initial plans proposed placing all schools into integrated systems by 2019 with an investment of US$98.47 million from the World Bank together with Italian cooperation, USAID and Salvadoran government funds, but the strategic education plan for the 2014–19 period of government, while including the Integrated Systems of Fulltime Inclusive Schools strategy, does not even mention the integrated systems model (MINED 2014b). It seems that the integrated systems approach is being dropped before the effects or successes of the programme are known. However, two recent accomplishments should be noted. First, the early childhood curriculum was reformed in 2013 with support from UNICEF: materials were developed for zero to six years of age as one integrated unit that eliminates subject areas. Second, the early childhood curriculum for zero to three years of age focuses on schools, community and other institutional resources that support families in the education of their babies and young children. Moreover, early childhood development and education is organized in kindergartens or family education circles, with the participation of health and community organizations and child protection services. Separately, and more tangibly, with an investment of $80 million, the MINED has provided uniforms, shoes, books and supplies to all students, including those in secondary school, as a way of guaranteeing access and encouraging permanence in schools (MINED 2015). Additionally, free school snacks were provided to 1.3 million students in 5,109 schools with an investment of $20.3 million and liquid milk for 1 million students in 2,918 schools at a cost of $5.6 million – all in an attempt to improve nutrition and (as a consequence) learning and to remove barriers to student retention (MINED 2015). The Salvadoran school system attempts to respond to diverse needs while transforming and developing society. Even though the conceptual framework of current education plans emphasizes inclusion and quality as goals, centralized organization, lack of political will and technical capacity, grave infrastructure needs and insufficient financing are some of the factors that hinder the effects of education. Education provides opportunities for social mobility and human development, but in El Salvador schools often contribute to reproducing social conditions and social positions (PNUD 2013: 138). In theory, recent models and special programmes should improve enrolment, retention and quality in schools, but other outside factors such as economic opportunities and social violence have not permitted the desired results to materialize.

El Salvador: Past, Present and Prospects of Education

165

Notes 1. These statistics do not specify, however, if the change of residence and migration is also related to social violence. 2. For more on the influence of research and evaluation performed by international organizations, see Edwards (2013; forthcoming-a) and Edwards and Loucel (forthcoming). 3. World Bank. Data. Available at: http://data.worldbank.org/. Consulted November, 2015. 4. Ibid. 5. Salvadoran Legal Medicine Institute, 2015. Available online: http://www.csj.gob.sv/

Bibliography Avilés, G. Un vistazo al pasado de la educación en El Salvador. Documento 1. Serie Reforma Educativa en Marcha (San Salvador: Ministerio de Educación, 1995). Cruz, J. M., ed. Street Gangs in Central America (San Salvador: UCA Editores, 2007). Cruz Bustamante, M. T. and Henríquez, A. M. ‘El Salvador: Estado de la educación básica y media pública 2010-2015’. In Reescrituras de la educación pública desde Centroamerica, edited by N. Alemán et al., 69–122 (Guatemala: Editorial Cara Parens, 2016). Cuéllar-Marchelli, H. El Estado de las Políticas Públicas Docentes (San Salvador: Fundación Salvadoreña para el Desarrollo Ecónomico y Social, 2015). Edwards Jr., D. B. ‘International Processes of Education Policy Formation: An Analytic Framework and the Case of Plan 2021 in El Salvador’. Comparative Education Review, 57, no. 1 (2013): 22–53. Edwards Jr., D. B. ‘A Perfect Storm: The Political Economy of Community-Based Management, Teacher Accountability, and Impact Evaluations in El Salvador and the Global Reform Agenda’. In Global Testing Culture: Shaping Education Policy, Perceptions, and Practice, edited by W. Smith, 25–42 (Oxford Studies in Comparative Education, Symposium Books, forthcoming-a). Edwards Jr., D. B.. International Education Policy and the Global Reform Agenda: Education with Community Participation in El Salvador (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2016). Edwards Jr., D. B. ‘Rising from the Ashes: How the Global Education Policy of Community-based Management was Born from El Salvador’s Civil War’. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 13, no. 3 (2015): 411–32. Edwards Jr., D. B., and C. Loucel. ‘The EDUCO Program, Impact Evaluations, and the Political Economy of Global Education Reform’. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 24, no. 49 (2016): 1–38. Available at: http://epaa.asu.edu./ojs/2019

166

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

Edwards Jr., D. B., P. Martin and I. Flores. ‘Teacher Education in El Salvador: Politics, Policy, Pitfalls’. In International Handbook of Teacher Education, 2nd edn, edited by C. Wolhuter (Athens: Atrapos, forthcoming). Edwards Jr., D., J. Victoria and P. Martin. ‘The Geometry of Policy Implementation: Lessons from the Political Economy of Three Education Reforms in El Salvador During 1990–2005’. International Journal of Educational Development, 44 (2015): 28–41. Flores, R. 55,446 estudiantes menos en matrícula de 2015: MINED. La Prensa Gráfica. 2015. Available at: http://www.laprensagrafica.com/2015/06/21/55446-estudiantesmenos-en-matricula-de-2015-mined Foley, M. W. ‘Laying the Groundwork: The Struggle for Civil Society in El Salvador’. Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs, 38 (1996): 67–104. Gómez Arévalo, A. P. ‘Una genealogía de la educación en El Salvador’. Revista Latinoamericana de Estudios Educativos, XLI, no. 3–4 (2011): 73–117. González, J. ‘Una reforma educativa desconocida. El Salvador 1883–1890’. Revista Realidades, enero-marzo 2013, no. 135 (2013). González, J. Instruir y moralizar: las Escuelas Normales en El Salvador. XI Congreso Iberoamericano de Historia de la Educación Latinoamericana (XI CIHELA) (Toluca, México, 2014a). González, J. La Escuela sin Dios. Apuntes para una historia de la educación laica (San Salvador: UCA Editores, 2014b). Hammond, J. ‘Popular Education and the Reconstruction of El Salvador’. In C. A. Torres and A. Puiggros (Eds), Latin American Education: Comparative Perspectives, edited by C. A. Torres and A. Puiggros, 349–71 (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1997). Hanson, M., W. Garns and C. Heymans. Decentralization of the Educational System of El Salvador: An Analysis of Opportunities (Washington, DC: USAID, 1986). Hernández, J. M. Caracterización de los docentes del sistema educativo salvadoreño (San Salvador. San Salvador: FUSADES, 2014). La Feber, W. Inevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central America (New York: Norton & Co, 1993) LeoGrande, W. Our Own Backyard: The United States and Central America, 1977–1992 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina, 2000). Lindo-Fuentes, H., and E. Ching. Modernizing Minds in El Salvador: Education Reform and the Cold War, 1960–1980 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2012). MINED. Plan de Implementación de la Escuela Superior de Maestros. Dignificación y desarrollo profesional del profesorado y directivos docentes para transformar la educación (Gobierno de El Salvador, 2011). MINEC. Encuesta de Hogares de Propósitos Múltiples (San Salvador: Ministerio de Economía, 2013). MINED. Consejo directivo escolar (San Salvador: Algiers Impresores, n.d.) MINED. Lineamientos generales del Plan Decenal, 1995–2005 (San Salvador: Ministerio de Educación, 1995).

El Salvador: Past, Present and Prospects of Education

167

MINED. En el camino de la transformación educativa de El Salvador 1989–1999 (San Salvador: Ministerio de Educación, 1999). MINED. Logros de aprendizaje en educación básica en El Salvador. Pruebas censales 2005 (San Salvador: Ministerio de Educación, 2005a). MINED. Proyecto Educativo Institucional. Impacto y perspectivas. Unpublished study produced by the Proyecto de Desarrollo Profesional Docente para Educación Media, under the BIRF 4224-ES contract, 2005b. MINED. Educación para todos en El Salvador. Informe de avance en el logro de los objetivos de desarrollo del milenio de El Salvador (San Salvador: Ministerio de Educación, 2007a). MINED. Plan Nacional de Educación 2021: Informe de avance 2005–2007 (San Salvador: Ministerio de Educación, 2007b). MINED. Transformación de la Educación: Programa Social Educativo 2009–2014 (San Salvador: Ministerio de Educación, 2009) MINED. Memoria de labores 2011–2012 (San Salvador: Ministerio de Educación, 2012a). MINED. Política Nacional de Desarrollo Profesional Docente. Direccion Nacional de Formación Continua. San Salvador: 2012b). MINED. Resultados de la información estadística de instituciones de educación superior (San Salvador: Ministerio de Educación, 2013). Available at: https://www.mined. gob.sv/jdownloads/Informacion%20Estadistica%20de%20Educacion%20Superior/ resultados_de_la_informacin_de_ies_2013.pdf MINED. Educación de El Salvador en cifras (San Salvador: Ministerio de Educación, 2014a). MINED. Ejes estratégicos del Plan Nacional de Educación en Función de la Nación (San Salvador: Ministerio de Educación, 2014b). MINED. Observatorio MINED 2014 sobre los centros educativos públicos de El Salvador (San Salvador: Ministerio de Educación, 2014c). MINED. Memoria de Labores 2014–2015 (San Salvador: Ministerio de Educación, 2015a). MINED. Observatorio MINED 2015 sobre los centros educativos públicos de El Salvador (San Salvador: Ministerio de Educación, 2015b). Pacheco, R. B. Políticas Docentes en Centroamérica. Tendencias Nacionales. El Salvador (Washington, DC: PREAL, 2013). Peñate, S. Deserción escolar ronda loa 35,000. La Prensa Gráfica. 2015. Available at: http://www.laprensagrafica.com/2015/11/12/desercion-escolar-ronda-los-35000estudiantes Picardo Joao, Oscar, and R. B. Pacheco. La formación de docentes en El Salvador retos, problemas, posibilidades. Realidad Y Reflexión, 35(2012): 15–64. Retrieved from http://ri.ufg.edu.sv/jspui/bitstream/11592/8311/1/La formaci%C3%B3n de docentes en El Salvador retos, problemas, posibilidades.pdf PNUD. Informe sobre desarrollo humano. El Salvador. Imaginar un nuevo país. Hacerlo posible (San Salvador: PNUD, 2013).

168

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

Quán, A. ‘Through the Looking Glass: U.S. Aid to El Salvador and the Politics of National Identity’. American Ethnologist, 32, no. 2 (2005): 276–93. Quintanilla de González, A. X., and S. J. de Solórzano Contreras. La Incorporación del Enfoque de Cultura de Paz en los Planes Educativos Nacionales en El Salvador a Partir de los Acuerdos de Paz./. Universidad Don Bosco, 2014. Retrieved from http://biblio. udb.edu.sv/library/index.php? Rivas, F., ed. El estado de la educación en América Central: 2000–2008 (San Salvador: Fundación de Innovaciones Educativas Centroamericanas, 2008). Rivas, F., ed. El financiamiento de la educación en El Salvador (San Salvador: Ediciones centroamericanas, 2013). Retrieved from http://www.unicef.org/elsalvador/El_ financiamiento_de_la_Educacion_en_El_Salvador.pdf Robinson, W. Transnational Conflicts: Central America, Social Change, and Globalization ( New York: Verso, 2003). Rodríguez, J. C. Incentivos a escuelas y maestros: la experiencia del ‘Plan de estímulos a la labor educativa institucional’ en El Salvador. Estudio de caso no. 74 (Santiago: Universidad de Chile, 2003). Rosa, H., and M. Foley (2000). ‘El Salvador’. In Good Intentions: Pledges of Aid for Postconflict Recovery, edited by S. Forman and S. Patrick, 113–58 (USA: Lynne Rienner, 2000). Salvadoran Legal Medicine Institute, 2015. Available at http://www.csj.gob.sv/ Umaña, C. Los Jóvenes en situación de exclusión social: caracterización de la niñez y adolescencia de 7 a 18 años de El Salvador (San Salvador: Fundación Empresarial para el Desarrollo Educativo, 1998). UNESCO. ‘Student achievement in Latin America and the Caribbean Results of the Second Regional Comparative and Explanatory Study (SERCE)’ (Santiago de Chile: UNESCO, 2008). UNICEF. Informe de Situación de la Niñez y Adolescencia en El Salvador. Transformar inequidades en oportunidades para todas las niñas, niños y adolescentes (San Salvador: UNICEF/CONNA, 2014ª). UNICEF. Ocultos a plena luz. Un análisis estadístico sobre la violencia contra los niños. 2014b. Available at: http://www.unicef.org/ecuador/ocultos_a_plena_luz.pdf van der Borgh, C. (2005). Donors in War-Torn Societies: A Case Study of El Salvador’. In Postconflict Development: Meeting New Challenges, edited by G. Junne and W. Verkoren, 249–72 (Boulder, CO: Lynne Reinner, 2005). World Bank. Data. 2015. Available at: http://data.worldbank.org/. Consulted November, 2015.

10

Guatemala: A Failing System C. M. Posner

Introduction We must preface the analysis of the Guatemalan system and practice of education with a warning. In the introduction to the book, we mentioned the unreliability of statistics, particularly those provided by government sources for international agencies. Those for Guatemala are possibly among the most unreliable in all of Latin America because of the long civil war and the hostility of the ethnic majority population towards central governments that were often under the thumb of the same military that decimated their villages. These sets of statistics are so discredited that while we mention them we have refrained from giving full references in some cases because they would only perpetuate an unacceptable presentation of data. With 70 per cent of Guatemala’s population, an estimated 16.6 million, under the age of thirty, with one of the highest poverty rates in Latin America and with ethnic groups whose first language is not Spanish probably constituting about half of the population (the statistics are contradictory), successive governments whether fronted by civilians or by the military have proclaimed their commitment to developing and maintaining a viable and sustainable national system to secure equitable growth. Given this challenge, one would have expected both a per capita expenditure on education above the international norm and the organization of massive and sustainable programmes to increase coverage and promote quality. Neither has been achieved. Before proceeding to discuss the evolution and essence of the current system of education, it is of paramount importance to preface our analysis by stating that it is plagued by weaknesses and inequalities, which is a result of decades of neglect, institutional instability and what international organizations like Amnesty International and other organizations have called ‘genocide’ (Martinic 2003).

170

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

Statistical and official overview Officially, primary schooling is of six years’ duration and is obligatory, free of charge and available to all whether they live in urban centres or the remote countryside such as the Mayan-speaking Western Highlands, where close to half the population is found. Those who survive these six years enter a middle or lower-secondary school. The first three years of study at this level is called the ‘prevocational cycle’ (ciclo prevocational). During these three years, students in theory have access to a wide variety of subjects. The next step for those who are able to continue their studies is called the ‘diversified cycle’ (ciclo diversificado) that is for two years for those who are studying for the bachillerato, the prerequisite for entering some form of higher education. Others wishing to terminate their educational career with a vocation or primary school teaching qualification study for three years. Because demand is greater than availability, private secondary schools have been organized particularly in urban areas. They are able to offer greater range of subjects such as auto-mechanics, information technology and training for administration and tourism and, in market towns, agricultural science. Secondary school teachers are trained through three-year programmes offered by institutions of higher education. The reality is more complex than the official structure. While primary schools are theoretically free and mandatory, beyond cities they are scarce. This is especially the case in rural indigenous areas. In most cases, parents must make a significant contribution to the education of their children. Given the level of poverty, this is generally impossible. Because children are more often than not involved in agricultural production and marketing, in the absence of fathers who work as seasonal labourers usually far from home, the school timetable can actually mitigate against anything more than sporadic attendance. Many children cannot afford the cost of uniforms, books, supplies and transport. In many cases, their priority is one of helping to support their families. In some cases, religious institutions and, as we will see, a bevy of other non-governmental organizations have stepped in and attempted to provide education coverage. But such institutions are rare. They are often filled with many children, particularly those living in rural indigenous communities who were forced to drop out of school for the reasons we mention above. Well-meaning but inappropriately trained staff are usually located in places that many rural pupils cannot reach.

Guatemala: A Failing System

171

In the introduction to this book, we mentioned the unreliability of educational statistics supplied by many of the countries discussed in the book. Increasingly, donor organizations and international organizations require detailed figures to justify their providing support. Guatemala is perhaps one of the best examples in Latin America where there is a lack of dependable statistics. For example, information gathered on the spot by individual researchers such as W. George Lovell (2010) and non-governmental organizations such as Avivara indicate that official statistics are more often than not wide of the mark. Beset by several decadeslong civil war that lasted until at least the late 1990s and which undermined the social underpinnings of the country, Guatemalan governmental sources were never in a position to do so, and military governments often resorted to invention as a matter of expediency. A government that is barely aware of what goes on in many classrooms is hardly likely to be able to collect meaningful data. According to Guatemalan government sources the rate of enrolment in primary schools of both boys and girls in 2010 was close to 100 per cent (Avivara 2000). However, this figure, like most government-issued statistics, is challenged by many non-governmental organizations as being too high. For example, a group of entrepreneurs who commissioned research in primary education put the rate at 85 per cent in 2013 and falling to 81.0 per cent in 2015 (Empresarios 2015). First years’ completion rates have improved by 18 per cent over the last four years because of greater continuity and, it is claimed, as a result of the implementation of education innovations designed to improve quality. Nonetheless, no more than 70 per cent of the primary intake survives the first year of schooling. Even according to official sources, only three-quarters of that 70 per cent complete their primary education. Fewer than 40 per cent sign up for secondary education, and of those who enrol, the lower-secondary completion rate is just below 59 per cent. Fewer than 30 per cent of poor rural indigenous girls are enrolled in secondary schools (Empresarios 2015). In 2010, the Ministry of Education (http://www.mineduc.gob.gt/ estadistica2010/) estimated that of the cohort of third-year primary school pupils who took part in an assessment, only 50 per cent reached the new national standards set for mathematics and reading. Of those who were appraised in their sixth year, only 30 per cent reached the national standards for mathematics and 40 per cent for reading (Avivara 2010). Another problem is the absence of data for rural areas, where the vast majority of the poor and ethnic population is found. For reasons we will discuss below, many of these schools did not function until recent times, and where they did, the school year was often shortened drastically.

172

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

Finally, it has been estimated that there are currently more than two million out-of-school youth between the ages of fifteen and twenty-four. The vast majority are found in the Maya-speaking Western Highlands. They are not provided with the basic life or vocational skills to enter a trade or develop a more productive practice of agriculture. Young people in urban areas, where the density of schools is greater, face increasingly difficult conditions, including high levels of unemployment, social and economic marginalization and an increasing rate of crime related to the formation and pervasiveness of the drug barons’ mafias.

Historical contextualization Despite decades of rhetoric about how education in Guatemala is the key to economic and social development and increasing life chance, investment in education has remained stubbornly low. Failing schools, absent and phantom schools, the lack of the most basic provisions for the classroom, inadequate number of teachers, little post-education training and undeveloped administration constitute the reality of contemporary education in Guatemala. One cannot begin to draw up realistic plans for the future until one understands why and how this occurred. First, in historical terms, the launching and sustaining of a viable national system of education is predicated upon a minimal collective consciousness, that is, beliefs, attitudes, values and aspirations that are widely shared within a political entity. In turn, this stems from a social configuration that is relatively homogeneous. In brief, the root of the Guatemalan failure was the inability to create a national consensus because power and, more importantly, control were vested in the 45 per cent of the population called ladinos, whose first language was Spanish and culture was largely urban based and who, until very recent times, systematically excluded the non-Spanish-speaking majority who lived in rural areas and spoke one of the Mayan languages and regarded them as subhuman. Moreover, in settings where homogeneity was lacking but there was sufficient unity of purpose to attempt its promotion, as in Mexico and some other Latin American countries, education was used as a weapon to create a sense of unity by inventing a system of central values based on nationalism. In Guatemala, the chasms that vitiated the society were too great and, as we will see, the only binding force was the military. More than any other Central American country, and for a longer period of time, Guatemala has been undermined by profound and seemingly insoluble

Guatemala: A Failing System

173

social, economic and cultural conflicts that have impeded the development of economic and social progress for the majority of its citizens. What has been described as a reign of terror that lasted between 1954 and 1996 destroyed the gossamer web of social relations that held the already-fragile political entity together. In this ethnically diverse country, where the majority of its citizens were systematically excluded socially, culturally and economically, and when they attempted to ameliorate their situations, they experienced violence and genocide. Against such a background, the construction of a modern system and the development of education to foster the kinds of economic, social and cultural advancement required to escape poverty were impossible. Any attempt to construct and maintain education establishments to further aspirations and encourage creativity and imagination was systematically destroyed by a succession of military and military-backed regimes interspersed by an occasional nominally civilian-led government that in almost every case was beholden to the military. Furthermore, there are other reasons why a national system of education never took hold outside a few urban areas. Theoretically, education came onto the agenda in 1871 when a Latin American liberal-style government led by Justo Rufino Barrios proclaimed that education was a right of all Guatemalans. This was the same Rufino Barrios who expropriated thousands of hectares of Mayan lands to be distributed to the coffee oligarchs, disrupting communities and forcing the population to become season labourers who migrated to the plantations. These coffee barons in alliance with one of the first multinational communities, the United Fruit Company, labelled ‘el pulpo’ (octopus) by its detractors, had no interest whatsoever in education provision for the rural population. This system of governance had its origin in a plantation economy based on the first multinationals in combination with an oligarchy of wealthy landowners based on directly employed labourers and tied micro-producers who were managed by local caciques largely part of the ancillary services required and an army to maintain order. They were tacitly allied with the largely urban ladino population who feared the Mayan majority and welcomed, if not encouraged, the disappearance of their rights as citizens. The military-led and military-tolerated governments provided basic schooling with a rigid curriculum and pedagogy that emphasized national values in towns and cities that helped to confirm the ladino sense of superiority. By choosing the path of social and economic apartheid, the system defending the social order laid the basis for an explosion that, as George Lovell (2010) has written, ‘seems destined to haunt its uncertain future’ (Lovell 2010; Poppema 2009; Nelson 2009).

174

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

Referring to the rigidness of control, Bienvenido Argueta (2015) has characterized this period as one of ‘militarisation of education’ (p. 239). The curriculum was rigid and marked by strong discipline with staged marches, public demonstrations and strong discipline in order to foster a compliant population and a servile spirit. By 1901 primary education had been established in urban areas and a training college was organized for infant education. During the government of José María Orellana (1921–6), rural primary schools came onto the agenda, but they were few and far between and teaching was in Spanish rather than in one of the languages of the twenty different Maya groups. The newly established Escuela Normal Superior failed to train sufficient numbers of teachers. In 1929, only forty-four men and twenty-nine women were admitted. Those who graduated were poorly trained and paid low salaries. A poorly constructed curriculum, an inappropriate pedagogy, a highly unmotivated teaching profession leading to parents seeing little relevance in education led to a pedagogic congress in 1929 that failed to end the chaos. In 1944, the year before the popular revolution, the system could only produce 440 primary teachers for urban schools and 27 for their rural counterparts. In 1944, there were thirteen official centres of secondary education with 1,961 students.

The Guatemalan spring 1944–54 Meanwhile, the social class structure of the country in common with other Central American entities had altered significantly. A client or subservient middle class composed largely of state and enterprise administrators that had been created to manage an increasingly complex social order aspired to escape from the social and political straitjacket that made its position insecure and did not provide for accumulating the cultural capital needed by their progeny. Their Weltanschauung was formulated against the background of the conviction that in order to achieve these ends the military regime underpinning in their view the oppressive representative of the privileges and power of the traditional élites, the coffee oligarchs and local export magnates in alliance with the large international corporations that controlled much of the primary economy had to be replaced. This coincided with a new-found aggressiveness on the part of the urban working class composed of transport, textile and shoe workers and dissident military officers who found their path to promotion blocked by the inertia of the Ubico government. Students joined in what was called a ‘Guatemalan spring’, a hitherto

Guatemala: A Failing System

175

unknown alliance of the middle and nascent working class to achieve common aims, one of which was an educational system responsible to their needs. The hitherto client and compliant middle class spearhead the movement, as in Costa Rica, to create something approaching a welfare state. Without the participation of the non-ladino population the new régime was fragile and subject to more than twenty attempts by the military representing the traditional élites, including the hierarchy of the Catholic Church who were opposed to his reforms. While a similar popular uprising in Costa Rica and, for a brief period of time, in El Salvador succeeded because it was able to engage the vast majority of the population, in Guatemala it failed because the proponents of the prevailing it angered were more powerful than its own supporters, and the military was the only organization capable of enforcing anything like a national policy in the absence of the involvement of the indigenous communities. The 1945 constitution laid the basis for the establishment of a more active Ministry of Education that would establish schools in the hitherto excluded rural zones. Parallel to the agrarian reform that expropriated a considerable portion of the land holds of the United Fruit Company and the establishment of 100,000 poor rural families on those lands and those distributed by the state, an attempt was made to spread education to the countryside. However, efforts were hampered by the fact that in the light of growing hostility on the part of the American government and the disruption caused by the coffee barons working in concert with the military and no real presence among the majority of the population, the government’s first priority was to survive. Nonetheless, they set up more facilities for the training of teachers, the launching of adult literacy programmes and the establishment of the innovations of the Instituto Indigenista Nacional to officialize indigenous. The university was awarded its autonomy and quickly moved to set up a humanities faculty that included education. Teacher training colleges were expanded and pre-vocational schools were established. Efforts were also stymied by the lack of resources and personnel to such an extent that too few teachers were trained, too few schools established in rural areas and little thought was given to the development of an appropriate curriculum.

Spring reverts to winter 1954–96 In 1954, the first of several American-backed and American-trained military regimes replaced the democratically elected government and instantly revoked all of its social reforms. Those who were judged to be illiterate, the majority of the

176

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

non-ladino population, lost the right to vote. Forcing the recently enfranchised peasants to give up their lands the new government cancelled the agrarian reform and returned lands to their previous owners. A Preventative Penal Law against Communism was put into place and thousands were arrested without any right of appeal. The coup d’état marked the beginning of a long and brutal civil war that tore the country apart. By 1970 about 2 per cent of the population had lost their lives. Another 10 per cent were forced off their lands and 600 villages were destroyed by order of a series of military and nominally civilian governments. Between 1970 and 1983 a further 50,000 people died in the violence, and 200,000 fled to neighbouring countries. Hundreds of thousands more were internally displaced. In 1981, the Inter-American Human Rights Commission released a report blaming the current government for ‘thousands of illegal executions.’ A 1999 report issued by the UN-backed Commission for Historical Clarification stated that Guatemalan security forces were responsible for 93 per cent of all human rights atrocities committed during the civil war up to 1996. Of these, 23,671 were victims of arbitrary execution. Eighty-three per cent of identified victims were Mayans. The report did not end the violence. Guatemalans, the report continued, still faced high levels of violence that weak and corrupt law enforcement institutions could not control. Sixty per cent of the country lived in poverty, and the increasing levels of crime, gang violence and the incursion of the drug trade revealed a society where inequality, racism and endemic poverty were the rule. It is difficult to imagine how any educational institution or programme could function against such a background. Scores of schools were closed or destroyed. Many teachers could not exercise their professions. In fact, between 1978 and 1980 the death squads in the highlands specifically targeted teachers who they presumed formed rallying points for the oppositions. The military regime saw the school as a site to inculcate a strong sense of discipline and duty to the state. Carefully constructed rites, rituals and other such practices filled the school day and constituted what observers called a ‘re-militarization of education’. However, despite dire consequences of a ‘regime change’ that undermined the social fabric to the point of irresolvable conflict, not all educational programmes, schools and initiatives disappeared from the agenda. Non-government organizations, many sponsored by elements on the fringes of the Catholic Church and Jesuit groups that were often in tacit alliance with international organizations, could cushion policy and even set up what we can call a ‘policy in waiting’ for the day when a greater element of democracy and the results of

Guatemala: A Failing System

177

social diversification came fully into play. Other private institutions that were unhappy with the inability of existing institutions to deliver a higher-quality education came into being. It became apparent that the Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala could not cope with the demand, and from 1962 a number of private universities were established. Hence, by 1980, the state university had quintupled in size and the new private universities enrolled 8 per cent of those in higher education, constituting almost the entire urban middle class. Among other initiatives during this period was the introduction of a new curriculum of pre-primary and primary education in 1963. In 1976, the formal educational structure was made more coherent. During the same period, new schools were constructed largely in urban areas. There was an attempt to train rural teachers through the establishment of a number of special training colleges, emphasizing that a special rural curriculum was unsuccessful. The government tried to extend the use of Spanish as the lingua franca through the creation of a national programme for bilingual education that was in theory extended to 800 schools. In 1985, for the first time since 1954, a National Education Law emphasized decentralization and participation of indigenous communities. There were moves to develop rural education sponsored by, among other institutions, Rural Teachers Training Colleges.

Towards the current system and practice of education – the 1996 settlement By 1993, it was apparent to most observers including the American State Department that the continued system of oppression and military-backed regimes not only had become an embarrassment but also threatened hemispheric interests. They brokered a set of compromises that laid the basis for Guatemala emerging from the status of what they called a ‘failed state’ into something resembling a more modern and hopefully more pluralistic society. This included doing something about a totally dysfunctional system of education.

Introduction to the post-1996 settlement The December 1996 peace accords signed by the government and the Union Revolucionario Nacional Guatemalteca included resettlement of the population displaced by the terror, an emphasis in line with the policies of international

178

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

organizations for integrated human development programmes through the setting of goals for productive and sustainable development and a programme to modernize: that is, democratize the state through an increase in the participation of all segments of society. They emphasized the rights of women and of indigenous communities, proclaiming that they were now determined to reduce poverty and social exclusion. For the first time, Guatemala was defined as a multiethnic, multicultural and multilingual nation (World Bank 2004). The documents stipulated that the role of education was to promote integration of multicultural values (Maria Elena Anderson 2001). Education was seen as the key to promoting and solidifying these aims. This meant promoting multilingual and multicultural education and in order to do so to find a way of decentralizing the operations of the schools. According to Morales Rubio and Rosales (2016), in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the Guatemalan system of education was still failing to deliver. More than six million adults, that is, those aged over fifteen, were illiterate and majority of them were those who still did not have access to education. According to Anderson (2001), the restructuring of education mentioned in the accords called for a 50 per cent increase in the budget as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP). The aim was to provide at least three years of primary school for all seven- to twelve-year-olds, and an increase in literacy rate to 70 per cent by 2000. This was to be achieved by ‘deconcentrating’, decentralizing and simplifying the educational administration. During this restructuring process, 200 positions were eliminated and nearly 400 administrative staff were made redundant, of which 124 were reassigned. The lead and lag time to establish a viable and sustainable system of education is a long one. Institutions must be created or revitalized, teachers must be trained or retrained, the support or at least the acquiescence of parents must be marshalled, and a fully functioning system of administration in tune with educational policies and aims must be in operation. If as in Guatemala previous administrations are widely seen as being tainted with corruption or with an ideology that impedes the progress of pupils, and if they are perceived to be agents of political control, then it is little wonder that parents particularly in poor and rural areas were thoroughly estranged from the system. If there are insufficient numbers of inadequately trained teachers, the situation was not propitious for education being conceived of as an instrument to improve life chances. Even the most progressive of aims as set out in the settlement were met with scepticism if not incredulity.

Guatemala: A Failing System

179

That is, the task was one of trying to compensate for the past but by using the same administrative apparatus that was part to the years of oppression. The situation was not helped by the naïve assumptions of international organizations like the World Bank and UNESCO that a change in control was equivalent to a change in power. Nor should one be surprised at the lack of optimism when six years after the signing of the accords Amnesty International, as we have seen, still classified Guatemala as a ‘corporate mafia state’ (Amnesty 2002, p. 6). Many new programmes were initiated, and what was called a ‘national education crusade’ was launched in 1999 through the dynamic pressure group, the Asociación de Investigación y Estudios Sociales (ASIES). However, most of their aims were not achieved and spending on education remained far below the international norm. In fact, between 1995 and 2000 it only increased from 1.6 per cent of gross national product (GNP) to 2.5 per cent. In 2013, according to the World Bank macroeconomic database, it was still only at 2.85 per cent – hardly an indication of financial commitment to education (Jonas 2000). The post-peace accords government realized that they simply did not possess the personnel, the know-how, the strategies and, indeed, the local support to undertake all of these changes quickly and efficiently. The task in rural areas seemed to be insurmountable. For that reason they took the unusual step of abdicating from their constitutional responsibility and empowering the nongovernmental organizations that had maintained some kind of presence in these areas even during the worst days of the civil wars to take over the schools, develop new and hopefully more successful policies and enhance the learning possibilities of young people in those areas. The 1996 peace accords provided the opportunity to appraise the educational panorama, consolidate worthwhile programmes set up by international and non-governmental agencies and initiate new projects with greater certainty of success than anytime in the previous forty years. A large number of sometimes overlapping but certainly eager agencies were established to repair the damages and set up new programmes particularly to design the educational infrastructure. These included the Fonda para la Paz, the Fondo de Inversión Social (The Fund for social Investment), the Sistema Nacional de Mejoramiento de Recursos Humanos (the National System for the Improvement of Human Resources and operational bodies like the Consejos de Desarrollo (The Councils for Development). Before the peace accords in 1992, the Ministry of Education was forced to admit that it did not have the resources to increase access to education in

180

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

remote areas. They passed the buck to a group of active non-governmental organizations that had sprung up during the long years of military rule and, most importantly, through their activities had gained the confidence of the rural and indigenous communities. Under pressure from sponsoring organizations like the World Bank, in an unheard-of action it literally gave away its monopoly to provide education by putting the responsibility completely in the hands of such organizations through the Programa Nacional de Autogestión para el Desarrollo Educativo (PRONADE) launched in 1994. At a stroke, they were able to absent themselves from their statutory obligations and as a bonus developed, as USAID pointed out, an instrument to collect information on the rural population.

An experiment in privatization: The Programa Nacional de Autogestión para el Desarrollo Educativo (PRONADE) The post-1996 Ministry of Education found that it could not provide the most basic services for its schools outside of the largest urban areas. It therefore decided to build on the PRONADE programme and use it to greatly expand education provision for those areas where schools had largely been absent. The most prominent organizations involved were those associated with the Catholic Church, although many others were financed by overseas organizations. It was claimed that the ministry had great difficulties in identifying what the organizations were and had no control over their activities. The newly invigorated PRONADE was designed to create a more participatory community-based system and practice of education that responded to local needs, including, above all, taking into account socio-cultural and linguistic characteristics of these communities. The aim was one to increase access to schools and to provide quality education in these rural areas. The PRONADE schools were designed to be self-managing, and their ruling bodies, composed, in part, of members of the community, had the power to hire and pay teachers. The funds, in theory, were to be managed by the local communities. Eventually, PRONADE became part of the ministry. Hence, PRONADE quickly evolved from a small pilot scheme to a countrywide programme consisting of over 4,500 schools and attended by almost 450,000 pupils of pre-primary and primary age, who were taught by almost 15,000 teachers in 2005, thus serving about 20 per cent of pre-primary and primary school students. In the same year, on behalf of the World Bank Di Gropello (2005) identified

Guatemala: A Failing System

181

the programme as ‘one of the most proactive managerial, administrative and financially decentralised undertakings in Latin America’. In theory it empowered local communities to define, administer and manage education that would be relevant to the needs and possibilities of the communities. However, the programme was subject to criticism from a number of organizations including the government body responsible for evaluation. It was argued that by reducing its role in delivering education, the state could no longer control quality. This was important because by 2000 it emerged that the PRONADE schools were among the worst-performing schools. It was claimed that their teachers were not fully trained and the role of the community was not self-management but in reality dealing with administrative functions. In fact, self-management was absent from many schools because the community did not participate. There was a shortage of bilingual teachers. On the positive side, between 1996 and 2000 PRONADE did raise enrolment rates by 15–20 per cent (26 per cent according to PRONADE itself) and performed as well, if not better, if measured against government schools in rural areas. According to ENCOVI (2000), enrolment in primary schools reached 79 per cent by that year and special attention was paid to developing programmes to encourage more girls in rural areas to enter and remain in school. The schools provided for 180 days of instruction annually, were open every day of the year and were located at sites within 1 km of its students. But the teacher–student ratio was up to 50–1 and the schools chronically lacked material and funding. Less positive is the fact that with the effective privatization of these schools, many of the costs were passed on to parents who could ill afford the expenditure. The schools depended on a teaching staff that worked far beyond what was specified in their contracts. Many parents were also overwhelmed by the expectation that they could manage the school and eventually became frustrated by withdrawing. Only in those communities where some of the inhabitants had the knowledge and practice of dealing with government institutions were funds obtained. Indeed, the government was often loathe to loosen the purse strings, and many schools were left having to raise the money even for current expenditure. In many cases, schools ended up being run by what were seen as authoritarian regimes. The idea of having a school within easy walking distance for all rural pupils was difficult to achieve. Even where it was possible, the schools were often illequipped and without adequate backup facilities. The more remote schools found it difficult to recruit the most highly qualified teachers. In both these schools and government-run schools, teachers were often employed on an

182

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

annual basis without firm contracts and social security. As a result, many staffing problems resulted that prejudiced the life chance of the pupils and alienated their community. An associated problem was the near impossibility of finding a sufficient number of adequately trained bilingual teachers. All too often, teachers sent to the smaller schools were able to converse only in Spanish, which was often a language that many pupils did not learn until they went to school. By 2006, there were calls for the Ministry of Education to assume its responsibilities and undertake a thoroughgoing evaluation of the programme leading to the integration of the schools established by PRONADE into the national system of state education. Further, it was argued that international organizations like the World Bank and USAID should cease financing pilot programmes and concentrate their efforts across the entire system of education. Specifically, it was proposed that more work was needed on developing a nationwide curriculum and pedagogy and that they respect local cultures, that PRONADE teachers should be integrated into the system and that education should be de facto as well as de jure free. Finally, it was proposed that the PRONADE system of school governance that specifically gave powers to parents should be generalized.

The current situation It would be churlish to suggest that progress has not been made since the 1996 peace accords. There is cause for optimism because a new realism has entered education thinking and there is a willingness to accept that the path ahead is difficult with the solution of one problem often uncovering others. There was undeniable progress between 2000 and 2010. According to the World Bank report for 2013, the pupil–teacher ratio in primary schools declined from 32.8 to 27.9 with the caveat that the ratio was far worse in rural areas. The number of primary school teachers increased from 58,641 to 95,194. However, while the number of secondary school teachers increased from 35,910 to 61,472 over the same period, the pupil–teacher ration worsened from 14 to 16. Women accounted for 65 per cent of primary school teachers, and just under 48 per cent of secondary school teachers were women, but more often than not they were excluded from school management. On the minus side, schools in rural and indigenous areas are still largely multigrade institutions lacking in the most basic infrastructure. The sheer poverty of the physical plant, the poor quality of training and backup for teachers and

Guatemala: A Failing System

183

language barriers remain. The mandatory 180 school days per annum remains a pipe dream for many. Administration leaves much to be desired. Decision making has not been made any easier, given that between 2000 and 2012 there were eighteen ministers of education. It is little wonder that nearly one-third of all primary school pupils failed their first year of schooling. Attempts to upgrade the requirements for entry into the teaching profession have run into difficulties. When in 2012 the ministry proposed that those studying to be primary teachers would have to have two addition years and complete a university degree at their own cost, there were riots in some urban areas.

1 Primary school coverage There are more schools, and according to Avivara, over 90 per cent of children are now registered at schools that actually exist. However, the percentage is significantly lower in rural areas (Avivara 2010). The dropout remains high because the authorities have still not been able to tailor rural schools to the needs and possibilities of rural families. Most rural parents cannot afford to contribute to the school, and their children cannot give up working on the family land. In terms of the school itself, the curriculum is still not relevant to the needs and possibilities of such children and it is difficult to find and train teachers with the required skills. Fewer than 15 per cent of classrooms meet minimal standards in terms of the provisions of classroom space, teaching materials and equipment, water and sanitation. In the rural areas of Guatemala, almost none meet these standards.

2 Primary school teachers and directors As McEwan (2006) points out, rural schools have a difficult time retaining teachers. Moreover, teachers still tend to come from urban areas and lack the linguistic and communicative skills to work in rural schools. Poor pay compounded by poor training and little backup does not help. Without guidance and access to computers and the web, teachers, by default, fall back on learning by rote, thus negating child-centred learning to which the government is now committed. Moreover, classrooms are crowded with between 45 and 60 pupils. Teachers find it almost impossible to compensate for the prevailing situation. Directors of school are often subject to premature burnout because they are overwhelmed by responsibilities and are aware of the structure impossibility

184

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

of meeting curriculum and assessment requirements. The low-paid position is seen as so onerous that it is often rotated. Directors do not have the time to provide for a system that contextualizes learning through community involvement and their relations with parents in the most ‘deprived’ areas are poor or even non-existent.

3 Professional development Where in-service training programmes exist, they do not test and stretch teachers. They generally consist of a presentation of new government regulations, given in the form of lectures which are poorly attended.

4 School organization Officially, the school year is composed of 180 days. Outside of urban areas this is rarely met. The school timetable is often interrupted by holidays, local festivities and, above all, the unavailability of teachers. These events regularly take precedence over learning. School heads cannot tailor the curriculum and pedagogy to the advantage of the pupils and do not have the resources to help teachers.

5 Curriculum and pedagogy The curriculum lacks flexibility and only a few teachers can contextualize the textbook with relevant and appropriate examples. While some of the PRONADE schools originally centred the curriculum on the needs of their pupils, much of this has disappeared. Individual and project-based learning are absent as teachers tend to lecture to the entire group of students and/or have them copy information. In rural schools, computer access is obviously limited or is non-existent. By default it means that thinking across boundaries to solve problems, applying knowledge to one’s own situation and critically accessing and using one’s experience are absent from the schools where loose framing is most required.

6 Accountability and evaluation Given the fact that the system still lacks unity and organization, it is not surprising that standardized methods for evaluating student performance and achievement hardly exist. According to Avivara (2010), any evaluation is done on a teacher-

Guatemala: A Failing System

185

by-teacher basis with only a hint of connection to standards and benchmarks. Evaluation in schools is more often than not based on attendance and the completion of assignments rather than on a demonstration of an understanding of underlying concepts and their possible application. It is difficult to blame teachers for poor performance when they have little control over the learning environment. In many cases, centralization of decision making, the lack of sufficient space and time to give attention to pupils on an individual basis, the lack of relevant training, low salaries and impossibly long commuting times alienate teachers from their work. The advent of school evaluation and the tendency to blame the classroom for failure rather than the forces that structure the classroom create a culture of blame that itself feeds back into giving the minimum, hence, teaching to rote.

7 Parents and the community Relations with parents in rural areas still leave much to be desired. Avivara researchers (2010) have found a tendency they met in other countries, which is to blame families and pupils for poor performance rather than the quality of the curriculum and the pedagogical methods used. Parental involvement is critical to encourage pupils and to guide their application of textbook knowledge gained in the school to solve problems. For a variety of historic, as we have seen, and operational reasons, such involvement is not encouraged and the continued alienation of rural parents from the school is hardly an encouragement to learn. The fact that the majority of teachers in rural schools are not equipped to deal with such situations, as well as the fact that many do not speak the local language nor have contact with the local community does not provide a framework where learning is possible. However, there is some evidence that younger parents, less scarred by Guatemala’s long civil war, are now seeking greater involvement in the school and with some teachers attempting to find ways to make learning more accessible and relevant to community needs.

8 Secondary schools Increasing enrolment and, more importantly, retaining students in secondary schools have been less successful. Teachers training, teachers’ salaries and teacher involvement are one factor. Another is the centralization of the curriculum and the result, as met elsewhere in Latin America, that the curriculum is not

186

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

necessarily respected not because of ill will but simply because the facilities are lacking. The lack of facilities, the lack of inspiration and the tendency to blame pupils for failures of the system and of perceived relevance means that retention rate continues to be a problem. Fewer than 30 per cent of poor rural indigenous girls are enrolled in secondary school.

9 Funding and prioritization Education still remains significantly underfunded, according to the Centre for Economic and Social Rights. Guatemala continues to have one of the lowest levels of funding relative to GDP of any Latin American country. This is corroborated by USAID. For example, Guatemala was loaned over $30,000,000 by the World Bank at the beginning of the millennium showed that very little of this money actually was devoted to the schools themselves, in part because the mechanisms to do so did not exist. In 2006, a further $62,000,000 devoted to secondary education met the same fate, in part because of lack of coordination and a misuse of funds. For example, many villages were provided with new buildings without teachers or materials.

10 Research and standards Research on a national level is still lacking because of lack of trained personnel and because it is still not sufficiently prioritized. The Ministry of Education (MINEDUC) has published a set of national curriculum standards for primary schools that unfortunately are difficult to apply to many schools because they are multigrade, without physical and intellectual resources and lack the basis for application. Moreover, there is a tendency, not welcomed by parents and many teachers, to emphasize what is called ‘moral education’ rather than learning, that is, curriculum places emphasis on subjectbased moral education and academic learning is secondary.

Conclusions We conclude with two points: First, sustainable and viable national systems of education that provide nationwide coverage with accountability at all levels are a product of relatively stable society where there is a sufficiently large middle class

Guatemala: A Failing System

187

that depends on the accumulation of cultural capital and its maintenance. Further, that middle class must occupy an important and mediating role between the owners of physical capital and a sufficiently large, active and organized working class. That middle class is generally both the author and chief beneficiary of state systems of education and that system itself needs a modicum of social stability to fulfil its tasks of creating and/or maintaining a Durkheimian consensus and the middle class also needs it as a vehicle to ensure the social position of its progeny. Until very recent times, Guatemala certainly never enjoyed such stability, and its middle class, until the productive and reproductive basis of the society altered, was never in a strong enough position to fulfil its role. The peace accords of 1996, while far from sufficient in the eyes of human rights organizations, began to lay the basis for the creation and extension of the first real system of national education. This allowed for both control and promotion and in conjunction with the beginnings of a legal and social framework began to enfranchise the majority of the population. It was largely indigenous in composition and was until then excluded from education, to move in the direction that international organizations assumed was a modern system of education. In the light of unresolved social conflicts and the continued denigration of indigenous groups, progress is slow and not aided by the fact that there are few qualified teachers who can take on the enormous tasks required. Continued social instability is reflected by the fact that over the last ten years there have been twelve different ministers of education. Wastage is high because the task of providing a system and guaranteeing equity when the budget is about half of that recommended by UNESCO, when it is badly distributed and when mechanisms for the development of teachers and administrators are lacking, sometimes corrupt and, in many cases, not functioning means that even in statistical terms, not forgetting that the country still does not have the facilities to even collect statistical data, while there is some improvement, it is small and possibly the result of an improvement in the collection of data rather than any real improvement in delivery. Second, even if coverage was universal, the ministry and its devolved organizations functioned properly, the country enjoyed a well-trained, efficient and committed corps of teachers, the question of quality remains. The assumption that the system must prepare students for higher education is possibly wrongheaded when it cannot provide a decent, meaningful and efficient system of agricultural and industrial education. So long as the curriculum and, possibly even more importantly, the pedagogy is based on the non-engagement and noninvolvement of pupils and their creativity, it cannot be successful. So long as the

188

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

system of evaluation is based upon performance in not necessarily appropriate examinations that measure the rate of the accumulation of a rigid curriculum and not upon competence, that is, a curriculum and pedagogy based upon competence or as close to an integrated code as one can get, then it cannot be successful in developmental terms and in personal terms for those living marginalized lives. However, on the other hand, according to a 2013 World Bank country survey (2014) of leading stakeholders, over 81 per cent of almost the residents of Guatemala City felt the country was heading in the right direction – a significant improvement over opinions expressed almost ten years before, and the development of a viable and sustainable system of basic education coupled with rural development was seen as key to reducing poverty.

Bibliography ActionAid Guatemala. Derecho a la Educación: El Precio que Pagan las y Los Pobres (Colectivo de Educación para Todas y Todos – EPT – ActionAid Guatemala, 2006). Alvarado Browning, Félix, Maribel Carrera Guerra and Abel Girón. Perfil de las organizaciones no Gubermentales en Guatemala (Guatemala: Foro de Coordinaciones de ONG de Guatemala, 1998). Alvarardo, Félix. ‘Complementary uses of Information Systems in Decision Making, Planning and Democracy: An Example in the Education Sector (Guatemala)’. Journal of Education for International Development, 4, no. 2 (2009): 1–12. Amnesty International. Guatemala: Guatemala’s Lethal Legacy: Past Impunity and Renewed Human Rights Violations, AMR 34/001/2002 (London: Amnesty International, 2002). Anderson, Maria Elena. ‘Guatemala: The Education Sector’. Guatemala Poverty Assessment (GUAPA) Program Technical Paper No. 2 (Washington, DC: The World Bank, 2001). Argueta Hernández, Bienvenido. ‘La historia de la educación de Guatemala de Carlos González Orellana, su significado y desafíos’, in Revista Historia de la Educación Latinoamericana, vol. 17, núm. 25, Julio-diciembre, 2015, pp. 233–56. Avivara (2010) http://www.avivara.org/aboutguatemala/educationinguatemala.html Ball, Patrick, Paul Kobrak and Herbert F. Spirer. State Violence in Guatemala, 1960–1996: A Quantitative Reflection (Washington American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1998). Berger, Susan. Guatemaltecas: The Women’s Movement: 1986–2003 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2006).

Guatemala: A Failing System

189

Burgos, Amílcar. ‘La Descentralización y Desconcentración en el Área Rural’. Cuadernos de Desarrollo Humano (Serviprensa de Guatemala, 2000). Carter, Jacob A. Beyond PRONADE: NGOs and the Formal Education Sector in Guatemala (Amherst Massachusetts: University of Massaachusetts, 2012). Commission for Historical Clarification. Guatemala: Memory of Silence (Guatemala: Litoprint, 1999). Cullather, Nick. Secret History: The CIA’s Classified Accounts of Its Operations in Guatemala, 1954–1954. 2nd edn (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006). Delli Santé, Angela. Nightmare or Reality: Guatemala in the 1980’s (Amsterdam: Thela Publications, 1996). Di Gropello, Emanuella. A Comparative Analysis of School-Based Management in Central America. Working Paper No. 72 (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2006). Empresarios por la Educación (2015). www.empresariosporlaeducacion.org. González Orellana, Carlos. Historia de la Educación en Guatemala (Guatemala: Editorial Universitaria, Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala, 2007). Hallman, Kelly, Sara Peracca, Jennifer Catino and M. Ruiz. Assessing the Multiple Disadvantages of Mayan Girls: The Effects of Gender, Ethnicity, Poverty and Residence on Education in Guatemala (Population Council, 2007). Hernandez-Zavala, Martha, Harry Anthony Patrinos and Chris Sakellariou. Quality of Schooling and Quality of Schools for Indigenous Students in Guatemala, Mexico and Peru, Vol. 3892 (Washington, DC: World Bank Publications, 2006). Jonas, Susanne. Of Centaurs and Doves: Guatemala’s Peace Process (Boulder: Westview Press, 2000). Levenson-Estrada, Deborah. Trade Unionists against Terror: Guatemala City 1954–1985 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press Books, 1994). Loenin, Josef. Effects of Primary, Secondary and Tertiary Education on Economic Growth: Evidence from Guatemala, Vol. 3610 (Washington, DC: World Bank Publications, 2005). Lovell, W. George. A Beauty that Hurts. Life and Death in Guatemala. Second revised Edition (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2010). Manz, Beatriz. Paradise in Ashes: A Guatemalan Journey of Courage, Terror, and Hope (Berkeley : University of California Press, 2004). Marques, José and Ian Banon. Central America: Education Reform in a Post-Conflict Setting, Opportunities and Challenges (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2003). Martinic Sergio. ‘Educational Progress and Problems in Guatemala, Honduras and México’. Background Paper Prepared for the Education for All Global Monitoring Report, 4 (UNESCO, 2003). McEwan, Patrick J., and Marisol Trowbridge. The Achievement of Indigenous Students in Guatemalan Public Schools (Wellesley, MA: Department of Economics, Wellesley College, 2006). Menéndez, Luis. La Educación en Guatemala – 1954–2004, Enfoque HistóricoEstadístico (Guatemala: Editorial Superación, 2006).

190

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

Ministerio de Educación. Plan de Educación 2004–2007 (Guatemala, 2004). Morales, Lucia, Fernando Rubio and Leslie Rosales. Out-of-School-Youth (OSY) functional literacy and numeracy assessment in Guatemala Western Highlands, CIES Conference, Vancouver, Canada (2016). Nelson, Diane M. Reckoning: The Ends of War in Guatemala (Durham: Duke University Press, 2009). Painter, James. Guatemala: False Hope, False Freedom (London: Catholic Institute for International Relations and Latin America Bureau, 1987). Poppema, Margriet. ‘Guatemala: The Peace Accords and Education: A Post-conflict Struggle for Equal Opportunities, Cultural Recognition and Participation in Education’. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 7 no. 4. (2009): 383–408. Ruano, Carlos R. ‘Educational Policy Formulation in Loosely Coupled Systems: Some Salient Features of Guatemala’s Public and Private School Sectors’. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 11 (2003): 21. Schirmer, Jennifer. The Guatemalan Military Project: A Violence Called Democracy (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998). Schlesinger, Stephen, and Stephen Kinzer. Bitter Fruit: The Story of the American Coup in Guatemala, revised and expanded edition (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005). SEGEPLAN. Desarrollo social y construcción de la paz: plan de acción 1996–2000. (Secretaría General de Planificación, 1996). Sieder, Rachel, Megan Thomas, George Vickers and Jack Spence. Who Governs? Guatemala Five Years after the Peace Accords (Cambridge, MA: Hemispheric Initiatives, 2002). Streeter, Stephen M. Managing the Conterrevolution: The United States and Guatemala 1954–1961 (Athens: Ohio University Centre for International Studies, 2000). Valerio, Alexandra, and Carlos Rojas. Education Decentralisation and School Management by Local Communities: The Case of PRONADE (Guatemala City : World Bank, 2001). Williams, Robert G. States and Social Evolution: Coffee and the Rise of National Governments in Central America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994). World Bank. Country Study, Poverty in Guatemala (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2004). World Bank. Guatemala: Striving to Implement the Peace Agreements (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2008). World Bank. Guatemala – World Bank Country Survey 2013 (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2014).

11

Honduras: Contemporary Education Reform Javier Luque

1 Introduction Before analysing the present system and practice of education and its achievements and deficiencies by way of an introduction, one must stress that Honduras is a small, poor and highly unequal country. In geographical terms, despite its small size, Honduras is hallmarked by a large variety of climatic and topographic conditions, with hot and dry areas in the south, mountains in the centre and tropical jungles in the north. It is located in the heart of Central America with a population estimated at 8.3 million (2014) spread over 43,278 square miles. Over 40 per cent of its population is under twenty years of age. One out of two Hondurans live in rural areas, many of them in isolated conditions without access to the most basic of public services. The International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs estimates that ethnic minorities constitute 1.27 million or somewhere between 7 and 9 per cent of the population (Mikkelsen 2015). The annual gross domestic product (GDP) per capita is only US$2,190, and the poverty rate is 64.5 per cent. In socio-economic terms with a Gini coefficient of 57.4, Honduras is one of the most unequal countries in the Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) region.1 Over the last fifty years, Honduran education has been drastically transformed. In 1950, the average person had no more than 1.6 years of schooling. Despite being mentioned in the Constitutions of 1831 and 1880, only in 1966 with the enactment of the first education law (Ley de Educación) was real public support for education provided. Until that time, education was private. This lay the basis for a vertiginous increase in school attendance. Between 1950 and 2010, it grew by 2,780 per cent, more than four times faster than the 670 per cent growth in total population. Correspondingly, over the same period the rate of school enrolment increased. The number of years the working-age population spent

192

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

in educational institution rose to 5.5 years (Barro and Lee 2010). Yet it was estimated that about 20 per cent of the population remained illiterate, although for the age group of fifteen to twenty-four the rate was about 4 per cent in 2011. In 2012, a Ley Fundamental de Educación (Basic Law of Education), with the stated aim of creating a more inclusive and modern system of education was put into practice. The new law was based on the premise that the education was a human right. In order to improve efficiency and increase the life chances of students, it fostered the creation of a system and practice of education that focused more directly on catering to their needs and possibilities. Among its many provisions, it provided for significant reforms of the structure and delivery of the education system. Despite these important improvements, Honduran education still faces many challenges if it is to successfully provide the human capital the country needs to compete successfully in the global economy, reduce the chasm between rich and poor and boost the living standards of all Hondurans. At the outset of the twenty-first century, almost all young Hondurans entered primary schools. However, only 90 per cent completed that level of education. Wastage at higher levels was greater: 60 per cent and 47 per cent, respectively, finish lower-secondary and upper-secondary schools2. In addition, in terms of learning itself recent results in national and international tests show that, despite improvements, Honduran students are not learning as expected. Additionally, economic inequality is reflected in unequal education outcomes. That is, the education system is failing to provide equal opportunities for all and the vicious circle of poverty and low educational attainment appears to be intractable. Education results are poor despite having one of the highest expenditure levels (about 9 per cent of its GDP) in the region in the last decade. However, its expenditure per student of US$199 is well below the regional average of US$658. Behind this failure are high levels of inefficiency in the system. Recent governmental efforts, that take advantage of the statutory framework introduced by the Basic Law of Education, are focused on improving the efficiency levels and student learning, by introducing a better management system for information, accountability in the education sector through the introduction of a culture of evaluation, improvement of governance through better compliance with the law and raising the requirements to become a teacher. Results are starting to show some progress. For two years in a row, students have not lost a single school day due to teachers’ strikes. A significant number of teachers have been redeployed from overstaffed schools to poorly staffed schools. Learning is improving as shown by evaluations, but gains are still limited and the

Honduras: Contemporary Education Reform

193

existing gaps we mentioned are still there. Despite initial opposition, reforms have been implemented to upgrade the competence of teachers. Nonetheless, as we will argue, to close the gaps a combination of further improvements in the efficient use of existing resources, the provision of carefully targeted new resources and a continuous effort to develop local education solutions for local problems is still needed. This chapter on Honduras is organized as follows. Following this introduction (Section 1), Section 2 presents a summary of education in Honduras up to the end of the twentieth century, including the institutional setup of the education sector, its achievements, the main factors shaping those achievements and the initial steps taken to achieve a thoroughgoing educational reform. Section 3 describes the main actions taken in the context of a new education reform at the beginning of the twenty-first century, the main actions taken within its framework, initial results and the remaining challenges. Section 4 summarizes the analysis and provides suggestions for the future. Further, in the limited space available, given the late development of educational institutions, we concentrate on the growth of the educational infrastructure. To discuss the evolution of a viable and sustainable curriculum, curriculum standards, a relevant and appropriate pedagogy and systems and practices of evaluation of the cumulative rather than a summative nature is extremely important and will be the subject of a further analysis.

2 The Honduran educational sector at the outset of the twenty-first century 2.a Establishing educational institutions In 1829, Francisco Morazán (1792–842), the great hero of the independence movement in Honduras and Central America, said, ‘Public education provides light, destroys the errors and prepares the triumph of reason and freedom’ (Sosa 2009, p. 26). As Honduras developed as an independent country, the need to educate its citizens became a key public policy, recognized in its statutory framework. The current constitution (passed in 1982) in Article 132, Fourth Chapter, states, ‘Every child has that right to benefit from education’. Nonetheless, Honduras is still short of attaining this objective. To achieve these ends the first steps were to establish a secure and responsible institutional framework. This was accomplished in several stages.

194

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

Stage I: The Ley de Educación (Congreso Nacional, 1966, derogated in 2012), Education Law, was the first major attempt by Honduras to organize its education system. The law established that education is a right, and the state has the obligation to provide it in the most comprehensive and appropriate manner. The law divided the state education system into three levels: pre-primary (four to six years old), primary (seven to twelve years old) and secondary (thirteen to eighteen years old). At that time only primary education was compulsory and the state was obliged to finance it. Stage II: The next step, two years later in 1968, was the passage by the Congress of the Ley de Escalafón (Teacher Promotion Law) that enhanced the status of teachers by giving them greater job security as well as setting the requirements for entry into the profession and defining different levels of teachers, transferring disciplinary procedures and establishing a salary scale. Stage III: After almost thirty years in operation in 1999 the Congress replaced the Ley de Escalafón (Law governing the service conditions of teachers) with the Ley del Estatuto Docente. The purpose of the new law was to enhance education outcomes by improving the working conditions of teachers. It established that teacher salaries would be determined by years of service and their educational attainment. It also regulated the process of recruitment and set up procedures to evaluate and impose sanctions on poorly performing teachers. Moreover, it assigned an important role to teacher trade unions in the regulation of the profession.

2.b Education capital in Honduras at the outset of the twenty-first century Despite these institutional reforms and innovations at the beginning of the twenty-first century, the education system in Honduras was not providing the human capital needed for long-term economic growth and a sustained reduction of poverty (Bashir, Gindling and Oviedo 2012). Growth opportunities, like the passing of the 2004 free-trade agreement with other Central American countries and the United States (CAFTA) made the matter more pressing: growth opportunities may have been lost, given the lack of proper human capital. For many Hondurans, access to education continued to be difficult, and the services offered were poor and not attuned to possibilities and needs. By 2010, the economically active population had on average 6.45 years of schooling. Completion rates were highest at the primary level, but, at the same time, more than one-tenth of the population had no schooling whatsoever (Barro and Lee

Honduras: Contemporary Education Reform

195

2010). Above all, the quality of education was an obstacle to the development of economically necessary skills and success was patchy. While one could expect that the older generations would have a low level of human capital accumulation, this was also the case of the far more numerous younger generation about to enter the labour market without proper training and preparation. In 2013, despite the almost universal coverage in the first year of primary schooling, net enrolment rates for primary and secondary education were 89.3 per cent and 48.5 per cent, respectively.3 Reflecting on the ongoing inefficiency and deficiencies in the education sector, of every student that started primary education, it estimated that only 90 per cent will successfully complete primary education, 60 per cent will finish lower-secondary school and only 47 per cent will finish secondary education. For those students in rural areas, the percentages are lower. For each rural child starting his or her first year of schooling, only 83  per  cent will finish that level with success. Forty-four per cent will finish lower-secondary school and only 29 per cent will complete their upper-secondary education.4 Drawing upon research from national and international student assessments in addition to low rates of completion, there is a problem of quality indicated by the fact that performance in the classroom was below the expected levels. In the 2010 national assessment of pupils, the results indicated that, for students at the level of basic education, only 37 per cent achieved a satisfactory level in Spanish and 23 per cent reached a satisfactory level in mathematics (Secretaría de Educación 2015). International tests confirmed these results. Honduras participated in the First Regional Study of Educational Quality organized by UNESCO in 1997. In that test, Honduras was the worst performer in mathematics and the second worst performer in Spanish.5 Honduras was the only Spanish-speaking country in Central America that did not participate in the Second Regional Study of Education Quality organized by UNESCO in 2006. More recently, Honduras’s participation in international tests goes beyond regional surveys and includes Trends on International Math and Science Study (TIMSS) in 2011. Results confirmed the low level of achievement of Honduran students and showed large performance gaps between students from Honduras and from top performer countries like South Korea. And, results were challenging for all Honduran students as results of the top performers in Honduras were below those of the lowest performers in Korea.6 Over and above test results, students who graduate are ill-prepared to enter the labour market. The wage differential for those who complete their primary

196

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

and secondary education is small, indicating that the productivity gains of extra schooling are negligible and there is little real incentive for young people to remain in school beyond the primary level. Individuals who have finished lowersecondary education earn on average US$ 200 lower than the minimum wage (Bashir, Gindling and Oviedo 2012).

2.c Factors that can help explain these results Education results, in Honduras and elsewhere, come from the interaction of different factors at the level of the school, the family and the wider community. The interaction among the different levels is regulated by the laws and tradition. Community. By community we mean the different individuals and institutions that coexist in a given geographical area. Communities tend to be organized in formal institutions, such as municipalities, or informal institutions, such as neighbourhood associations. Communities have not been particularly keen on promoting the expansion of education, and therefore reforms have tended to be top-down rather than bottom-up. The lack of support from communities for education is related to the rapid growth in education indicators experienced in the last sixty years in Honduras, as many other countries in Latin America and the developing world. In 1950, with a total population of 1.5 million, the education achievement was only 1.63 years of schooling, and 63.2 per cent of the population had never attended a school. By 2010, roughly after three generations, education attainment in years of schooling had increased fourfold to 6.4 years of schooling. In many communities, expectation of education and its perceived value remains low particularly in rural areas, and communities and families expect their children to go no further than primary education. Further education is not seen as relevant for those involved in family-based microfundia (Gavin 2016). Family background. Family’s support and contribution to the education process is essential for good outcomes. A number of recent studies have assessed the importance of financial resources, and non-monetary resources, like previous education attainment (Carneiro and Heckman 2002) from the family for students to achieve results. Low levels of parental education are related to low cognitive and non-cognitive stimulation and low demand for education, starting in early years. Unfortunately, in Honduras parental education attainment is low in comparison to the attainment of their children: in 2013, a sixth grade

Honduras: Contemporary Education Reform

197

primary education student has a 50 per cent probability of being more educated than his or her parents. In the case of ninth and eleventh grade students, the probabilities are 70 per cent and 90 per cent, respectively.7 Therefore, family contribution will grow as education attainment does, until education achievement stabilizes. In order to increase the demand for education among populations that lack education experience or face financial constraints, the government has implemented conditional cash transfer programmes in the last twenty years. Following the examples of Brazil, Mexico and several other countries in Latin America, selected households are entitled to a monetary transfer after fulfilling certain education and health conditions. With regard to education, conditions imply that school-age children should register into schools and keep a good attendance record. BID (Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo also known as the Interamerican Development Bank; 2012) evaluated the programme impact, showing an increase of 8 per cent in school participation among the beneficiaries of the cash transfers. Nonetheless, the full impact of these cash transfer programmes may not have been reached, as there is a lack of education services in many areas in which the programme operates: as there are no schools, these conditions could not be enforced. Teachers. Today, there are approximately 64,000 teachers responsible for the education of more than 1.7 million young people attending both state and private schools. Since 1950, the number of teachers has expanded by a factor of thirty. Notwithstanding these recent developments, now it is possible to teach in primary schools without having a post-secondary school qualification. Education is now one of the most popular areas of study. In 2012, there were about 4,000 students studying to become primary school teachers who were registered in the country’s twenty Escuelas Normales (upper-secondary-level teacher training colleges). About 2,000 were registered at in the Universidad Pedagógica Francisco Morazán (UPNFM) to become secondary school teachers for whom a university degree is required. However, very few of the top-performing upper-secondary school students actually go into the teaching profession. Nonetheless, according to FEREMA (2015), the teacher profession has become more attractive over recent years to a much wider population. Traditionally, the teaching profession was attractive for students in mediumand small-sized towns and cities. But, starting in the mid-1990s, when the Pedagogic University was founded and teacher salaries began to increase, the teaching profession became appealing to the middle class in larger cities. As a

198

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

result, more students applied to the UPNFM which grew apace. Unfortunately, this evolution was not matched by the creation of new ‘plazas docentes’ (posts for teaches), and the result was an oversupply of graduates with degrees in education. Between 2005 and 2011, teachers’ salaries doubled in real terms. By 2012, teacher salaries were competitive with other professionals with similar years of education (Bruns and Luque 2014). Nonetheless, the continued oversupply of applicants for teaching posts led to serious problems with the teacher unions (called ‘Colegios Magisteriales’). Strikes and other forms of protest became common. For example, in 2011, many schools were in operation for no more than sixty days of the school year. Other long-standing reasons for these problems include a resistance to professionalism and continued corruption in the award of positions in schools and the educational administration. In 2008, a survey among students at the UPNFM found that they were convinced that the likelihood of getting a teaching position is more dependent on their political affiliation than their performance as teachers.8 For those who succeed in becoming teachers, there is no clear career path and there are very few opportunities for professional advancement (FEREMA 2015). Additionally, once in the system, there are no incentives to promote continuous improvement, as teacher pay is related to years of tenure rather than to the outcomes of teaching and in-service training. There are no rewards for good performance and no sanctions for bad performance. Other mechanisms to increase salaries are obtaining a university degree, taking a managerial post, working a double shift within the education system or having a part-time job outside the system. It has become clear to researchers that teacher performance is affected by a low level of awareness and understanding of the curriculum and lack of skills necessary for classroom management. In Honduras there are remaining challenges in both directions. In the first teacher performance test administered in 2013 by the directorate general of Evaluation of Educational Quality, about a quarter of the teachers performed below a satisfactory level in mathematics and reading. The consequences for teacher practices are important as has already been documented, for example, in a study by Padilla (2012). He found that teachers were not implementing the national curriculum because they lacked a sufficient awareness and understanding of its content and of its aims. Besides content knowledge, teacher practices are not promoting student learning. Regarding classroom management, a study, which gathered information on teacher practices through the methodology of classroom observation method

Honduras: Contemporary Education Reform

199

in a representative sample of schools in Honduras, found that teachers were engaged in learning activities approximately 62 per cent of the time. This number was similar to the average observed in other LAC countries studied, but below the 85 per cent benchmark of developing countries. Additionally, classroom observations showed that in Honduras, despite teacher engagement, only 30 per cent of students were engaged as well, which is below the numbers observed in other Latin American countries (Bruns and Luque 2014). Lack of incentives for improving and low levels of training and, indeed, ability may limit willingness of teachers to engage in new practices to improve student learning. For example, in a study to assess the way teachers were interacting with information and communications technology (ICT) at schools in Honduras, Luque (2013) found that older teachers were less likely to incorporate computers into their everyday pedagogical practice. Schools. A total of 1.7 million students and 64,000 teachers in Honduras study and work in more than 31,000 public schools. As in the case of students and teachers, the number of schools increased rapidly in the last sixty years. In 1950, the number of schools was approximately 1,000. The growth is explained partially by the increase in rural, multigrade schools, which tend to be smaller than regular schools. Given the rapid growth in school-age population, innovative measures were implemented with an emphasis on accommodating more students, like schools offering double and triple shifts, and alternative methods that change the traditional concept of school have been implemented. Despite these efforts, many youngsters in Honduras do not attend school, given the lack of supply. Reflecting the different socio-economic and geographical conditions present in Honduras, schools are heterogeneous in many dimensions. There are schools with less than 10 students (40 per cent of schools, 10 per cent of enrolment), and schools with more than 5,000 students (4 per cent of schools, 30 per cent of enrolment). Besides challenges with the school capacity to accommodate the schoolage population, schools lack proper conditions to deliver proper classroom instruction. According to the ministry, there is a lack of US$200 million in school infrastructure (SE 2014). That number can be considered as a lower limit, given that it does not include building new schools or eliminating multiple school shifts. Furthermore, challenges with school go beyond infrastructure. Unfortunately, many schools are located in areas under the influence of organized mobs. A recent study (Gutierrez and Luque 2015) shows that 90 per cent of the enrolment

200

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

in secondary education in Tegucigalpa is located in such neighbourhoods. The violence related to the organized mobs affects student and teacher behaviour, increasing dropout rates and leading to poor patterns of behaviour on the part of the students. Financial. Overall, education budget has traditionally been small, both in terms of GDP and in spending per pupil. Nonetheless, teacher salaries were increased between 2005 and 2010, increasing education sector budget to a peak of 7.5 per cent of GDP. Since then, the education budget has been reduced to 5.6 per cent of GDP in 2012. Despite the decline, the education expenditure in terms of GDP is among the largest in Latin America, reflecting the effort made by the state to finance education. Education expenditure was 19.3 per cent of total government expenditure. The expenditure per student in primary education and secondary education was 19.7 per cent and 18.1 per cent of the GDP per capita, respectively. On average, expenditure per pupil was US$450. Total expenditure in staff compensation represents 80 per cent of total expenditure in public institutions. Provisions in the Teacher Statute place strictures on education expenditure for the future. The Statute mandates increases in teacher salaries related to qualifications and seniority. It is quite likely that the continuous rise of teacher salaries will crowd out other favourable investments in the sector. In short, the system is not functioning as it should for a number of reasons: 1. There is evidence of clientelism in the naming of teachers and administrators and advancement often does not recognize their qualifications. It is claimed that some teachers’ organizations operate as political groups and use their influence on their behalf. 2. Related to this is the fact that promotion is not based on an evaluation of professionalism and in-service training is poor, if not, non-existent. 3. It is claimed that administration does not operate according to clear rules giving the impression that education is a political football, and this has led to an alienation of the principal stakeholders.

2.d Cutting the Gordian knot – initial steps for educational reform in the first decade of the 2000s At the outset of the twenty-first century, as well as 163 other governments, Honduras participated in the Education For All (EFA) initiative which is a global commitment to provide quality basic education for all children, young people and adults. As part of EFA, Honduras was obliged to comply by 2015:

Honduras: Contemporary Education Reform

201

(i) increase numbers in pre-primary schools, (ii) achieve universal coverage for primary schools, (iii) increase academic achievement in sixth graders in mathematics and Spanish; and, (iv) achieve gender parity in enrolment in educational institutions. To quickly increase the number enrolling in pre-primary education, the secretary of state for education resorted to alternative methods. The methods were based on community participation. In 2004, enrolment of those reaching five years of age was 44 per cent. To increase enrolment, the secretary of state employed a strategy based on Centros de Educación Preescolar Comunitaria (CCEPREBS), Community-Based Pre-School Education Centres. In 2010, the number was close to 4,000. Total enrolment rose to 75 per cent. The model is based on a structured education approach that employs the methodology known as Juego y Aprendo, I play and I learn, and it is implemented in the classroom through a facilitator. Facilitators are not required to have formal studies in education and, in many cases, are volunteers. This model has been evaluated by Rapalo and Aguilar (2007) and Luque (2015a) with good results. Equally, within a short period of time there were major initiatives to raise attendance in lower-secondary schools. The strategy was twofold: first, invest in the construction of new Educativos Básicos, or Basic Education Centres (CEB). Given financial constraints, the approximately eighty centres that were constructed were not enough to affect education indicators. Secondly, alternative methods were employed. To create a CEB, these methods relaxed some of the formal requirements. Traditionally, CEBs are designed to be large institutions with subject teachers and laboratories. In rural areas, given the low concentration of population, institutions have to be smaller. Here this led to the elimination of the subject teacher who was replaced by a facilitator to guide students through self-learning platforms through television, radio and other such technologies. In order to assess the compliance of the third commitment of the EFA initiative related to improvement of education quality, a unit was created in the Secretariat of Education to monitor the quality of education. The unit operates independently from the rest of the secretariat in order to guarantee unbiased results. To provide a guide education practice and assessments, a national curriculum was launched in 2007 by the secretariat in collaboration with international donors operating in Honduras. Besides monitoring quality, the secretariat took actions to improve it. On the one hand it created centres of excellence for Teacher Training and Enhancement Programmes for Technical Education in the Department of Mathematics. And, on the other hand, investment was made in ICT in an attempt to boost education

202

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

quality. The major development here was an initiative at the school level through a programme that gave laptops to students in 466 schools (most of them singleteacher schools in rural, isolated areas). The EDUCATRACHOS also provided laptops for teachers and principals/directors of the schools in the programme to be able to access online resources. The programme not only delivered laptops to students, teachers and administration staff, but also provided a local area network (LAN) and connectivity to schools. Student laptops were loaded with locally designed contents for math and language. Besides, the school network server was equipped with a library of contents. Additionally, the LAN was set up for the application of formative tests. EDUCATRACHOS also had an education virtual portal allowing other schools with similar technological resources to access the mathematics and language material for their students and teachers. Luque (2015b) showed a positive impact of the intervention, after only two years of existence.

3 Reforming the education sector 3.a Changing the statutory framework After almost fifty years without amendment it was clear in the light of educational needs and possibilities that the Education Law was outdated. The expansion of the education system created many situations not foreseen by the drafters of earlier laws. Numbers increased greatly, and there was more demand from stakeholders for a modern and beneficial system of education. Particularly, there was a growing need to place the interests, necessities and potential of the student at the heart of the education process. Initial steps to change the law can be traced back to an initiative of the year 2000, when for the first time a non-governmental group of educational stakeholders set up a national forum, the Foro Nacional de Convergencia, and called for a new and more relevant and coherent set of educational policies. In 2006, the forum generated a new proposal for a law and presented it to the Ministry of Education in 2007. This coincided with Honduras the country embarking on a comprehensive reform of the role of the state. The path towards a new education law was aided by the enactment of a law in 2010 to foster a vision of the country and the adaption of a national plan – for the economic and social development of country from that date to 2038. It specified the following goals: to abolish extreme poverty through education and the development of an

Honduras: Contemporary Education Reform

203

expanded and consolidated health service; and to transform the country into a modern, transparent, responsible, efficient and competitive state. Education was to play a key role in moving towards reaching the first goal: the fostering of educated and healthy Honduras free of scourge of extreme poverty, educated and healthy, endowed with the key elements of a welfare state and systems and practices of education to achieve the goal, of ‘Education and culture as means of social emancipation’. Concretely, this meant increasing preschool, primary and secondary school coverage and improving performance in the basic subjects of Spanish and mathematics. In 2011, two major events in the context of school reform took place. First was the proposal for a new and updated General Law for Education. This proposal was based on the 2007 proposal, but at the same time, it was aligned with the Country Vision and the National Plan. Second event was the Ley de Fortalecimimiento de la Educación Pública y la Participación Comunitaria (Poder Legislativo 2011) Law for Enhancement of Public Education and Community Participation that the Congress approved. The aims were to facilitate greater community participation that was seen as essential to ensure the effective development, implementation and monitoring of plans and policies of the education system. That would contribute to the achievement of national goals and targets in education. The law empowers local communities represented by parental associations and municipalities as major participants in the education sector. It also empowers communities to demand changes in the education sector, monitor the relevance, track progress and hold government accountable to its commitments. It was felt to be essential that the involvement of communities would more effectively form policies, regulatory frameworks and strategies for implementation. In 2012, la Ley Fundamental de Educación, the Basic Law of Education, was approved by the National Congress. It represented a major breakthrough because of its focus on the student and its promotion of social inclusion and equal opportunities for all Hondurans. The 2012 law aligned the education sector with the objectives established in the Country Vision Law 2010–38 and the National Plan 2010–22, and provided a legal framework for the sector in line with current developments of the education system. According to the 2012 law, educational systems and practices must be based on the following premises, principles and values: (i) education is compulsory from the pre-primary level up to and including secondary schooling, (ii) education is free of cost in all state schools, (iii) education must be of quality for all, (iv) education must be based on democratic principles, participation and

204

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

freedom, (v) education must be transparent and accountable, (vi) education must generate environmental responsibility, (vii) education must be lifelong, (viii) education must emphasize multiculturalism and interculturalism and (ix)  education must prepare students for the transition to the world of work. As a contribution to these ends, the 2012 law proposed an educational model based on (i) the comprehensive development of the students, (ii) the use of information and communication technologies, (iii) a basic national curriculum and (iv) an inclusive approach. The 2012 law and its spinoffs incorporated many of the best practices observed in successful education systems and created the necessary conditions for Honduras to enjoy a modern education system. Following are the reform groups proposed by Vegas (2013).

a. Promoting high goals for student learning and the monitoring of education services at all levels. The law created the first national system for evaluation, accreditation and certification of educational quality – El Sistema Nacional de Evaluación, Acreditación y Certificación de la Calidad Educativa. b. New students enter primary education ready and prepared to learn. The 2012 law established that one year of preschool education should become obligatory. c. All students have access to effective teachers. The law spelled out these key provisions in the following three dimensions: • Recruiting better teachers. The law decreed that all teachers must have a university degree as the minimum qualification to get a teaching post. It established a National Education Council to set down the requirements to be met by all those applying for pre-service training. It established Teacher Career Regulation in order to create a more transparent process of teacher recruitment based on a standardized test. • Professional updating of teachers. According to the provisions of the 2012 law, it is both the right and duty of all teachers to receive in-service training on a continuous and permanent basis. A systematic process of teacher evaluation was organized in order to check and assess teachers’ work: that students receive a good education and to assess teachers’ effectiveness in the learning process, their responsibilities and their relation with the education community. It was stated that evaluation should take place periodically with the aim of enforcing skills and as part of a scheme to incentivize teachers. • Motivating teachers to perform. Therefore, the law enabled the ministry to use incentives as a tool to motivate teachers’ performance.

Honduras: Contemporary Education Reform

205

d. All schools have adequate resources and are able to use them for learning. The 2012 law established mechanism to facilitate universal coverage of education. It recognized the difficulties in attaining universal coverage for the three levels of education. It stressed the need to promote school access for the hard-to-reach students and therefore recognized the existence and effectiveness of alternative methods for educational delivery. In order to develop the educational infrastructure, the law mandates the creation of a national system to promote the infrastructure. e. All children and young people must be able to acquire the skills necessary to make a productive contribution to society. The law specified that the objective of secondary education was to generate the incorporation of students into the world of work or further education. The 2012 law also made major changes in the management structure of the sector with the aim of fostering efficient decision making. It decentralized several functions that were performed from the central level to departmental, municipal and school levels. The administration of financial and human resources, school supervision, the opening of new schools and creation of posts for teachers was decentralized to the region. The implementation of pedagogical support programmes was transferred to the municipalities. Schools became responsible for creating their own budget proposals, and implementing those actions that would lead towards enhanced education quality. The national system of school information and the management of physical–pedagogical infrastructure were also decanted. Finally, following the implementation of the new law, departmental directors became civil servants.

3.b Implementing the education reform programme Empowered by the new law the ministry initiated a series of measures to modernize the entire system. Building an information system. At the time when the 2012 law came into effect, informed policymaking was almost impossible because of the lack of reliable information. There were uncertainties about the number of teachers, their location and teaching load, the number of students, their performance and the number of schools and the condition of the physical plant. The ministry therefore decided to construct a reliable database to provide that information. It hoped that the new system would greatly improve the decision-making process

206

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

not only centrally, but also for the department, the municipalities and the schools themselves. The newly installed system was called the System for the Administration of Educational Centres – Sistema de Administración de Centros Educativos.9 The advent of new system created a new culture of information management at the ministry, though its implementation faced major challenges as there were hardware and institutional constraints to overcome:

a. Information technology penetration in Honduras is low. The system was based on a web platform. To access the system, appropriate electricity, equipment and internet connection, as well as, and a minimum level of, previous exposure to information technology of teachers and school principals were required and which were not always present. b. Prior to the development of the new system, the roster of both teachers and students were poorly managed. Hence, in November 2012, a largescale operation of self-registration of public school teachers was launched. Despite initial complaints from many teachers, the great majority of the profession complied. For the school year 2013, student registration was made using the new system and a process called ‘online registration’ – matrícula en linea – was put into operation and used again with success in the following years. In addition to information about students and teachers, updated information was also needed to assess the infrastructure needs and to develop a plan to overcome the deficiencies that were identified. In 2012, the ministry in coordination with bilateral and multilateral launched a major plan to gather information on working conditions in existing schools and develop a platform that would allow them to prioritize future investments in the educational system. All schools in the country were visited, and the collected data was uploaded into the System for the Planning of the Educational Structure – Sistema de Planificación de Infraestructura Educativa.10 The school information was geo-referenced and included the design and the type of infrastructure. An assessment of current and future needs could then be made. The System for Planning also included indicators of environmental and social threats to schools nationwide. As well as helping with developing the existing infrastructure, the System for Planning worked closely in conjunction with the System for the Administration of Educational Centres paying special attention to rural areas. For example, the information was used to design school networks in for geographically remote areas.11 Over and above the need to obtain precise information about student registration and the state of the educational infrastructure, it was deemed

Honduras: Contemporary Education Reform

207

necessary to obtain information on the state of learning and teaching in the schools. Starting in 2004, Honduras diagnostic tests were conducted on a national basis to determine what students were learning. In the light of the 2012 law, diagnostic national test was made obligatory. Testing was implemented with the support of local organizations.12 The school-level results of the test are uploaded in to a web-based application. Once all the results had been uploaded, national averages are calculated, as well as top and low performers. The tests are coordinated by the unit in charge of monitoring quality and are linked to the national curriculum. The evaluation has also provided the ministry with a tool that is used to assess teacher knowledge of the curriculum. In 2013, the ministry undertook the first test to assess mastery of school curriculum. Based on the results of this exercise, the ministry was in a position to design and schedule online training courses for teachers to plug the gaps that were discovered. Improving governance of the education system. The 2012 law established a tenmonth-long school year. Though, following constant teacher strikes, effective instructional time was less than expected for several years. The LFE introduced a new unit of measure to assess compliance of instructional time: 200 school days per year. The new, more precise unit of measure was enforced by Acuerdo No.15096-SE-2012, which at the same time took advantage of other laws that regulate the overall public administration. Improving management of teachers. The information gathered from teacher and students became an extremely powerful tool to improve the supply and distribution of teachers to schools. For example, in one extreme case a school had thirty teachers on its staff and only thirty students. The study helped identify major recurring problems on teacher deployment:

a. Teachers whose original appointment was in remote rural areas were then transferred to urban areas without renouncing the bonuses received for hardship conditions. The information allowed reassignment of teachers to their original schools. b. Teachers were given simultaneous teaching posts in different schools, for example teachers teaching in schools that were distanced by as much as 100 kilometres. c. Payments were being made to deceased teachers. Overpayments were not returned, and there were cases of improper refunds, fraud and financial leaks and so on.

208

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

d. Corruption was also detected related to the number of teachers taking sick leave. To generate accountability at the local level with regard to teacher labour force, information on teacher assignment per school was posted online. Communities were very active verifying the compliance of teacher deployment. As a result, thousands of complaints were received from the community about improper payments to teachers, including double payments, teacher absenteeism and other similar irregularities. To prevent future irregularities in the allocation and payment of teachers, it became mandatory to use the System Human Resources Administration (SIARH) of the Secretary of Finance (SEFIN) to make any changes of personnel. This ensures that teachers are properly registered in the system. Before this, regulation procedures were discretionary. Communication between SACE and SIARH has been established, allowing better coordination between the SE and SEFIN. The improvement of teacher management increased the efficiency in the use of resources, but it is also part of the completion of the corrective measures and audits of teaching posts by Tribunal Superior de Cuentas, Superior Court of Audits. Checking the number of class hours per teacher, not to exceed the equivalent of a full-time basis, was established in the Honduran Teachers Statute. Expanding the learning opportunities offered the extension of the school day. Due to constraints arising from the sheer lack of school buildings and resources, the government had no choice, as in other Latin American countries, to shorten the school day and setting up a shift system. Such a system obviously created enormous problems for pupils and their teachers. Teachers found it impossible to compress the curriculum into the reduced timeframe, and pupils found it difficult to learn. Fortunately, by 2013, in several areas of the country the facilities were available to restore the length of the school day. At that time the ministry decreed that schools fortunate enough to have an extended school day should decompress their curriculum and that on Saturday it was mandatory to attend school for two and a half hours. Increasing the role played by parents in the education of their children. In order to involve parents more effectively in their children’s schools, the ministry launched a programme for parents and guardians – Programa de Escuela para Padres, Madres de Familia y Tutores, to improve communication and information sharing between the home and the school and to improve relations between parents, guardians and teachers to make learning more effective.

Honduras: Contemporary Education Reform

209

3.c Initial results of the reform It is still early days to judge the success of the new reforms. However, it is already clear that 2012 law and its spinoffs and the actions taken by educational institutions and authorities in the light of the law have profoundly changed the perception the general public has of education. Some important results are as follows: ●

●

●

●

The setting up of the System for the Administration of Educational Centres and measures to improve teacher management allowed the planners to have a more precise estimate of the number of students and teachers. In turn, this permitted the ministry to increase the efficiency of the resources invested in the education sector, in part because fictitious students and teachers were removed from the rolls. Before the advent of the system, it was estimated that Honduras had a student population of 2.1 million. The new information, available following the establishment of the system, showed that there were 1.7 million students, an adjustment equivalent to 20 per cent. The number of teachers was 60,000. Once teacher deployment was analysed, approximately 10 per cent of teachers were reassigned to schools where there was a shortage of teachers. As teacher bonuses were rationalized, there was a reduction in teacher payroll of approximately 15 per cent. In terms of school governance, after several years in which the school year was not completed, in 2013 and 2014 schools finally functioned for the prescribed minimum of 200 days per year. This multiplied the learning opportunities of the children by a factor of two with respect to the average school days registered in previous years. In terms of student learning, national assessments showed that students achieving satisfactory levels for Spanish or higher rose from 37 per cent in 2010 to 55 per cent in 2014, and in the case of mathematics from 23 per cent in 2010 to 33 per cent in 2014 (Secretaría de Educación 2015). The results of international tests organized in Latin America by UNESCO showed similar trends. Honduras went from the worst performance in the Primer Estudio Regional Comparativo y Explicatgivo (First Region Comparative and Explicatory Study), to closer to the region average in Tercer Estudio Regional Comparativo y Explicativo (Third regional Comparative and Explicatory Study).

210

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

3.d Remaining challenges Recent improvements in school governance promoted by legislation have laid the groundwork for a student- and classroom-centred, more efficient and inclusive education system in Honduras. Despite some undeniably positive results, structural challenges remain. Despite the recent slowdown in the rate of population growth, the total population is expected to expand until 2025. The capacity of the education sector will have to continue expanding, not only to close existing enrolment gaps, but also to accommodate the arrival of higher numbers of young people into the country’s schools. Total population will grow by 25 per cent and schoolage population by 20 per cent. Adding up capacity needed to close enrolment gaps and accommodate population growth, total enrolment will have to expand by 150 per cent if schools are to be able to admit the entire cohort of children between the ages of three and five, 20 per cent for primary education and 50 per cent for secondary education. As the number of students enrolled in schools expands, an expanded educational infrastructure and a greater number of appropriately trained teachers are required. Bruns and Luque (2014) estimate, taking into account age structure of the current teacher labour force, the system will require an expansion of 20 per cent in the number of teachers. Moreover, to conform with the requirements set by the 2012 law, all new teachers will be have to have earned a university degree. It is important to stress that two groups of teachers will continue to coexist, those hired before and after the enactment of the 2012 law; therefore, mechanisms will be needed to coalesce the two groups and to guarantee similar benefits for those operating in both systems. Despite this, the system has to move forward on promoting a culture of relevant and cumulative evaluation. The 2012 law specifications relating to evaluation have not yet been implemented. What is required is the establishment of an independent institution for evaluation that is not subject to outside pressures as has been recently done in Mexico. To accommodate the expansion, new schools and new classrooms in existing schools would need to be built and school provision through alternative schooling methods would need to be expanded. Additionally, moving from a shift system to a system where all pupils attend schools that operate on an all-day programme would require further expansion of infrastructure. Education will have to be more responsive to needs and possibilities. It is important to promote relationships between the school and work, and

Honduras: Contemporary Education Reform

211

develop a relevant curriculum and pedagogy. This would make it easier for gaps identified in the implementation of the curriculum framework to be identified and closed. These gaps include the lack of the teaching profession’s mastery of the core national curriculum, provision of regular and flexible in-service training for teachers, the lack of training and support for planning, the need to design and develop curriculum standards that ensure effective student learning and the lack of basic and relevant educational resources. These resources must include teachers’ guides, textbooks or other relevant learning materials. Dealing with these would allow the development and implementation of a holistic curriculum strategic plan to ensure the necessary teaching content to students and ensure their continuity as they pass through the educational system. The system must facilitate access to twenty-first-century skills through the use and adaption of appropriate technologies. Installation of reliable computer network resources in basic education centres is essential. It would promote connectivity and teaching of educational materials through information technology and communications and lead to the development of the skills needed to enhance the life chances of young people. It would allow us to bring together the various technology packages available from the Ministry of Education and ensure their further development through these educational centres. Expenditure on education should be determined by the long-term needs of that sector and be formulated on a multiyear basis. Planning to overcome the problems we have outlined above is essential, and such a development will hopefully enhance the commitment of teachers to their pupils and their schools because it would reduce extreme fluctuations of teacher salaries and lead to a greater willingness of commitment by people entering the profession.

4 Final comments In Honduras there are grounds for much cautious optimism about the future of its education system. The new laws have led to significant and welcome improvements in governance and accountability. They are creating a virtuous circle of good results and a strengthened commitment to education. As the reform process advances and strengthens, lacunae and discontinuities will be reduced and the education system will hopefully fulfil its aim of boosting economic growth and at the same time providing equal opportunities for all Hondurans.

212

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

Notes 1. Data coming from http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/ (accessed 17 August 2015. 2. Author’s calculations of the share of the twenty-year-old in 2013 that reach those thresholds. Based on National Household Survey (Instituto Nacional de Estadísticas INE 2013). 3. Latest information available. UNESCO. www.unesco.org (accessed July 2015). 4. Author’s calculations based on Encuesta Nacional de Hogares (Instituto Nacional de Estadísticas INE 2013). 5. Databases available on http://www.unesco.org/new/es/santiago/education/ education-assessment-llece/perce-serce-databases/ (accessed July 2015). 6. Source: Author’s calculation based on TIMSS data. 7. Author’s calculation based on Household Surveys. 8. The survey was done for 500 students on their last year at the UPNFM. The survey found that 90 per cent of students in the UPNFM think that the likelihood of getting a teaching profession is related to their political affiliation. Only 5 per cent think that it will depend on their ability. 9. http://sace.se.gob.hn/ 10. Secretaría de Educación. Plan Maestro de Infraestructura Educativa: http:// planmaestro.se.gob.hn/ 11. Honduras has taken a regional lead on ICT introduction for management of the education system. The government is sharing its experience (and developed software) with partners in Central America. 12. For comparison purposes with previous testing exercises, a sample of schools took the test with higher level of monitoring.

Bibliography Asamblea Nacional de Honduras. Constitución Política (1831), https://es.wikisource. org/wiki/Constituci%C3%B3n_de_Honduras_de_1831 Asamblea Nacional de Honduras. Constitución Política (1880), https://es.wikisource. org/wiki/Constituci%C3%B3n_de_Honduras_de_1880 Asamblea Nacional de Honduras. Constitución Política (1982), https://es.wikisource. org/wiki/Constituci%C3%B3n_de_Honduras_de_1982 Barro, Robert, and Jong-Wha Lee. ‘A New Data Set of Educational Attainment in the World, 1950–2010’. Journal of Development Economics, 104 (2010): 184–98. Bashir, Sajitha, T. H. Gindling and Ana Maria Oviedo. Better Jobs in Central America: The Role of Human Capital (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2012). Bruns, Barbara, and Javier Luque. Great Teachers: How to Raise Student Learning in Latin America and the Caribbean (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2014).

Honduras: Contemporary Education Reform

213

Carneiro, Pedro, and James Heckman. ‘The Evidence on Credit Constraints in PostSecondary Schooling’. The Economic Journal, 112 (2002): 705–34. Congreso Nacional. Ley Orgánica de Educación (1966), http://www.se.gob.hn/media/ files/leyes/LE_7.pdf Congreso Nacional. Ley del Escalafón (1968). Congreso Nacional. Ley del Estatuto Docente (1999), http://www.se.gob.hn/media/files/ leyes/LE_6.pdf Congreso Nacional. Ley Fundamental de Educación (2012), http://www.se.gob.hn/ media/files/leyes/Ley_Fundamental_de_Educacion.pdf Congreso Nacional. Ley de Fortalecimiento de la Educación Pública y la Participación Comunitaria (2011), http://www.tsc.gob.hn/leyes/Ley%20de%20Fortalecimiento%20 a%20la%20Educación%20Pública%20y%20la%20Participación%20Comunitaria.pdf Di Gropello, Emanuela y Jeffery H. Marshall. ‘Decentralization and Educational Performance: Evidence from the PROHECO Community School Program in rural Honduras’. Education Economics, 19, no. 2 (2011): 161–80. FEREMA. Políticas Docentes en Honduras (Mimeo, 2015). Gavin, Megan. Percepciones sobre la educación en Honduras rura (New York: Mimeo. Interamerican Development Bank, 2013). Gavin, Megan. Parental Participation in Hunduran Schols: Understanding How and Why Learning Happens (New York: Highpoint Executive Publishing, 2016). Gutierrez, Aminta y Javier Luque. Educación, migración y violencia en El Salvador y Honduras (New York: Mimeo. InterAmerican Development Bank, 2015). IEU (Instituto de Estadisticas de UNESCO [base de datos]). http://data.uis.unesco.org/ Instituto Nacional de Estadisticas. Encuesta de Hogares (2013). Instituto Nacional de Estadisticas. Censo de Poblacion 2013 (2015). Inter American Dialogue/FEREMA. Honduras. El Estado de las Políticas Públicas Docentes. (2015) Available online: http://vinculacion.upnfm.edu.hn/wpcontent/ uploads/2016/11/El-estado-de-las-politicas-publicas-docentes-FEREMA2105.pdf (accessed 10 December 2016). Laboratorio Latinoamericano de Evaluación de la Calidad de la Educación (LLECE). Segundo estudio regional comparativo y explicativo. Los aprendizajes de los estudiantes de América Latina y el Caribe (Santiago: UNESCO/Laboratorio Latinoamericano de Evaluación de Calidad en la Educación, 2008). Luque, Javier. Teacher Perceptions towards ICT (New York: Mimeo. The InterAmerican Development Bank, 2013). Luque, Javier. Jugando sí aprendo: educación preescolar comunitaria en Honduras, 28 April 2015, http://blogs.iadb.org/educacion/es/2015/04/28/jugando-si-aprendoeducacion-preescolar-comunitaria-en-honduras/ Luque, Javier. Juego Si Aprendo, An Evaluation of a Pre-school Program (New York: Mimeo. The InterAmerican Development Bank, 2015a). Luque, Javier. Impactos de programas EDUCATRACHOS a dos años de su implementación (New York: Mimeo. The InterAmerican Development Bank, 2015b).

214

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

Mikkelsen, Caecilie, ed. The Indigenous World 2015 (Copenhagen: International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs, IWGIA, 2015). NORC-ESA. Evaluación de Impacto del Programa Bono 10,000 (2013). Padilla, Suyapa. Análisis de la implementación del curriculum nacional (New York: Mimeo. InterAmerican Development Bank, 2012). Poder Legislativo. Ley de Fortalecimiento a la Educación Pública y la participación comunitaria. La Gaceta, Diario Oficial de la República de Honduras. 25 mayo, 2011. Available online: http://www.poderjudicial.gob.hn/CEDIJ/Leyes/Documents/ Ley%20de%20Fortalecmiento%20a%20Educacion%20Publica%20y%20 Participacion%20Comunitaria%20(2,1b).PDF (accessed 12 December 2016). Rápalo Castellanos, Renán, and Claudia Regina Aguilar. Estudio de implementación e impacto del programa Juego y Aprendo (Resultados Preliminares) (Tegucigalpa: FEREMA, Mimeo, 2007). Secretaría de Educación (SE)-Mesa Redonda de Cooperantes Externos en Educación (MERECE). Rendición de cuentas de la Secretaría de Educación y construcción de Alianzas para fortalecer la Inversión Educativa (Honduras: SE, 2014). Secretaría de Educación. Informe Nacional de Rendimiento Académico (2015). Sosa, Roberto. Alta es la noche y Moraźan vigila (Tegucigalpa: Presidencia de la República de Honduras, 2009). Vegas, Emiliana. Documento de Marco Sectorial de Educacion y Desarrollo Infantil Temprano. The Inter American Development Bank (2012). Vegas, Emiliana. Teoría y evidencia sobre las políticas docentes en países desarrollados y en desarrollo (Washington: Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo, 2013). World Bank. Honduras – Mejores empleos en Honduras: el rol del capital humano (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2011).

12

Nicaragua: Education for Sustainable Human Development Cefas Asensio Flórez with the collaboration of Ana Patricia Elvir

The United Nations defines human development as ‘development of the people through building human capabilities, for the people by improving their lives and by the people through active participation in the processes that shape their lives. It is broader than other approaches, such as the human resource approach, the basic needs approach and the human welfare approach’ (PNUD 2015: 2). In this perspective, education plays a fundamental role in the creation of comprehensive social conditions for human development and quality of life and sustainability over time. This chapter analyses contemporary Nicaraguan education from the perspective of the aforementioned human development idea. It describes the status of education and major educational reforms developed in four distinct periods of the country’s political history, beginning in the 1960s: the Somoza regime, the Sandinista Revolution, the neo-liberal period and the post-revolution Sandinista government. In the Somoza period, education was aimed at strengthening the agroexport model, and characterized by low coverage, although with good quality. The Sandinista revolution intended to make education a factor of development; however, it was prevented from moving in this direction by the armed conflict. In the neo-liberal period, a national development plan was formulated, based on productive conglomerates, but there were difficulties in its implementation and it was not linked to education policies. During the post-revolutionary Sandinista movement, a human development plan was formulated; it was based on citizen power with a Christian, socialist and solidarity vision of society, including education, yet its goals had little connection to educational policies. The chapter concludes with remarks and recommendations regarding current Nicaraguan education challenges.

216

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

I Overview of the Nicaraguan education system The current organization of the Nicaraguan education system was adopted in the 1980s. Its structure involves three major subsystems with different levels. The Basic and Secondary Education Subsystem includes early childhood education from birth to five years with two levels, early education and preschool; primary education from six to eleven years; a three-year cycle of intermediate education for adolescents (twelve to fourteen years); and upper-secondary education for adolescents aged fifteen to sixteen years. The Technical Education Subsystem offers technical education and vocational training courses for youth and adults who have graduated from primary education and for adolescents and youth who have graduated from secondary school. The Tertiary Education Subsystem provides university education at three levels: technical, undergraduate and graduate. The structure is rather linear, aimed at preparing for university education, with few intermediate offers of technical, vocational training. The education system is an institution of central importance in Nicaragua, a country where most of the population is young. Despite major challenges in fertility rates, with an average of 2.4 children per woman and mortality in children under 5 of 21 per 1,000 live births (INIDE 2012), the Nicaraguan population has a median age of twenty-six years, below the Latin American average (INIDE 2007). During this and the next decade, Nicaragua has a historic opportunity to take advantage of the ‘demographic dividend’, defined as ‘the period of demographic change in which the number of potentially productive people – aged 15 to 59 years – grows steadily relative to the potentially inactive persons – children under 15 and adults over 60 years’ (Delgadillo 2010). It is estimated that this opportunity will end for Nicaragua around 2035. This demographic transition is unique and offers an exceptional opportunity for strategic and quality investments in the education of young people, which will result in sustainable human development in the medium and long term. By 2014, Nicaraguan net educational enrolment reached 57 per cent in preschool, 93 per cent in primary and 50 per cent in secondary. Illiteracy decreased to 10.5 per cent. Qualified teacher rates were 36 per cent in preschool, 82 per cent in primary and 57 per cent in secondary. These figures were lower in rural areas and in the autonomous regions of the Caribbean Coast where there was progress, at a small and medium scale, both in teacher training and in bilingual curriculum development (PREAL, EDUQUEMOS, IBIS Denmark, 2014).

Nicaragua: Education for Sustainable Human Development

217

Technical education has lagged behind the sustained growth experienced by public and private universities. According to National Education Commission, enrolment in technical careers in the public and private sectors was 30,038 students in 2015, while public and private universities reached 194,000 students. In 2015, the education sector received an estimated 4.8 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP), distributed as follows: 3.1 per cent to primary and secondary education, 1.2 per cent to universities and 0.5 per cent to vocational education and training.1

II Education during the Somoza regime (1960–79) In the last period of the Somoza dictatorial regime, between 1960 and 1979, Nicaragua was characterized by low spending on public education and generalized poverty that seriously constrained social and educational opportunities for the majority of Nicaraguans. The educational system was in line with a successful agro-export developmental model that relied on a large pool of low-wage and unskilled workers. Despite low education coverage, successful small-scale initiatives and reforms were developed in this period by the government and the private sector, in order to improve the quality of education to support the development of the agro-export economic model. Access to education, as stated above, was scarce. In 1963, (UNESCO 1965), the net enrolment rate was 56 per cent, and by the end of the 1970s, it was 53 per cent2. Illiteracy was estimated at 50.3 per cent nationwide, increasing to 70 per cent and 80 per cent in rural areas, and almost 100 per cent in provinces such as Río San Juan and those of the Caribbean Coast.3 Miller (1985) refers that illiteracy ‘was both a condition and a product of the overall system’ (p. 20). Most rural schools were managed by non-certified or poorly trained teachers who could not offer more than one or two years of schooling, usually on a parttime basis as teachers needed to have two or more different jobs to make ends meet. Over two-thirds of all students were from an urban background, and, at the same time, less than 5 per cent of all students from the rural sector even finished primary school (Pastor 1987). Moreover, public sector participation in early childhood education was minimal. Care and Toddler Education services were mainly provided by private institutions and were paid by families (Elvir and Asensio 2007). Secondary schools were also overwhelmingly in the private sector, meaning that the vast majority of families could not afford for their children to attend. Only 8 per cent of the population could enter higher education, and upper-class families

218

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

sent their progeny to universities abroad. Consequently, many adolescents, unable to receive higher levels of formal education, were forced to prematurely enter the labour force, mainly in the agricultural sector. The education system contributed to the preservation of a highly unequal social structure. Twenty-eight per cent of the teachers in primary school and 78 per cent in secondary schools were unqualified (Torres 1991). Teachers’ resistance or challenge to educational authorities would be punished with reassignment to remote areas (Miller 1985). Lucio Gil (2013) states that ‘the systematic imprisonment and torture suffered by the main teachers’ leaders linked this sector to the process of social struggle, and stressed the role of education as a means to transform the political, economic and social systems in favor of the poor majority of the country’ (Lucio 2013: 32). In the early 1970s, the education sector received 2 per cent of the GDP and 2.8 per cent at the end of the decade.4 Such neglect of public education was not an arbitrary omission of the Somoza regime. Denying education to the urban and rural poor worked well to preserve the dictatorial power and to retain complete control over Nicaragua’s political, economic and social life (Pastor 1987). In this context and encouraged by international organizations, however, modernizing reforms were implemented in the education system, in line with the agro-export model of development. Although the first technical training institutes were established in the early twentieth century, this sector was strengthened, beginning with the establishment of the National Training Institute (INA) in 1967. Subsequently, other technical institutes were founded in major cities in Nicaragua: (i) The Technological Institute of Granada (INTECNA) – 1969; (ii) The Technical Institute of La Salle in León – 1970; (iii) Don Bosco Youth Center in Managua – 1970; (iv) Christopher Columbus Technical Institute of Bluefields. In 1972, the Department of Technical Education of the Ministry of Education was also created (INATEC 2003). Nicaraguan universities, meanwhile, advanced further reforms towards modernization in search of a new social role under the influence of the ‘Cordoba Movement’, a Latin American university reform initiated in Argentine at the beginning of the nineteenth century that favoured freedom and independence of university life. In 1958, Nicaraguan public universities won their battle for autonomy. Among other changes, this made it possible for the National Autonomous University of Nicaragua (UNAN) to expand the number of majors at its central campus in Leon and at the campuses of Managua, Carazo and Estelí. Likewise, in 1960 the first private university in the country, the Central American University (UCA), was founded by the Jesuits. Also, the first academic business

Nicaragua: Education for Sustainable Human Development

219

administration programme to instruct future managers was inaugurated in 1963 at the initiative of business leaders, who garnered US government support as well as the academic participation of Harvard Business School. The programme was the foundation of what became the current Central American Institute for Business Administration (INCAE). In 1967, the Polytechnic University, a higher technical education institute with Baptist underpinnings, was founded, further expanding the offerings at this level (Tünnermann 1971). Basic education also experienced reforms under the influence of the ‘Alliance for Progress’, the US government aid programme for Latin America developed between 1961 and 1970. The programme aimed to reduce illiteracy; assure access to at least six years of primary education for every school-age child and modernize and expand secondary, vocational and higher education. Based on this programme, Nicaragua introduced new pedagogical and organizational models for rural education, such as the clustering of rural schools within a geographical location as an administrative unit, to enable supervision and instructional assistance, a process known as educational districting. Curricular reform was also implemented to make the content of education more relevant for rural development. The reform extended to the Normal School system to introduce professional profiles for new teachers and to prepare more competent educators to improve the quality of education. Normal Schools of this period were ‘extraordinary and prolific, breeding specialists, leaders, teachers and teachers of recognized quality that have made and continue to make history in the education of Nicaragua’ (Arríen 2008). Regional integration of education was attempted in this period. In June 1962, the ministers of education of Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua signed the ‘Central American Agreement on Unification of Education’. This initiative resulted in the founding of regional training and research institutes that are still active and working on relevant projects. Yet, regional education integration is still elusive. Certainly, in general terms, the educational system during the Somoza regime reproduced generations of poor and illiterate landless workers who depended on temporary subsistence jobs at coffee and cotton plantations. Yet, on a relative scale, there were initiatives that contributed to the expansion, diversification and enhancement of educational opportunities. These experiences deserve to be taken into account as lessons learnt from this period of Nicaraguan education. Upon coming to power in 1979, the Sandinista movement announced its intention to completely rebuild the education system in an effort to eliminate poverty.

220

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

III Education during the Sandinista Revolution (1979–90) July 1979 marks a significant event in Nicaraguan history: the Somoza dictatorship, the oppressive regime that had ruled the country for over four decades, was overthrown by the Sandinista National Liberation Front in an armed revolution. The new regime proposed a broad social and economic transformation by empowering the majority that were marginalized by the Somoza regime. Education was central to the project of promoting the new Nicaraguan ideals. The Sandinista Revolution period includes two phases. In the first phase, between 1980 and 1984, major social transformations occurred due to the huge consensus among Nicaraguans to support the revolutionary goals. The second, between 1985 and early 1990s, was a phase of open-armed confrontation between the Nicaraguan state and the opponents of the revolutionary project. The conflict caused enormous damage to the country and, therefore, to the education system and its potential contribution to sustainable human development.

First term of the Sandinista Revolution Initially, the government organized a national consultation to determine the goals, objectives and principles of the new education. The purpose was to build social consensus regarding the type of education for the country’s development in the long run. Most suggestions collected in the consultation were adopted and were included in the Constitution of the Republic and its subsequent reforms to date. The National Literacy Campaign was the most important initiative within the educational reform in this period. In only five months 95,582 brigadistas (volunteers) managed to teach 406,056 Nicaraguans to read and write in Spanish. Literacy in the Caribbean Coast native languages was also completed in the same year. As a result of the campaign, the illiteracy rate was reduced from 50.3 per cent to 12.96 per cent (Assmann 1981), creating a break from the prior education system and establishing the basis for alternative education models. The campaign won the prestigious ‘Nadezhda Krupskaya’ UNESCO Literacy Award. In order to consolidate the gains of the literacy campaign, the Ministry of Education developed a non-formal education system based on groups known as Popular Education Collectives (CEP). Using materials and pedagogical advice provided by the ministry, residents of poor communities met in the evenings to

Nicaragua: Education for Sustainable Human Development

221

develop basic reading and mathematical skills. The popular education approach promoted democratization of education and learners’ empowerment through a dialectic methodology for social change. However, this level of education had modest gains. Other innovative strategies paved the way for the strengthening of educational quality through non-formal educational approaches, such as science and production activities and vocational training based on career guidance. This was an important achievement of the period, particularly for pupils with disabilities, a sector in which Nicaragua developed a universally praised programme. In the rural sector, attention was granted to new forms of educational administration such as the education clustering developed in the 1960s. There were also important efforts to integrate schooling into community life, as in the ‘Rural Work-Study Schools’ (Escuela Rural de Educación y Trabajo – ERET) designed to include training in specific agricultural skills and innovative techniques in addition to the regular curriculum. The institutionalization of early education, preschool education, special education and the Caribbean Coast bilingual intercultural programme were important educational reforms of the revolutionary period. Although these programmes initially achieved little coverage, they were in all provinces of the country. The bilingual intercultural programme on the Caribbean Coast was also important. The public budget for education rose from 2.3 per cent of GDP at the end of the 1970s to 3.8 per cent in 1982 and 5.8 per cent in 1984. As a result of that increase, coverage of preschool and primary education expanded, especially in the first half of this period. The policy of ‘planting schools’ led to the growth of the preschool net enrolment rate from 7 per cent to 12 per cent, and the primary net enrolment rate from 53 per cent to 67 per cent by the end of the decade.5 Secondary education had a modest growth (21 per cent at the end of decade). However, secondary schools were established in major cities and municipalities, prompting increased demand for this level of education in other communities. The Department of Technical Education was elevated to the rank of General Division in the Ministry of Education. The National Training System (SINACAP) was created to provide vocational courses for private and public institutions. A main feature of the period is the abundance of political content in the curriculum. School textbooks exalted national pride in a pro-revolutionary tone and glorified the Sandinista heroes. This is, indeed, the most common critique of the Sandinista education reform during the 1980s.

222

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

Table 12.1 Enrolled Students Pre-primary

Primary

Secondary

9,000

369,640

98,874

355

1980/81

30,524

472,167

139,743

1,430

1989

64,956

595,612

161,212

2,556

1978

Special education

Source: Ministry of Education as cited by Arnove (2000: 37).

National universities increased coverage. The National Council for Higher Education was created to improve this sector’s institutional development. Enrolment in higher education jumped from 11,142 students in 1978 to 38,570 in 1985 (ENVIO 1986). The Sandinista government also reshaped the higher education system by reordering curricular priorities, establishing new ones and increasing access to universities for students of low socio-economic status. At the same time, thousands of undergraduate students received scholarships to complete their university education in former socialist countries in programmes not offered in Nicaragua, such as medical specialties and engineering. As a result of all these efforts, the country achieved a remarkable expansion of the education system (see Table 12.1). Yet, despite the Sandinistas’ determined efforts to expand the education system in the early 1980s, Nicaragua remained an undereducated society by 1990. The objective of developing an education system to contribute to socioeconomic development with social justice was postponed in great measure due to the armed conflict and economic prostration.

Second term of the Sandinista Revolution In the second half of the decade, the armed conflict expanded in several regions of the national territory, affecting the education system with drastic budget reductions. All this took place during uncontrollable hyperinflation and scarcity caused by the trade embargo imposed upon the country. The war situation, in the second half of the decade, limited the growth of educational coverage. The expansion of the educational system during the early 1980s did not reach its potential, partly because sufficient education professionals and administrators were not trained to ensure the quality of the changes initiated. The subsequent economic crisis forced spending on education back to the 1970 level.

Nicaragua: Education for Sustainable Human Development

223

The education system struggled to meet the rapid growth of the school-age population. At the same time, the education of many young people stagnated because of their participation in the legally required military service and in productive work in rural areas to support the deteriorated economy by harvesting the coffee and cotton crops. By the end of this period, the proportion of students who completed their primary education had not advanced beyond the 1979 level. Moreover, illiteracy had grown to 22 per cent,6 whereas the coverage of technical and higher education either stopped expanding or even shrank in some cases. After the 1990 election, the Chamorro government placed education in the hands of critics of Sandinista policy, who imposed more conservative values on the curriculum and prioritized the decentralization of education.

IV The neo-liberal period (1990–2006) This period started with more favourable conditions for the Nicaraguan education system. Peace was re-established in the region with the cessation of the armed conflict, and peace agreements were signed among Central American countries. At the international level, the end of the Cold War reduced worldwide tensions. At the same time, new trends emerged towards a more globalized world that translated into challenges and opportunities to undertake education reforms. The educational policies of the 1990s proposed a comprehensive change. They included strengthening the role of education in shaping moral values and critical thinking through the modernization of the curriculum and improving teaching quality. Actions were taken to improve the teaching and learning of literacy and mathematics. The subjects of civics and philosophy were added, the latter including religious content. Also, public and private school textbooks used in the Sandinista period were changed; the new texts came from abroad and some were produced nationally. Obviously, there was a need to expand textbook options and set aside the ideological overload; but the main motivation was, in fact, to remove the Sandinista influence on education. A major reform that became key to the remodelling of education was the decentralization of schools, or what was called the ‘School Autonomy’ system. It emerged as a strategy to give parents decision-making power regarding the curriculum and school administration. Yet, conversely, it prioritized the involvement of school boards and municipal officers in administrative decisions such as staff and teacher movement, and thus left aside the substantive aspects

224

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

of education. It also introduced financial mechanisms that became a pressure on families through the so-called ‘voluntary contributions’ that, in practice, ended up establishing charges (Asensio et al. 2001). In the early 2000s, an organizational reform of the educational system was attempted. It aimed to diversify educational offerings with alternative pathways and added programmes for job training as an alternative to university after completion of basic education, to take advantage of the demographic dividend phenomena. This reform, however, did not prosper due to frequent leadership changes within the Ministry of Education (MINED). Relevant aspects at each educational level are described below:

Early childhood education Child development programmes for zero- to three-year-old children were removed from the purview of the Ministry of Education in this period and transferred to the Ministry of the Family (MIFAMILIA), an institution responsible for protecting impoverished families. In the second half of the 2000s, however, childcare for that population decreased. Gross enrolment for preschool education for children from three to five years of age – under the responsibility of the MINED – increased significantly in the first decade of the 2000s from

Tasa neta de matrícula de educación primaria y secundaria 91.9

Secundaria

Primaria

81.6 71.4 61.2 51 40.8 30.6 20.4 10.2

Source: ECLAC Databases

Figure 12.1 Tasa neta de matricula de educacion primaria y secundaria (Net enrolment rate in primary and secondary education)

2010

2008

2006

2004

2002

2000

1998

1996

1994

1992

1990

1988

1986

1984

1982

1980

1978

1976

1974

1972

1970

0

Nicaragua: Education for Sustainable Human Development

225

29 per cent to 52 per cent.7 Part of the personnel involved in this level includes community educators, who must be selected by the community and who have earned a sixth grade diploma (PREAL, EDUQUEMOS, IBIS Denmark, 2014). Teacher training deficits at this level were still unresolved at the end of the period.

Primary and secondary education Nicaragua had a constant increase in primary school enrolment in that period, reaching 90 per cent in 2006, a positive legacy from neo-liberal administrations to the current Sandinista government. Enrolment in secondary education was still low; it was 41.4 per cent in 2005, far below the Latin American average of 69 per cent for that year.8 Furthermore, student retention was low. In 2005, only 46.5 per cent of students completed primary education and 50 per cent completed secondary. Generally, dropouts or those who never enter the system are at risk of having precarious jobs, being abused or breaking the law. This population represents a challenge for the formal system and, therefore, has been supported by civil society organizations with alternative education programmes. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, 90 per cent of high school students were in the urban sector. Excessive concentration of secondary education in the cities led to, among other things, a decrease in the chances of developing agribusiness and improving productivity and agricultural innovation in the country.

Quality of learning in basic education Nicaragua entered the international testing system with the 2006 SERCE Study to measure reading and math abilities. National student participants scored among the lowest in the continent, obtaining results like those of El Salvador, Guatemala, Panama, Paraguay and the Dominican Republic. The country has not participated in the PISA science tests. To resolve learning and quality problems, a curricular reform of basic and secondary education was conducted in the first half of the 2000s. It introduced skills for life, work and citizenship. In some schools, it also included educational technology and support for students and teachers in this field. This reform, however, did not improve cognitive, procedural and attitudinal learning, as proposed, because content changes were not accompanied by teaching and methodological training. The reform was subsequently revised but continued with similar challenges.

226

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

Literacy, and youth and adult education According to the MINED, the illiteracy rate of the population over fifteen years was 22 per cent in 2006; it had remained virtually unchanged since 1990. Similarly, the incorporation of the literate population into lifelong learning and employment was insufficient and the technical education offerings for this population were not developed.

Technical and higher education The early 1990s were characterized by a phenomenon which focused on higher education but reverberated throughout the whole educational system with student protests demanding the allocation of 6 per cent of the national budget to public universities. The enactment of Law 151 assigned 6 per cent of the ordinary and extraordinary income of the general budget of the republic to public universities, plus additional allocations for basic services – electricity, water and telephone. Throughout the 1990s and the first half of the 2000s, this legislation generated political friction between MINED and the National Council of Universities (CNU), since the former considered it an unfair decision that harmed the primary and secondary education budget. However, the real problem was the insufficient budget to meet the needs of quality and equity of each educational subsystem. At the same time, a substantial number of private universities emerged, capturing 40 per cent of total enrolment in higher education, in the context of a policy that facilitates private participation in this sector. Most of them, however, did not have accreditation by a national authority. The government developed a reform to establish university accreditation based on international standards. Participant universities were subject to external evaluation and assisted in the formulation of comprehensive development plans. This process, benefiting from an Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) loan, lasted a decade. Technical education received little attention compared to higher education. For example, enrolment in technical middle education by 2007 was 17,000 students versus 77,000 just in public universities (PREAL, EDUQUEMOS, IBIS, 2014). Consequently, there is a ratio of one middle or senior technician to every five university graduates, a quotient that is dysfunctional for economic, technological and business development. That ratio has improved, but remains dysfunctional.

Nicaragua: Education for Sustainable Human Development

227

In 2007, a new Sandinista government took power in a different context for development trends. The Sandinista administration has been making progress, but amid great challenges in its education and development projects.

V The post-revolutionary Sandinista period: Education and the National Human Development Plan (2007–16) The Government of Reconciliation and National Unity (GRUN) proposes a National Human Development Plan (NHDP) to build a Christian, socialist and solidarity model of citizen power. It focuses on overcoming poverty and improving the living conditions of the population through macroeconomic stability, citizen participation, dialogue between producers and public–private partnerships, and favouring a business and investment climate. The education plan is one section among many, not defined as a strategic axis; it prioritizes solving academic problems and does not include policies or programmes to meet the economic, social, cultural and environmental demands of new development trends.

Public and private investment in education In the period from 2000 to 2006, there was modest GDP growth of 3.4 per cent. Since 2007, except for the deterioration in 2009 by the international financial crisis, there has been a rebound that is close to 5 per cent above the Latin American average, due to better international commodity prices, export growth and increased foreign investment. Despite these conditions, allocation to education has not been consistent with the development strategy, with an average allocation of 4.3 per cent between 2006 and 2014, far from the 7 per cent of GDP recommended by UNESCO and international organizations as the minimum to provide a quality education to the population.9

Access and retention There has been growth in enrolment in early childhood education, primary and higher education and adult literacy programmes, but not in secondary and technical education. Increased enrolment, partly due to programmes to help the poorest, contrasts with the low retention over the academic year in primary and secondary education, compared to the average for Central American countries.

228

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

Early childhood education, from zero to six years, decreases significantly in the neo-liberal years; but due to an early childhood education policy for this sector, coverage has reached a modest 13 per cent since 2011 (PREAL, EDUQUEMOS, IBIS Denmark, 2014), attended by MIFAMILIA. Preschool enrolment increased from 52 per cent in 2006 to 56.8 per cent in 2013, for children between three and five years, a ratio like that of El Salvador and Guatemala. Although 1,300 preschool educators received self-training modules in 2015, community teachers’ insufficient professional knowledge is a persistent major challenge.10 In primary education, net enrolment rose from 90 per cent in 2006 to 92 per cent in 2014, the same as the Latin American average. Such progress can be attributed to the expansion of the school feeding and school supplies programmes. The survival rate through the last grade of primary education also increased from 48.7 per cent in 2008 to 56.9 per cent in 2012; however, it is among the lowest in the Central American countries (PREAL, EDUQUEMOS, IBIS Denmark, 2014). The primary education dropout rate is 7 per cent; but it reaches 40 per cent in the first grade, highlighting the challenges of quality teaching and curriculum relevance in the early grades, as well as urban–rural differences (IIEEP 2012).

Crecimiento del PIB versus Crecimiento del Presupuesto Educativo como porcentaje del PIB

5.4

6.0 5.0

5.0 4.2

4.0

4.0

5.0

4.31

6.00 4.75 5.00

3.6 4.94

3.0 2.0

5.2

4.74 4.35

4.16

4.09

4.16

4.00

4.33

3.76 3.00

1.0 0.0

2.00

–1.0 –2.2

1.00

–2.0 –3.0

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

Presupuesto Educativo (% del PIB)

2011

2012

2013

2014

Crecimiento del PIB

Figure 12.2 Crecimiento del PIB Crecimiento del Presupuesto Educativo como porcentaje del PIB (Growth of public spending in education as percentage of GDP). Source: General Budget of the Republic of Nicaragua and the Central Bank of Nicaragua

Nicaragua: Education for Sustainable Human Development

229

Jóvenes de 20 a 24 años con Secundaria completa. Porcentajespor países latinoamericanos. 2008/9 y 2010/12 100.0 2008/9

2010/12

20.0

35.8 36.0

30.0

32.6 36.0

41.2 45.1

45.3 48.9

44.8 53.1

52.4 54.7

51.2 56.5

40.0

49.6 57.4

50.0

56.3 59.2

60.0

64.7 66.9

70.0

64.5 69.8

80.0

80.9 82.2

Porcentajes 2008/9 y 2010/12

90.0

10.0

do r H on du ra s N ica ra gu a

lv a Sa

EI

M ex ico

ia

Pa na m á Pa ra gu ay Pr om Re ed p. io D om in ica na Co sta Ri ca

Bo liv

Ch

ile Ve ne su ela

0.0

Paises

Figure 12.3 UNESCO Compendio Mundial de la Educación – herramienta interactiva. http://uis.unesco.org/ (Accessed 09/07/2016) Source: ODM-2015 follow-up and UNESCO Statistics

In secondary education, the net enrolment rate is 50.1 per cent, an increase of 11 points between 2004 and 2013. Survival to the fifth year in that decade stagnated at 55 per cent. A programme to introduce secondary education in rural areas is currently being implemented. Although enrolment in 2000 was almost 90 per cent urban and fell to 72 per cent in 2013, this disproportion against the rural sector remains very high. Rural secondary education is critical for developing the agricultural potential of the country. It is noteworthy that only 36 per cent of the population aged between twenty and twenty-four years finished secondary school.

Learning quality and equity of basic education The TERCE-2013 test results on reading and mathematics did not show significant differences from the SERCE-2006 (UNESCO 2008; UNESCO 2015). Nicaragua remained among the countries with lower scores. MINED conducted reading comprehension tests in 2008, but they were discontinued and their results were not used to involve the educational community in improving educational quality and equity. To address shortages and foster the most meaningful learning, the new MINED administration conducted a social consultation and revised and improved the competence-based curriculum developed during the neo-liberal

230

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

period. Similarly, 1,800 in-service teachers became professionalized in four public universities.11 However, there is still a large gap between the existing curriculum and teacher development plans. Uncertified teachers comprise 64 per cent of those teaching in preschool, 24  per cent in primary and 42 per cent in high school. Teachers’ standard of living is low; in 2013, the average salary of a teacher bought 60 per cent of the basic food basket and services. The teaching career has little prestige in society. Inequity comes from differences in access to and quality of education. Rural and marginalized urban areas have less access to school, more uncertified teachers and less teaching materials; therefore, survival rates to sixth grade and fifth year are lower, with higher dropout and repetition rates. Overage pupils comprise 31 per cent in primary and 39 per cent in secondary schools. On the Caribbean Coast, educational inequity is aggravated by the dispersion of the population and extreme poverty. Although there are successful educational technology programmes, the number of computers per school is small.

Educational decentralization In 2007, the Sandinista government abolished the neo-liberal school autonomy reform, arguing the right to free education and eliminating families’ monetary contributions. However, families still pay for their children’s educational materials and transportation, and continue contributing to school maintenance. Curricular decentralization policy is maintained, with 20 per cent of the activities of the educational programme corresponding to local variations. Applying the same educational districting policy of the 1960s, educators from neighbouring schools meet to exchange and evaluate progress of the curriculum; however, there is a need for continuing education for teachers and principals. Administrative decisions are more centralized. Today, there is consensus among education researchers that the system needs an alternative to decentralization to strengthen the managerial, pedagogical and curricular capacity of schools and local MINED authorities.

Demographic bonus and the need for technical and professional education A very low priority has been given to technical education. The National Technological Institute (INATEC) increased technical education offerings, reaching 29,395 students in 2015. However, short-term courses increased at the

Nicaragua: Education for Sustainable Human Development

231

expense of medium-term training (Asensio and Hurtado 2010).12 Moreover, enrolment dropped from 17,000 students in 2008 to 8,000 in 2013. There are very few higher technical education offerings in public and private universities due to the growth of bachelor and engineering degree programmes, which increased from 32,000 students in 2000 to 194,000 students in 2015, both in public and private universities. In 2015, only 3,894 students were enrolled in higher technical programmes in public universities (CNU 2016). Technical and professional major programmes are outdated, resulting in a gap between academic supply and demand. Productive and business sectors require new technician job profiles. In addition, there is little research on how to improve productivity and innovation, how to link education and the workplace and how to develop entrepreneurship and leadership to generate employment and self-employment. In this context, the education system continues to push secondary school graduates to universities, while technical education is perceived as a second-class option. The National Council of Evaluation and Accreditation (CNEA), created by Law 704 in September 2011, is a positive initiative. Since its establishment, public and private universities have been striving to meet quality requirements for accreditation. It is possible that this initiative will contribute to the design of strategies to improve educational relevance for sustainable human development.

The potential of youth and adult literacy The Ministry of Education has made great efforts to increase adult literacy through the literacy campaign ‘Yes I Can’. The National Illiteracy Rate Certification Committee indicated that illiteracy fell to 3.5 per cent in 2009 (UNESCO, OEI, INIDE, UNAN, IDEUCA, 2009); however, the Living Standards Measurement Survey said that illiteracy was 12 per cent in 2009, and the National Demographic and Health Survey 2012 found 10.5 per cent illiteracy, placing Nicaragua third in literacy in Central America, after Panama and Costa Rica. The highest illiteracy rates are found in rural areas (23.2 per cent) and the Caribbean Coast (14.8 per cent). Education for this population is critical for taking advantage of the demographic dividend in Nicaragua. However, continuing education and job training programmes for literate adults, which could create opportunities for self-employment or employment, remain scarce because technical education offerings for this population have still not been created.

232

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

In conclusion Development strategies in the four analysed periods have left education quite disconnected from productive, business, environmental, service, social sectors and innovation. Education plans have been linked very little with other areas of national development. The discontinuity of educational policies from one administration to another, and little use of the achievements of each period, largely explains the current gaps in educational quality and equity. There is a lack of social consensus on quality education and equity; the various national sectors have not been involved in actions to face those challenges. Public budget allocations for education in the four periods have been low, mirroring the low priority that has been given to education. The country’s investment levels are simply too low to make the education system a key factor for national development. Coverage in early childhood, primary, literacy and university education has grown; but secondary and technical coverage has not. Retention in the system, however, is low at all education levels, and dropouts are high in the early years. There are inequities in access and quality of education, particularly in rural and marginal urban sectors. Overage students and poverty amplify educational inequity. Positive experiences have been developed on the Caribbean Coast to improve educational quality, retention and curricular relevance. Adolescents and youth represent 53.6 per cent of the working-age population, and this sector will continue to grow for another thirty years. The country is not taking advantage of the demographic dividend, as evidenced by low coverage and little diversity in secondary, technical and adult education, as well as the low relevance of higher education. Since 2006, the country has participated in international reading and mathematics tests; but the results are not discussed with the educational community. Significant efforts are being made to improve preschool and primary teachers’ qualifications; but teachers’ salaries remain low and the educational profession lacks social prestige. The current primary and secondary curriculum, in place since 2004 and modified in 2008, includes content for developing life, job and citizenship skills; but there is an overload of content, a lack of relevant topics, and it is dissociated from the teacher training curriculum.

Nicaragua: Education for Sustainable Human Development

233

Administrative decisions are centralized because of the abolition of school autonomy for ethical and administrative reasons. In recent years, social organizations, companies and private foundations have contributed programmes to improve educational access, retention and quality. There is consensus that greater public and private investment in education for development is needed. The slow progress of Central American integration hinders educational integration, which is needed to strengthen coexistence and regional development.

Educational challenges for sustainable human development Consensus among government, business and social organizations needs to be promoted around an education plan that will contribute to sustainable human development and that is geared towards the National Human Development Plan (NHDP). The plan would support national development priorities in social, cultural, economic, technological and environmental fields. It would also include education strategies in these areas. The national education offerings need to be diversified, to make them more responsive to the country’s development issues, by considering differences in territories, autonomous regions, communities, families and individuals. A fiscal pact for educational quality and equity needs to be promoted. In the short term, the country should allocate 7 per cent of GDP to education. Education would bring skills needed for improving production, productivity, innovation, quality services, technology and research, while forming high human, cultural and ethical values. There is a need to promote the following: an educational strategy that develops competencies beginning in early childhood; basic education that prepares for involvement in social and community solutions; teacher preparation that contributes to the quality of education and that halts abandonment, repetition and overage students; and diversified and relevant educational programmes for potential dropouts or excluded groups. Youth is the hope of the country. There is a need to expand and improve quality of secondary education by including vocational training, technical guidance, innovation, entrepreneurship and professional certification; invest in specialized technical education, considering sustainable human development trends; develop special technical education programmes for youth and

234

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

adults; link the technical educational programmes of INATEC, MINED and universities affiliated with the National Council of Universities (CNU); and continue professional development of secondary and higher technical education teachers. There is a need for greater articulation of university education programmes with economic plans, considering production demands, trends and challenges, as well as new societal trends for knowledge, technology, human values, ethics and citizenship. The National Assessment and Accreditation Council (CNEA) should stimulate quality, innovation and research capacities to offer creative solutions for development. Multisector partnerships should be strengthened with educational strategies of common interest, collaboration among public educational institutions in their role as facilitators of different sectors and levels, and strengthening the National Education Commission’s professional capacity with formal and nonformal education experts. In the context of Central American integration, educational initiatives should be promoted among countries of the region, to become platforms for dialogue and inclusive technical and professional cooperation for sustainable human development. Finally, the National Educational Development Plan should include measurable impact indicators. It should allow monitoring and evaluation to facilitate decision-making processes and to elaborate lessons learnt to explore ways in which the Nicaraguan education system can become an effective means for sustainable human development.

Notes 1. Developed by author, 2006–15, with data from the PGR-MHCP, Central Bank, MINED, INATEC and CNU. National Accounts, Base Year 2006. 2. UNESCO Statistics Institute. http://stats.uis.unesco.org/unesco/TableViewer 3. Data from the 1979 National Census for the Literacy Campaign of 1980. 4. UNESCO. Institute of Statistics. Database on line. 5. World Bank. Statistics. http://datos.bancomundial.org/indicador 6. The data, provided by the Ministry of Education based on estimates, was confirmed by the Living Standards Measurement Survey conducted in 1993, which revealed 23 per cent illiteracy. 7. UNESCO Institute for Statistics. http://stats.uis.unesco.org/unesco/TableViewer

Nicaragua: Education for Sustainable Human Development

235

8. CEPALSTAT-Database. 9. With the new methodology of the Central Bank for calculating GDP, the percentage of annual allocation to education estimated before 2013 decreased by 1.5 per cent. 10. MINED. Informe ‘Avanza la Formación Docente’. Salvador Vanegas, Presidential Advisor for Educational Affairs. http://www.mined.gob.ni/index.php?option=com_ content&view=article&id=4221:avanza-la-formacion-docente-en-nicaragua&catid =97:archivo&Itemid=29 11. MINED. Informe ‘Avanza la Formación Docente’. Salvador Vanegas, Presidential Advisor for Educational Affairs. http://www.mined.gob.ni/index.php?option=com_ content&view=article&id=4221:avanza-la-formacion-docente-en-nicaragua&catid =97:archivo&Itemid=29 12. With no significant variations to 2014.

Bibliography Arríen García, Juan Bautista. ‘Referentes de impacto en la educación de Nicaragua: período 1950–2008’. Encuentro: Revista Académica de la Universidad Centroamericana, 79 (2008): 8–18. Arnove, Robert. ‘The tension between quantity and quality in Nicaraguan Education’. Third World Education. Quality and Equality, 6 (2000): 29. Asensio, Cefas, Raúl Ruiz, Valinda Sequeira, Alec Gershberg and Vanessa Castro. ‘Lecciones aprendidas de la autonomía escolar nicaragüense’. Resumen ejecutivo de reporte para el proyecto ‘Empowering Parents While Making Them Pay: Autonomous Schools in Nicaragua’. Managua, The New School University (2001). Asensio Flórez, Cefas, and María Hurtado Cabrera. Identificación de Demandas Relevantes de Formación de Técnicos para los Sectores Industrial y de Servicios (Managua: Fundación Victoria, 2010). Assmann, Hugo. ‘Nicaragua triunfa en la alfabetización’. Documentos y Testimonios de la Cruzada Nacional de Alfabetización (San José: Departamento Ecuménico de Investigaciones, 1981). CNU. Rendición Social de Cuentas 2015 (Managua: Consejo Nacional de Universidades, 2016). Available online: http://www.cnu.edu.ni/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/ Documento-Informe-Rendici%C3%B3n-Social-de-Cuenta-s2015-CNU.pdf (accessed 12 December 2016). Delgadillo, Maritza. El bono demográfico y sus efectos sobre el desarrollo económico y social de Nicaragua (Managua: Fondo de Población de las Naciones Unidas, Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe, Centro Latinoamericano y Caribeño de Demografía, 2010).

236

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

Elvir, Ana Patricia, and Celso Luis Asensio. La atención y educación de la primera infancia en Centroamérica: desafíos y perspectivas. Background paper prepared for the Education for All Global Monitoring Report 2007 Strong foundations: early childhood care and education (UNESCO, 2006). ENVIO. La Universidad en Nicaragua: una transformación en marcha. ENVÍO 57. Marzo 1986. Available online: http://www.envio.org.ni/articulo/482 (accessed 13 December 2016). IEEPP. Niños, niñas y adolescentes que se desgranan de la Educación Primaria (Managua: Instituto de Estudios Estratégicos y Políticas Públicas – Embassy of Finland, 2012). INATEC. Reseña histórica del currículo de la Formación Profesional (Managua: Instituto Nacional de Tecnología – INATEC, 2003). INIDE. Informe de la Encuesta Nacional de Demografía y Salud ENDESA 2011/12 (Managua: Instituto Nacional de Información de Desarrollo – INIDE/Ministerio de Salud -MINSA, 2012). INIDE. Estimaciones y Proyecciones de Población Nacional, Departamental y Municipal. Revisión 2007 (Managua: Instituto Nacional de Información de Desarrollo -INIDE, 2007). Lucio Gil, Rafael. ‘La cuestión docente en Nicaragua: desde el pasado y presente, pensando en el futuro’. Congreso Nacional de Educación, no. 1. (2013): 1–18. Miller, Valerie. Between Struggle and Hope: The Nicaraguan Literacy Crusade (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1985). El 19 Digital. MINED da a conocer importante informe que destaca los logros de las rutas educativas 2015. Diciembre 18, 2015. https://www.el19digital.com/articulos/ver/ titulo:36965-mined-da-a-conocer-importante-informe-que-destaca-los-logros-delas-rutas-educativas-2015 Pastor, Robert. Condemned to Repetition: The United States and Nicaragua (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987). PreaL, Eduquemos, Ibis Denmark. Informe de Progreso Educativo Nicaragua 2014 (2014). PNUD. Informe sobre Desarrollo Humano 2015 (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2015). Torres, Carlos Alberto. ‘The state, non-formal education, and socialism in Cuba, Nicaragua, and Granada’. Comparative Education Review, 35, no. 1 (1991): 110–30. Tünnermann Bernheim, Carlos. ‘La universidad: búsqueda permanente’. La Educación, 34, no. 106 (1971): 1–24. UNESCO, OEI, INIDE, UNAN, IDEUCA. Informe. Comisión Nacional de Verificación de la Tasa Nacional de Analfabetismo en Nicaragua 16/06/2009 (Managua: UNESCO, OEI, INIDE, UNAN, IDEUCA, 2009). UNESCO. Second Regional Comparative and Explanatory Study SERCE. Student Achievement in Latin America and the Caribbean – Executive Summary (Santiago de Chile: OREALC-UNESCO, 2008). Available online: http://unesdoc.unesco.org/ images/0016/001610/161045E.pdf (accessed 13 December 2016).

Nicaragua: Education for Sustainable Human Development

237

UNESCO. Third Regional Comparative and Explanatory Study TERCE. Learning Achievements. Executive Summary (Santiago de Chile: OREALC-UNESCO, 2015). Available online: http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0024/002439/243983e.pdf (accessed 13 December 2016). UNESCO. Proyectos prioritarios de Educación para el Desarrollo: Nicaragua (París: UNESCO, 1965). Available online: http://unesdoc.unesco.org/ images/0002/000292/029206sb.pdf (accessed 15 December 2016).

13

Panama: An Overview1 Rolando de la Guardia Wald

Introduction According to international agencies, Panama has one of the poorest systems of education in Latin America, yet, on the economic front, it has been a great success with an enviable rate of growth. On the one hand, according to these international agencies, the shortage of a skilled population will affect economic performance, and, on the other hand, a poor system of education has begun to have deleterious effects. How can we begin to comprehend the disparity between apparently economic expansion and a dysfunctional system of education? For us, the problem is not only how many people teach and learn, but how they do so. In this sense, a specialist in Panamanian education wrote that the problem of the Panamanian education system has always been providing goodquality education (Bernal 2004: 70). However, the concept of ‘quality’ is elusive, because it is related to the way educational structures, learning processes and teaching methods are implemented, permitting to widen the ‘cultural capital’ of an entire society. Even though quality seems difficult to measure, the technocrats who work for the governments and international organizations seem to agree that numeric values, statistics, indicators, standards and tests serve to enlighten about the functioning of educational systems. Their studies and reports, supposedly, measure the capacity of the system, its teachers and students to deliver, learn and create knowledge. Technocrats seem confident in that they have designed scientific methods to assess the quality of education. These methods cannot be disdained; they partially fulfil their objective. Nevertheless, one of our underlying arguments is that the Panamanian education problems stem from the economic and political decision makers viewing these problems and their possible solution through what we can call

Panama: An Overview

239

‘technocratic lenses’: the perspective that technical and quantitative analysis produced by groups of experts provide the foremost holistic and accurate information about an education system. This appears as an idealization of quantification as a mean to achieve ‘progress’. In this chapter, we are going to show how statistics help to illustrate that there are major flaws in the Panamanian education system, but also how they cannot sketch a clear image of what exactly happens to the students and teachers in the classrooms, especially in public schools and universities. Technocratic reports cannot explain the lack of quality in learning and teaching, because they fail to observe human interactions, especially those among the authorities, teachers, students and other actors involved in the process of education. Similarly, the effects of the internal politics in schools and universities escape their grasp, although governments probably are aware of them and are an active agent in them. All this does not help governments and international organizations to explain why projects for educational improvement do not achieve the expected result of fixing the dysfunctionality of the Panamanian education system.

Part I Theoretical approach and hypotheses In order to support our arguments, we draw upon Nicola Miller’s definition of ‘technocratic modernity’, which is ‘the promotion of an ideology of progress defined primarily in economic terms, driven by instrumental reason and technology, and implemented by a knowledge elite’ (Miller 2008: 16). We argue that in Panama this knowledge elite understands the world through the aforementioned technocratic lenses. This could be observed, in the first instance, in the way governments rely on the expertise of technocrats, specialists who, inspired by and working with international organizations, produce ‘technical’ evaluations. Based on their quantitative research, which, supposedly, depicts the current state of education, technocrats establish projections for future improvement. The result generally includes projects and policies that allow augmenting the number of students, schools, the insertion of technology in school and universities, the strengthening of education authorities and the efficiency of their bureaucrats, the constant production of technocratic studies, the design of curricula and courses oriented to solve social problems and satisfy the needs of the national and international labour markets. However, as said, numeric values do not necessarily provide information about the quality of education services.

240

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

We argue that the mere implementation of policies that serve to increase numbers of schools, students or teachers without contemplating the importance of quality are palliatives that serve to comply with internal and external standards. Panamanian authorities make an effort to reach such standards, because they are interested in satisfying national and international critics. Fulfilling quantitative goals is a means to generate a better image of Panama, because showing numbers might fabricate an ‘objective’ vision of modernization or improvement. More importantly, augmenting or decreasing numbers might prove easier than actually providing a good-quality education. We also argue that some of the problems affecting Panamanian education come from the ‘devaluation of education’ or the devaluation of the relevance of the quality of teaching and learning. This happens when learning and teaching is perceived as less relevant than the achievement of other kinds of personal or collective interests. Our ideas stem, in part, from the Argentine sociologist, Di Tella. He paid attention to the ‘educational explosion’ or massive increase in the number of students and teachers that have been occurring throughout Latin America since the 1960s (Di Tella 2001: 23). This ‘educational explosion’ is a major problem because it shows a lack of forethought and provision to cope with the rapid increase in population and the general demand for education. Di Tella argued that ‘government[s] cannot avoid providing its citizens with some education. … Mass education might be neglected, but the pressure of the dominant strata and the middle-classes ensures some attention to high school and university education, and that is precisely where the most powerful antisystem tensions arise’ (2001: 24). Indeed, Panamanian governments recognize the social and cultural right of its citizens to receive education since 1904 (Bernal 2004: 54, 62–4). However, it is important to mention that, during the military regime (1968–89), especially between 1970 and 1980, there was a major ‘education explosion’ in Panama. This affected both primary and secondary schools, as well as the Universidad de Panamá. For instance, during this time, student population of the Universidad de Panamá grew from 8,947 to 41,234 (Bernal 2004: 64). This might have been the result of pressure from the Panamanian dominant strata and the middle classes, which realized that the government and companies needed graduates to function. However, educational explosion could be also the result of populist governance to satisfy the demand for free or inexpensive education. The government reacted by giving uncontrolled and easy access to secondary, upper-secondary and higher education. The ‘educational explosion’ could also

Panama: An Overview

241

be caused by the seeking of quantitative goals, which require governments to show that more people are being incorporated into the education system and receiving, at least, basic education. Governments fulfil this by inserting as many students in the system, but without checking if the students are academically ready to enter the different levels of education. In the meantime, quality remains unchecked. Di Tella also observed that ‘in small communities, people have … “a character to lose” and are thus restrained by their peers and superiors. When they migrate to a large milieu these controls do not operate in a similar manner’ (2001: 24). For us, this could be connected to what we call ‘academic endogamy’ in public and some private schools and universities. In Panama, the academic community is relatively small. The migration to larger milieus rarely occurs, with the exception of a small number of students who go abroad and professors who receive temporary positions or obtain short-term fellowships outside Panama. In general, the situation in local universities is that the higher and permanent academic and administrative positions are monopolized by a small group of academics. They become an ‘establishment’ within the Ministry of Education, teacher and student unions, and schools and universities. As we will see, this establishment tends to be protectionist against outsiders, who experience rejection and find many obstacles in their search for academic employment. Furthermore, the establishment restrains their peers and students by neglecting opportunities and creating professional dependency. More importantly, it attains support from the government and/or the university, especially if they align with those on the top of the state or academic hierarchy. As Di Tella suggests, these groups might be politically active in both the university and the political arena. They might be critical of the government. However, differing with Di Tella, we sustain that professional protectionism transforms them into pro-system, not anti-system, within the schooling and academic communities. An important point in Di Tella’s work is that ‘the oversupply of unemployed graduates at middle and higher levels generates a burgeoning of discontent, well-informed, and politically active groups’ (2001: 23–4). He comments that when there are too many graduates, governments have many options to reduce or eliminate dissatisfaction. One of them is to ‘devalue the social significance, and therefore the ensuing aspirational structure, of given levels of education (often also reducing their quality)’ (2001: 23). However, the problem is not only the result of an oversupply of diplomas or unemployment. On the contrary, in Panama, unlike many other countries, there is a shortage of labour. Due to the

242

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

good economic situation of Panama, there is very low unemployment (less than 5 per cent). This eases finding jobs in the most productive fields without the need of having a strong preparation.

Part II General information The Panamanian education system confronts several challenges. Some of them are related to demographic changes, its obsolete infrastructure, its lack of organization and the incapability of its authorities and institutions to cope with them. The following details might help to understand some of these problems.

II. I. Demography The Republic of Panama became independent from Colombia in 1903. Since then, it has been faced with the task of creating a nation state out of a very mixed population and working out a viable relationship with the United States that had been granted extraordinary powers over vast swathes of its territory of 75,515 square kilometres. Panama’s population is relatively small. In 2013, its population was 3,850,735 (Contraloría 2014: 38) and 75 per cent of the population lived in urban areas. Panama City alone had 1,405,296 inhabitants (including the people of the metropolitan district of San Miguelito), who accounted for close to 36.42 per cent of the total population (Contraloría 2014: 40). Recently, Panama also received a large number of immigrants from Colombia and Venezuela (FUDESPA 2010: 46). This is important because it does not seem that Panamanian authorities have been able to cope with the influx of people from other Latin American countries and the natural growth of the indigenous population.

II. II. Economics: Today, Panama’s economy is rapidly expanding. It is mainly based on commerce, banking and tourism. It is the second largest economy in Central America. According to the Economic Forum’s Global competitiveness Index (2010), it is the second most competitive economy all of Latin America. According to the World Bank, Panama’s gross domestic product (GDP) grew at an average of 8 per cent between 2006 and 2012. Since ‘2010 the economy [increased] 7.6 per cent … 10.6 per cent in 2011, 10.5 per cent in 2012, 7.9 per cent in 2013 and an estimate of 7.3 per cent in 2014’ (2014). Panama’s main economic asset is the canal, which defines the socio-economic structure. In 2013, it obtained an income of US$2,411,300,000.00 (ACP 2013: 7). The economy is heavily

Panama: An Overview

243

dependent on legal and logistic services as well as in industries related to the Panama Canal. The service sector accounts for nearly 80 per cent of the gross national product (GNP) and comprises banking, the Colón Free-Trade Zone, insurance, container ports, flagship registry and other services. In 2012, the industrial sector accounted for just under 17 per cent of the country’s GNP and agriculture a mere 3.8 per cent, while only 17 per cent of the population are employed on farms and some manufacturing, mainly of cements and textiles. Nevertheless, Panama has the second worst distribution of income in Latin America. According to the World Bank, in 2013, 25 per cent of the population lived in poverty and the difference in income between the highest and lowest deciles was one of the greatest in the world. For this study it is important to know that international organizations maintain that the future growth of the economy is threatened by the poor educational system which has not kept pace with population growth, technological change and the provision of an adequately educated workforce.

Part III An overview of Panamanian education III. I. General description of the official structure of the Panamanian educational system Article 17 of the Organic Law 47 of 1946 declares that the Ministry of Education is statutorily the institution responsible for all levels of education, from preschooling up to and including higher education (Gobierno de Panamá 2008: 10–11). According the Article 19, the ministry is responsible for the provision of universal primary education, school governance, administration and generally overseeing the activity of all schools, universities and other educational institutions (Gobierno de Panamá, 2008: 10–11). Article 18 states that the ministry develops, delivers and implements educational policy. It generates and reforms school curriculum, pedagogy and systems and practices of evaluation (Gobierno de Panamá, 2008: 11). Finally, according to Article 132, it has responsibility for the diffusion of culture (Gobierno de Panamá, 2008: 67). The ministry not only issues the policies that regulate the programmes of public schools, but it requires private schools to comply with their core courses, even though they are allowed to include other courses into their curricula, such as Catholic religion, or have a bilingual programme. According to the law, the Panamanian system has a ‘regular’ and a ‘nonregular’ education and both could have a ‘formal’ and an ‘informal’ character

244

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

(Gobierno de Panamá 2008: 4–5). Administratively, the Panamanian education is divided into three distinct levels, which are subdivided in the following way: 1. First level: • Pre-primary, • Primary (first to sixth grade), • Secondary (seventh to ninth grade), 2. Second level: • Upper secondary (tenth to twelfth grade), 3. Third level: • Higher education (which includes ‘post-upper-secondary’ education, whether it is university education or not) (Gobierno de Panamá 2008: 38–9).

III.II. Demographics of the education system in Panama: Primary, secondary and upper-secondary levels In 2013, the population of school age was 992,574 and 851,434 were at least initially enrolled in educational programmes (Contraloría 2014: 248–50). More specifically, there were a total of 105,070 students enrolled in pre-primary schools; 435,973 in the primary schools; and 310,391 in secondary and uppersecondary schools (Contraloría 2014: 249). Similar information was published by the Ministry of Education in 2013. This, however, allows to see the regional (capital city/rest of the country) distribution. The documents indicate that there were a total of 437,277 students enrolled in primary schools in 2012. Of these, 120,440 students or 28 per cent attended schools in Panama City (MEDUCA 2013: 7). In addition, there were 188,603 students in secondary schools in 2012. Of these 58,370 or 31 per cent were enrolled in schools in Panama City (MEDUCA 2013: 9). Also, 111,834 students were enrolled in upper-secondary schools in 2012. Those studying in schools located in Panama City amounted to 38,602 or 36 per cent (MEDUCA 2013: 11). It is relevant to indicate that, according to UNICEF and the World Bank (2013), it is claimed that 64 per cent of the relevant age group is enrolled in preprimary education, 91 per cent in primary education, 76 per cent in secondary education and 42 per cent in upper-secondary education. Being on the rolls does not necessarily mean that students attend their schools. According to the OECD Latin-America Economic Outlook 2015: Education Skills and Innovation for Development,2 Panama enrolment in secondary and upper-secondary education and especially pre-primary education has risen but is still below the

Panama: An Overview

245

OECD average. It is close to the regional average, but government expenditure per primary pupil as a percentage of GDP per capita is less than half the Latin American average. Overall enrolment in tertiary education is much higher for women than for men. Besides this, 97 per cent of the poorest quintal and 99 per cent of the richest quintal attend primary school. For secondary schools the disparity is greater with 56 per cent of the poorest quintal and 90 per cent of the richest quintal in attendance. The figures for upper-secondary schools are particularly disastrous. They are respectively 7 per cent and 43 per cent. The problem is particularly acute in rural areas for reasons that must be explored. Looking at the number of potential students and those enrolled, it is possible to deduce that about 14.21 per cent of children did not attend a school. The figure does not quite coincide with an estimate made in 2010 that 7 per cent of children between the ages of five and fourteen were incorporated into the workforce. It also does not quite coincide with several reports that indicate that all children of primary school age were enrolled in schools. The vast majority of children attend state schools. However, as in most Latin American countries, a high percentage of students were educated in the private system. In 2011, the private sector accounted for 52,854 of 12 per cent of all primary school pupils. At the level of secondary and upper-secondary schooling, the private sector accounted for 46,324 or 15 per cent of all those attending such schools. Nevertheless, in 2013, the private sector accounted for 60,090 of 13.78 per cent of all primary school students. At the level of secondary and upper-secondary schooling, the private sector accounted for 51,127 or 16.47 per cent of all those attending such schools (Contraloría 2014: 249, 250). This shows that, in recent years, the percentages of students attending private schools have increased. This is perhaps due to rising competition for school places and the fastgrowing population. Moreover, this could be the result of the middle class’ perception that state schools do not provide a good-quality education and/or that there are better chances to for social and economic mobility after graduating from a private school. This last point takes us back to the ideas of Bourdieu, as it seems that middle classes rely on the prestige of a private school diploma and the networks that students can establish in such schools to maintain or enhance their social and economic position. It also reminds of the arguments presented about the devaluation of education. In this particular case, public school diplomas are less appreciated and devaluated. Thus, public school graduates are in many ways stigmatized as persons without enough ‘cultural capital’, and, as a result, their opportunities for further education are limited to local universities. All

246

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

this makes us ask to what extent Panama is an example of the Latin American phenomenon where the middle class deserts the public system and thereby weakens it further with serious consequences. Another important statistics is that, in 2013, there were 20,990 secondary and upper-secondary education teachers and 19,162 primary school teachers (Contraloría 2014: 249–50). This means that there are 22.75 students per teacher in primary education and 14.79 students per teacher in secondary and uppersecondary education. This number does not seem to suggest that teachers can be overloaded. There is not much difference between public and private schools. Therefore, it remains to investigate why with a, relatively, reasonable amount of students, the system appears to provide poor-quality education.

III.III. Taught programmes: Bachilleratos or upper-secondary degrees As mentioned, the education system in Panama offers five levels: pre-primary, primary, secondary, upper-secondary and higher education. It was possible to collect information about the programmes of study at the upper-secondary level. In this section, we will present this data as a means to shed light upon what the system expects students to learn before entering a university. The Panamanian public education system now offers many kinds of uppersecondary degrees (bachilleratos). There are upper-secondary degrees in tourism, accountancy, agriculture, humanities, science and commerce, among others. Traditionally, the system was less specialized, so, until recently, public upper-secondary schools offered only degrees in letters (or humanities), science or commerce. In the following text, there is archival information obtained at the Ministry of Education about current programmes in those three areas. As it will be seen, all students have to take courses in ‘humanities’, ‘science’ and ‘technology’ (tecnológica) fields. Following is a list of the courses offered: 1. Upper-secondary degree in commerce: • Humanities courses: Castilian; English; geography of Panama; economic geography; modern and postmodern history; history of Panama I and history of Panama II; civic instruction, ethics, morality, values and personal relations; fine arts. • Scientific courses: mathematics; physical education and integral health. • Technology courses: information systems technology (four hours/week in tenth grade); commercial technology; administration; accountancy; marketing and publicity; entrepreneurial management; office work;

Panama: An Overview

247

project planning and management; commercial and labour foundations; professional internship (Ministerio de Educación 2015: 1–2). 2. Upper-secondary degree in science • Humanities courses: Castilian; English; physical geography; geography of Panama; human, economic and political geography; modern and postmodern history; history of Panama I and II; ethics, morality, values and human relations; fine arts; civic instruction; and logics and philosophy. • Scientific courses: mathematics; physical education and integral health; biology; chemistry; physics. • Technology courses: information systems technology; entrepreneurial management and project planning (Ministerio de Educacion 2015: 7–8). 3. Upper-secondary degree in humanities: • Humanities courses: Castilian; English; ‘French/Mandarin/Other language’; physical geography; geography of Panama; human, economic and political geography; modern and postmodern history; history of Panama I and II; history of Latin American culture; ethics, morality, values and human relations; fine arts; civic instruction; logics and philosophy. • Scientific courses: mathematics; physical education and integral health; natural sciences. • Technology courses: information systems technology; entrepreneurial management and project planning (Ministerio de Educación 2015: 9–10). However, the information obtained in the archives do not provide any description of the courses’ content and objectives, the qualifications of the professors who teach them, the requirements to pass the class (except that the grading scale goes from 0.0 to 5.0, and 3.0 is the minimum grade to pass). Besides this, it was not possible to find information about the performance of students in any of these courses.

III.IV. Training of teachers of primary, secondary and upper-secondary education: III.IV.1. The Escuela Normal One of the main institutions in charge of preparing pre-higher education teachers is the Escuela Normal Juan Demóstenes Arosemena de Santiago, the main Normal School in Panama, located in the province of Veraguas. Unfortunately, the main offices of Ministry of Education do not have

248

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

information about the programme of studies of the Escuela Normal. The only source at hand was the information that this school shared on its webpage. There, the official statement claims that the school is the only one that offers a Bachiller Pedagógico, Bilingüe y Tecnológico (pedagogic, bilingual and technological high school degree’). According to the information, the degree provides a ‘solid basis’ in the fields of English, technology and pedagogics, which would allow students to pursue education at local universities, such as the Universidad de Panamá, Universidad Tecnológica, Universidad Católica Santa María la Antigua (USMA) and UDELAS. The institution claims that it offers a free course in English, ‘responding to … the new policies of the … government’. Finally, the webpage claims that the Normal School of Santiago is certified by the ‘Process of Institutional Evaluation’. Supposedly, this allows teachers to ‘perform excellently … [and] enjoy better economic remuneration’ (Escuela Normal 2016). The main requirements to enter the school as a student are the presentation of the transcripts and diploma of secondary education, a ‘certification of good behaviour’ and a ‘medical certificate from the Social Security and the Ministry of Health’ (Escuela Normal 2016). According to Executive Decree 261 of 18 April 2013, the Programme of Studies of the Pedagogic, Bilingual and Technological High School degree offers courses in four areas: humanities, science, pedagogy and technology. In the humanities, the courses include languages and communication, geography of Panama, history of Panama, modern and contemporary history, civic instruction, ethics and values, English and fine arts. In the area of science, the students have to take courses of mathematic, natural sciences (physics, chemistry and biology I and II). Concerning pedagogy, the programme of the Normal School of Santiago includes courses on pedagogics, curricula building, philosophical foundations of education, general didactics, school administration, educational evaluation, sociology of education, psychology of education, research on education and classroom laboratory. Finally, in the area of technology, the school teaches a class called ‘family and communal development’, plus another class on information technology (Escuela Normal 2016). However, there are many voids in this information. It is important to highlight that there is no description of the courses or their content, the textbooks used, the teaching methodologies, the assessment or the qualifications to be a teacher at the Escuela Normal. There is no information about how many students graduate.

Panama: An Overview

249

III.IV.2. The Faculty of Education Sciences of the University of Panama The other important institution that confers degrees in education is the Universidad de Panamá. The information collected indicates that the Faculty of Education Sciences of the Universidad de Panamá offers bachelor degrees in pre-primary education and primary education (Licenciatura en Educación Primaria), a professorship in education (Profesorado en Educación) and a degree called ‘Degree in Diversified Secondary and Upper-Secondary Education’ (Docencia Media Diversificada). The bachelor in primary education is a four-year programme that has four objectives. The first is to ‘emphasise attitudes that allow the internalization of value’s, beliefs and habits within the frame of professional ethics’. The second is to ‘form a professional in education, with skills and abilities that go in accordance with the new conceptions of the cognitive theory of the teaching-learning process’. The third is to ‘provide future professionals the theoretical-methodological instruments to plan, programme, execute, and assess their [own] pedagogical and administrative practices’. The fourth is to ‘create contextualised and integrated opportunities of participation to interpret and analyse educational reality [as a mean to] promote changes’ (Facultad de Ciencias de la Educación 2010). The professorship in education was created with the purpose of ‘enabling’ students who had graduated prior 1999 from bachelor programmes in preprimary and primary education to engage in ‘Basic General Education’ and in normal schools. Additionally, it has the purpose of strengthening the preparation of students who had graduated after 1999 (Facultad de Ciencias de la Educación 2010b). The degree in diversified secondary and upper-secondary education aims at ‘facilitating a scientific-technical-pedagogic education which would connect social requirements with the characteristics of the graduates’. Another of its objectives is ‘forming professionals in secondary and upper-secondary education, who would be capable of addressing the necessities and [understand the] characteristics of the education of [their] students’, as well as ‘preparing teachers in different fields of knowledge for performing educational and orientation functions related to the preparation of secondary and uppersecondary [school] graduates, so that [these] could enter the labour market as intermediate technicians and/or [could] continue studying at university level’. Finally, the document establishes that the programme expects to ‘form teachers with a working mystic when performing their fundamental professional functions [which are linked to] aspects of ethics and relationship with the

250

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

community’ (Facultad de Ciencias de la Educación 2010c). This seems like a very vague language rather than a clear explanation of the curricula, the courses’ content, teaching methodologies and even pedagogical views. It was possible to obtain a list of courses of this programme. It might help to enlighten about what would-be secondary or upper-secondary teachers learn before they go into the labour market. This list goes as follows: 1. First semester: • Educational technology and communication. • Curriculum planning. • Didactics I. • Learning • [Teenager?] Growth and development • General pedagogics • Elective seminar 2. Second semester: • Didactics II • Organization and management of education centre • Learning assessment • Foundations of secondary education • Teacher’s mental hygiene • Pedagogics of values • Elective seminar II 3. Third semester: • Teaching internship The information also indicates that the elective seminars could be on the topics of ‘Professional and Educational Orientation’, ‘Information Systems’, ‘Voice Use and Management’ and ‘Transversal Axis’ (Facultad de las Ciencias de la Educación 2010d). Again, we found the problem of not having any description of the requirement to enrol in the programme. It might be possible that anyone who passes the admission test, if there is one, could enter. This might mean that not all the best candidates become teachers. No information is provided about the content, objectives, teaching methodology or assessment of each course. Also, there is no indication of who are the members of the faculty teaching these classes, so we cannot say if these trainers are qualified. In addition, no bibliography is presented, so it is not possible to know if the reading material is up to date.

Panama: An Overview

251

Finally, there is nothing that could say which requirements successfully finish the programme. It does seem that there is no need to write a research thesis, but this is the only deduction that we could make. In sum, the information only provides a glance, but leaves many questions unanswered regarding the quality of education that would-be teachers receive.

III.V. Current performance of Panamanian primary, secondary, and upper-secondary schools: Given the statistics made available by international institutions, it is probably an understatement to say that by all accounts the Panamanian system of education is not performing well. Out of 139 countries that were surveyed, Panama ranked in 129th position for primary education and 128th position for higher education. There is other and perhaps more reliable evidence of the poor performance of the Panamanian education system. In 2012, the Ministry of Education calculated that 21,108 primary school students failed and 3952 abandoned or dropped out; in secondary schools and upper-secondary schools, 25,695 failed and 8,340 dropped out of their studies (MEDUCA 2013: 14–16, 27–9). Similarly, UNICEF maintains that over 60 per cent are enrolled in secondary schools but that the dropout rate is almost 20 per cent. According to official statistics, the overall dropout rate has risen sharply to 13 per cent in 2011. If Panama conforms to the general pattern found in other Latin American countries, it is possible that irrelevance of the educational offer is responsible for the high dropout rate. There is also a gender gap in the lower-secondary education survival rate with 73 per cent boys surviving to end compared to 82 per cent females. This is well below the regional average. Vocational education, in particular, is deficient and not tailored to the productive possibilities of the country. However, in primary education, Panama performs better than the regional average. There is no evident explanation for these numbers. Nonetheless, it is worthy to take into account the perception that education is not necessary for obtaining a job, the obstacle that poverty makes it difficult to attend school every day, and even the possibility that some professors understand that failing students makes them seem demanding and respectable. In 2009, Panamanian students, at the age of fifteen from public and private schools, sat for the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) examination organized by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The organization claims that the test measures competence. Among all the countries that participated, Panama ranked sixty-first

252

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

out of sixty-four contestants. In the reading category also, Panamanian students were sixty-first; in mathematics, they ranked sixty-third; and, in science, sixtyfirst (OECD 2010: 8–11). Since 2009, Panama has not participated in the PISA examinations. However, the current government made Panamanian students sit the test again in 2016. When we have the results it should be possible to make a longitudinal analysis and see if the policies implemented have borne fruit. Similarly, the United Nations Education, Science and Culture Organization (UNESCO) evaluated the abilities of Latin American primary school students in 2005 and 2006 through the SERCE exam. The assessment analyses the mathematical and reading skills of third and sixth graders. It also evaluated their proficiency in natural sciences. The students’ results were used to rank the countries’ performance in four different levels or categories. Concerning the levels of sixth grade reading, UNESCO established that Level IV included students who could ‘[i]ntegrate, rank and generalise information distributed across the text … establish equivalences among more than two codes (verbal, numerical and graphic) … [r]einstate implicit information associated with the entire text … [r]ecognise the possible meanings of technical terms or figurative language … [d]istinguish various tenses and nuances (certainty, doubt) used in a text’ (UNESCO 2008: 38–9). In Panama, 9.55 per cent of the students reached Level IV. This means that 90.45 per cent of Panamanian sixth grade students barely understand what they read. In mathematics, the results are not good either. According to UNESCO’s test, Level IV includes students who are able to ‘find averages and do calculations using the four basic operations in the field of natural numbers’. They should also be able to ‘identify parallelisms and perpendiculars in a real situation and the graphic images of percentages’. Furthermore, to reach Level IV, they should be able to ‘solve problems involving properties of angles, triangles and quadrilaterals as part of different shapes, or involving operations with two decimal number’. UNESCO indicates that Level IV requires ‘students [to] solve problems involving fractions … [and] make generalisations in order to continue a complex graphic sequence pattern’ (UNESCO, 2008: 33–4). Here, only 2.33 per cent of examined Panamanian sixth graders reached this level. Again, this means that, by 2005 and 2006, a total of 97.67 per cent Panamanian sixth graders had major difficulties solving basic mathematic problems. Finally, the students were tested in the area of natural sciences. To achieve a Level IV score, students had to ‘use and transfer scientific knowledge, which requires a high degree of formalisation and abstraction, to diverse types of situations … [and be] are capable of identifying the scientific knowledge involved

Panama: An Overview

253

in the problem at hand’. According to the document, ‘these problems are more formally stated and may relate to aspects, dimensions or analyses that may be detached from the immediate setting’. Only 0.77 per cent of the Panamanian sixth graders who participated were able to reach these standards (UNESCO 2008: 42–3). Hence, 99.23 per cent of Panamanian sixth graders were unable to demonstrate having more than basic knowledge about natural sciences.

III.VI. Diagnosis and governmental solutions: One possible factor for the failure of the Panamanian education system is that successive governments have invested only a relatively low percentage of the GNP in the area. A factor that must be explored is that, as the OECD has found in many Latin American countries, the resources are poorly allocated and used and institutions are badly coordinated. In 2001, the government invested 4 per cent of its GDP (US$444,675,000,000.00); in 2008, it dedicated 3 per cent of its GDP (US$715,349,000,000.00); and, in 2010, the investment was 2.5 per cent of the GDP (US$797,006,000,000.00) (FUDESPA 2010: 5). Furthermore, planners have been caught unaware by the enormous expansion of the cohort of the population of school age. There is no real system of accountability, as stakeholders are not sufficiently involved in the system and there is no real overall and coherent plan. Another possible factor is that, according to one study, in 2010, only 88.3 per cent of pre-middle and middle school teachers were qualified, while 90.6 per cent primary school teachers were qualified (FUDESPA 2010: 52–7). In light of these figures and a growing skills shortage in recent years, the government has sought to bolster quality of education through curriculum reform emphasizing vocational training. Two national bodies were set up to attempt to remedy the situation. The Equipo Nacional de Innovación y Actualización Curricular (National Team for Curricular Updating and Innovation) was established to promote meaningful curriculum reform and the Equipo Nacional de Capacitación Docente (National Team for Teacher Capacitation) was organized to reconstitute teachers’ training. However, it is unclear how innovative the curricula are designed, how many teachers receive capacitation, if the quality of the capacitation is good and, more importantly, if the teachers actually put these methods in practice in the classrooms. Aware of the failure to provide relevant training for the poor, in 2012, a universal grant, the ‘Beca Universal’ (Universal Scholarship), was established for both public and private primary schools as a means to make education more attractive. Similarly, the Secretaría Nacional de Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación

254

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

(SENACYT), or National Secretariat for Science, Technology and Innovation, grants scholarships to supposed leading professionals and professors to study abroad in many fields, including that of education. Also, it has designed a programme, PISTA (meaning ‘Trace’ or ‘Hints’ in English), to detect preuniversity students with ‘talent’ in the field of science (SENACYT 2013: 52). The Instituto para el Fomento y Aprovechamiento de Recursos Humanos (IFARHU), or Institute for the Development and Usage of Human Resources, grants scholarships to some of the best-performing students. It also grants scholarships for students in hardship. In 2009, IFARHU granted a total of 42,168 scholarships (29,063 for primary students; 9,827 for secondary and uppersecondary students; 2,863 for university students; and 415 for studies abroad). Nevertheless, in 2013, it granted 565,171 scholarships (323,197 for primary students; 229,044 for secondary students; 12,582 for university students; and 348 for studies abroad) (Contraloría 2014: 257). The increase reveals an effort to make the education system more inclusive and to increase the access of education. It is too early to see what would be the effects of this project.

Part IV The Higher education system First, it is important to say that regarding universities, a key player in the system is the Universidad de Panamá, founded in 1935. According to the Constitution of 1972, the Universidad de Panamá is an autonomous entity (Gobierno de Panamá 1972: 35). In theory, this prevents the politicization of the Universidad de Panamá, as it is independent of the government, and, therefore, of the political party in power. It plays a hegemonic role in the determination of the system and practice of education. The Constitution of 1972 also gave it the power to review and approve the curricula and programmes of other universities (Gobierno de Panamá 1972: 34).

V.I. Demographics of the higher education system: In 2014, there were 138,894 students enrolled in higher education institutions. Out of these, 51,829 went to the Universidad de Panamá; 19,580 studied at the Universidad Tecnológica de Panamá; 8,795 attended the Universidad Especializada de las Amerícas (UDELAS); 10,749 studied at the Universidad Autónoma de Chiriquí (UNACHI); 1,062 were students of the Universidad Marítima Internacional de Panamá (UMIP); and, interestingly, 46,879 were students of ‘other universities’, a concept that most probably refers to private

Panama: An Overview

255

universities (Contraloría 2014: 254). In 2014, the University of Panama had 4,221 professors (Universidad de Panamá 2016b).

IV.II. Characteristics of higher education faculty: Hiring and training: Candidates to academic positions at the Universidad de Panamá have to turn in legalized copies of their transcripts and diplomas to the Office of Evaluation of the Secretaría General of the Universidad de Panamá (General Secretariat of the Universidad de Panamá). After a lengthy bureaucratic process, the documents are sent to the faculty and department in which the candidate wishes to work. An evaluating commission of the faculty emits a resolution deciding if the degrees that the candidate has are equivalent to those offered by the Universidad de Panamá. If so, the candidate is awarded a number of points depending on the different levels of education acquired. In this way, the candidate officially enters the ‘Banco de Datos,’ or data bank of the Universidad de Panamá (Universidad de Panamá 2007: 1). The candidate may also present evidence of ‘ejecutorias’ to obtain some extra points (Universidad de Panamá 2012: 14–15). An ‘ejecutoria’ is ‘any public activity or action that demonstrates the performer’s academic quality’ (Universidad de Panamá 2011: 3). Nevertheless, the list of activities is very broad. Some minor actions are worth the same amount of points than more difficult tasks. For instance, a publication in a newspaper attending a conference or designing new teaching material counts just as much as a publication in an academic and peer-reviewed journal (Universidad de Panamá 2011: 13). Each year, there are several calls for concursos or ‘contests’ (Universidad de Panamá 2011: 4). These are competitions for better salaries or tenure-track positions. The person with more points wins the contest (Universidad de Panamá 2008: 147–50). The Universidad de Panamá now offers postgraduate and master degrees in teaching in higher education, which is mandatory to attain an academic position. Its postgraduate degree programme includes the following courses: ‘The Reality of Higher Education’, ‘Research Methodology I’, ‘Theories of Learning’, ‘Curricular Design for Higher Education’, ‘Educational Technology and Communications’, ‘Seminar on Ends, Ethics and Value Formation’, ‘Evaluation of Learning in Higher Education’, ‘The Theory and Practice of Applied Didactics’ and ‘University Education’ (Facultad de Ciencias de la Educación 2010a). The master degree programme contains the same courses, but adds courses in ‘Foundations and Tendencies in Higher Education’, ‘Research Methodology II’ and ‘Higher Education Management’. It also includes seminars on statistics and

256

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

on ‘Cultural Artistic Expressions’. In order to graduate, the students also have to do an internship called ‘Pedagogic Professional Practice’ (Facultad de Ciencias de la Educación 2010d). They could be deemed as in-service and out-service teacher training courses, because professors from different universities as well as who are not professors yet could take the course. This could signify an important improvement in the quality of education in Panama, as, in theory, lecturers would learn new teaching techniques. It also means that future university teachers would have up-to-date teaching skills. In short, they could be better at imparting knowledge in their fields. Nonetheless, it all depends in the quality of the course. The statistics show that, in 2014, there were 1,376 students enrolled in all the programmes of the Faculty of Education (Universidad de Panamá 2016a:  2). Also, according to the University of Panama, 337 persons graduated from all the master programmes of the Faculty of Science of Education between 2007 and 2014. In 2014, the number of graduates was 93; while in 2013, it was 49. The numbers of 2014 almost doubled or tripled the number of each individual year between 2007 and 2012 (Universidad de Panamá 2016: 40). This shows the influence of the new governmental policy of forcing professors to attain degrees in higher education teaching. However, it was not possible to find information about how many of 4,221 professors of the University of Panama have taken or are taking the courses. Moreover, it is not possible to know if professors from other universities are following the design of the government and taking these degrees at the University of Panama. Nevertheless, there is no document similar to a bulletin or syllabi for this postgraduate programme, so we cannot make any affirmation about its quality. It remains to be explored how students are admitted into the programme, what are the requirements to graduate, how the courses are taught and assessed, who teaches these courses or what material they use to conduct the teaching. So far, however, there is no indication that the education at the University of Panama has improved because of this programme.

IV.III. Higher education institution performances Universities in Panama do not perform much better than the country’s preuniversity educational institutions. In 2014, according to Q/S ranking, for instance, the Universidad Tecnológica de Panamá and the Universidad de Panamá are the best local universities, but they were ranked, respectively, 105th and 116th in Latin America (Q/S, 2014). The next year, the Universidad Técnológica went up to 92nd position, but the University of Panama went down

Panama: An Overview

257

to position 123 (Q/S, 2015). The improvement of the Universidad Tecnológica might be the result of the injection of professors with doctoral degrees. Many of these are former grantees of the scholarships given by the government. However, the decline of the University of Panama has no clear explanation. These rankings cannot be considered exact, but the fact that the two most important universities of Panama consistently rank in very low positions suggests that they are not preparing enough excellent professionals or researchers. One question that comes to mind is if the university is not overproducing diplomas, especially after knowing that most university graduates studied there. In certain ways, overproduction is related to access to the university, and, even though the University of Panama does make prospective students take an admission exam, it was not possible to find information about how many students pass, what is assessed and, more importantly, what is the level of difficulty of the test. Probably, one of the most relevant problems of the quality of education at the Universidad de Panamá is its faculty hiring system. A person with a bachelor’s degree and many ‘ejecutorias’ could obtain a better position than a person with a doctoral degree and postdoctoral training. The Universidad de Panamá’s hiring system also gives an advantage to its own graduates and, in a lesser degree, to graduates from other nationally accredited Panamanian universities. Candidates with degrees conferred by Panamanian universities do not have to take courses to make their degrees equivalent. In contrast, candidates who graduate from foreign universities with strong and prestigious programmes abroad do not receive this expedite process. If the evaluating commission decides that the degree is not equivalent, the candidate receives a letter indicating the courses needed to be taken to make the degree equal to one of the Universidad de Panamá. Only some Universidad de Panamá graduates with foreign postgraduate degrees have a better chance to work there. In addition, the data bank points attributed to a candidate do not depend on the strengths of the education received, but on the mere possession of a diploma. All the undergraduate, master’s and doctorate degrees from any university in the world are worth the same. All undergraduate degrees are worth twenty points, master’s degrees are worth forty points and doctorate degrees are worth sixty points (Universidad de Panamá 2007: 180–3) regardless of the rank of the university in Panama or the rest of the World. This academic protectionism restrains against those who studied abroad, impedes the incorporation of new well-prepared scholars who studied abroad and limits the internationalization of education and the introduction of new ideas. Another weakness of the Panamanian education system comes from the privilege of the Universidad de Panamá to regulate and approve programmes

258

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

and curricula of other universities. It could reject other university’s plans to modify its curricula, its programmes or create a new course. The problem is not only that it protects the Universidad de Panamá from competition, but also that it limits curricular and academic innovation.

Conclusion Quality is a concept that eludes us. Perhaps, just like modernity, it seems achievable, but it seems that reaching it is always difficult. In a counterintuitive way, this chapter has shown how numeric measurements, although useful, do not completely serve to determine the current situation and plan the future improvement of the quality of education. Essentially, the chapter establishes that one of the reasons why Panamanian education has failed to live up to its own expectations is the idealization of technocratic evaluation and planning. That is, Panama has failed in education due to its long-standing search for a technocratic modernity. The question that it raises is that if the new technocratic projects will bring about a ‘historical transformation’. The other reasons for the failure of education mentioned were the devaluation of education, the massive production of diplomas and academic protectionism. After briefly presenting some basic information about Panama, we proceeded to point out details and statistics regarding the Panamanian educational system in all its basic levels: primary, secondary, upper-secondary and higher education. Next, the article showed some of the assessments that showed how Panamanian students in primary schools failed. Since the article intended to focus on higher education, though, it analysed how the failure of those students in 2005–6 and 2009 might be affecting higher education now, by illustrating how students of the same age group performed in a history of Panama course in 2015. Finally, the chapter pointed out some of the flaws of the Universidad de Panamá, including its protectionist hiring system, the restraining of students and of those who study abroad, its endogamy and the limit it poses to other universities.

Notes 1. I would like to thank Dr Jaime Estrella for allowing me to use some of the documents that he had compiled previously. I also thank Dr Etilvia Arjona from the Centro de Estudios de la Educación de la Universidad Santa María la Antigua

Panama: An Overview

259

(CEDUSMA) for guiding me and advising me about the sources I could use for this work. I would like to express my gratitude to some officers of Curricula Division of the Ministry of Education and to Antonia de la Cruz from SENACYT for providing me with useful documents. To Dr Colin Brock and Dr Charles Posner, I must thank you for your patience, your advices and insights, for your help, and, more importantly, for this opportunity. Finally, I would like to show my gratitude to Florida State University – Panama and Quality Leadership University for supporting me with this chapter. 2. Available online: http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/development/latin-americaneconomic-outlook-2015_leo-2015-en

Bibliography Autoridad del Canal de Panamá. Canal de Panamá. Informe Anual 2013 (Panamá: Autoridad del Canal de Panamá, 2013). Bernal, Juan Bosco. ‘La Educación en Panamá: antecedentes, tendencias y perspectivas’. Panamá: Cien Años de República (Panamá: Comisión Universitaria del Centenario de la República, 2004). Consejo Nacional de Evaluación y Acreditación Universitaria de Panamá (CONEAUPA). Matriz de Evaluación y Acreditación Institucional Universitaria de Panamá. Anexo 2. (Panamá: Universidad Tecnológica de Panamá, 2012). Available online: http://www.utp.ac.pa/documentos/2013/pdf/ MatrizdeevaluacionacreditacionCONEAUPAMODIFICADA.pdf (accessed 30 January 2017). Consejo Nacional de Evaluación y Acreditación Universitaria de Panamá (CONEAUPA). Modelo de Evaluación y Acreditación Institucional Universitaria de Panamá Documento Nº1: Fundamentos del Modelo de Evaluación y Acreditación Institucional Universitaria de Panamá (Panamá, Impresora Educativa MEDUCA, 2010). Consejo Nacional de Evaluación y Acreditación Universitaria de Panamá (CONEAUPA). Modelo de Evaluación y Acreditación Institucional Universitaria de Panamá. Documento N° 2. Proceso de Autoevaluación Institucional Universitaria de Panamá (Panamá: Impresora Educativa MEDUCA, 2010). Contraloría General de la República de Panamá. Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Censo. Panamá en Cifras: 2009–2013 (Panamá: Contraloría General de la República de Panamá, 2014). Di Tella, Torcuato. Latin American Politics. A Theoretical Approach (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2001). Escuela Normal de Santiago Juán Demóstenes Arosemena. ‘Oferta Académica 2016 Bachiller Pedagógico y Bilingüe’ (Panamá: Escuela Normal de Santiago, 2016). Available online: http://enjda-santiago.webnode.es/news/bachiller- (accessed 30 January 2017).

260

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

Facultad de Ciencias de la Educación. Universidad de Panamá. ‘Licenciatura en Educación Primaria’ (Panamá: Universidad de Panamá, 2010). Available online: http://www.up.ac. pa/portalup/FacEducacion.aspx?submenu=191 (accessed 30 January 2017). Facultad de Ciencias de la Educación. Universidad de Panamá. ‘Postgrado en Docencia Superior’ (Panamá: Universidad de Panamá, 2010a). Available online: http://www. up.ac.pa/ftp/2010/f_educacion/postgrados/Post_Docen_Super.pdf (accessed 30 January 2017). Facultad de Ciencias de la Educación. Universidad de Panamá. ‘Profesorado en Educación’ (Panamá: Universidad de Panamá, 2010b). Available online: http:// www.up.ac.pa/ftp/2010/f_educacion/documentos/Profesorado_en_Educacion.pdf (accessed 30 January 2017). Facultad de Ciencias de la Educación. Universidad de Panamá. ‘Profesorado en Educación Diversificada a Nivel de Educación de Pre-Media y Media’ (Panamá: Universidad de Panamá, 2010c). Available online: http://www.up.ac.pa/ftp/2010/f_ educacion/documentos/Profe_%20Doc_%20Media_%20Diversificada.pdf (accessed 30 January 2017). Facultad de Ciencias de la Educación. Universidad de Panamá. ‘Programa de Maestría en Docencia Superior’ (Panamá: Universidad de Panamá, 2010d). Available online: http://www.up.ac.pa/ftp/2010/f_educacion/postgrados/Maes_Doc_Sup.pdf (accessed 30 January 2017). Figueroa Navarro, Alfredo. Dominio y Sociedad en el Panamá Colombiano (1821–1903) (Panamá: Impresora Panamá, S.A, 1978). Fundación para el Desarrollo Económico y Social de Panamá (FUDESPA). La educación en Panamá: 5 metas para mejorar (Panamá: FUDESPA, 2010). Gobierno de la República de Panamá. ‘Ley 47 Orgánica de Educación de 1946’. Modificada y adicionada por la Ley 34 de 6 de julio de 1995, Ley 50 de noviembre de 2002 y por la Ley 60 de 7 de Agosto de 2003 (Panamá: Ledinsa – Librería y Editorial Interamericana, S.A., 2008). Gobierno de la República de Panamá. Constitución Política de la República de Panamá de 1972. Available online: http://pdba.georgetown.edu/Constitutions/Panama/ vigente.pdf (accessed 30 January 2017). Miller, Nicola. Reinventing Modernity in Latin America. Intellectuals Imagine the Future, 1900–1930 (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2008). Ministerio de Educación de la República de Panamá (MEDUCA). ‘Decreto Ejecutivo 920 del 30 de octubre del 2012’. Gaceta Oficial Digital. Año CVIII N° 25154 (Panamá: Gobierno de Panamá, 2012). Ministerio de Educación de la República de Panamá (MEDUCA). Departamento de Estadística. Dirección Nacional de Planeamiento Educativo. Boletín No 2 Estadísticas Educativas, Matrícula, estimaciones y proyección en el sistema educativo panameño: Total por Región Educativa, por nivel y comarca indígena. Años 2004–2012 Matrícula Real, 2013 y 2014 matrícula pronosticada (Panamá: Ministerio de Educación, 2013). Available online: http://www.meduca.gob.pa/sites/default/files/pdf/estadistica/ Boletin_estadistico_2004-2014.pdf (accessed 30 January 2017).

Panama: An Overview

261

Ministerio de Educación de la República de Panamá (MEDUCA). (2015?). Planes de Estudio. Panamá: DVD archive material. Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). ‘PISA 2009 Results: Executive Summary’ (OECD, 2010). Available online: https://www.oecd.org/ pisa/pisaproducts/46619703.pdf (accessed 30 January 2017). Q/S University Ranking: Latin America 2014. Available online: http://www. topuniversities.com/university-rankings/latin-american-university-rankings/2014 (accessed 30 January 2017). Q/S University Ranking: Latin America 2015. Available online: http://www. topuniversities.com/university-rankings/latin-american-university-rankings/2015 (accessed 30 January 2017). Secretaría Nacional de Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación. Gobierno Nacional. República de Panamá. ‘Memoria Anual 2013’ (Panamá: SENACYT, 2013). Secretaría Nacional de Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación. Gobierno Nacional. República de Panamá. (2014) ‘Memoria Anual 2014’ (Panamá: SENACYT, 2014). Szok, Peter A. ‘La Última Gaviota’ Liberalism and Nostalgia in Early Twentieth-Century Panamá, Series: Contributions in Latin American Studies, Number 21 (Westport, CT and London: Greenwood Press, 2001). United Nations Education, and Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and Laboratorio Latinoamericano de Evaluación de Calidad de la Educación (LLECE). Executive Summary. Second Regional and Comparative and Explanatory Study (SERCE). Student Achievment in Latin America and the Caribbean (Santiago, Chile: UNESCO and LLECE, 2008). Universidad de Panamá. ‘Cuadro 2. Graduados de Postgrado en la Universidad de Panamá, según sede, curso, programa y unidad académica: años 1990–2013’ (Panamá: Universidad de Panamá, 2016). Available online: http://www.up.ac.pa/ ftp/2010/d_estadistica/Comparativos90-15/cuadro-02.pdf Universidad de Panamá. ‘Cuadro 14. Matrícula en la Facultad de Ciencias de la Educación según escuela y carrera: primer semestre: Años Académicos 1990 a 2014’ (Panamá: Universidad de Panamá, 2016a). Available online: http://www.up.ac.pa/ ftp/2010/d_estadistica/Comparativos90-15/cuadro-14.pdf Universidad de Panamá. ‘Cuadro 37. Personal Docente de la Universidad de Panamá., según sede, unidad académica y/o de investigación: Años 1990–2014’ (Panamá: Universidad de Panamá, 2016b). Available online: http://www.up.ac.pa/ftp/2010/d_ estadistica/Comparativos90-15/cuadro-37.pdf Universidad de Panamá. Vicerrectoría Académica. Dirección Curricular y Evaluación de Títulos y Otros Estudios. Reglamento para la Evaluación de Títulos y Otros Estudios aprobado en reunión de Consejo Académico N°18-07 Celebrado el día 22 de marzo de 2007 (Panamá: Universidad de Panamá, 2007). Available online: http://www.up.ac.pa/ftp/2010/principal/transparencia/docencia/ReglamentoEvaluaci%C3%B3n-T%C3%ADtulos%20-Final.pdf Universidad de Panamá. Vicerrectoría Académica. Coordinación General de Dirección de Concursos Formales (2011). Manual de Procedimientos para la

262

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

Evaluación de Ejecutorías (Panamá: Universidad de Panamá, 2011). Available online: http://www.up.ac.pa/ftp/2010/v_academica/documentos/descargables/ ManuaEjecutoriAprobadoCA10-11-02-03-2011.pdf Universidad de Panamá. Vicerrectoría Académica. Coordinación General de Dirección de Concursos Formales. Manual de Procedimientos para las Comisiones de Concursos Formales (Panamá: Universidad de Panamá, 2012). Available online: http://www.up.ac.pa/ftp/2010/v_academica/documentos/descargables/ CF-ManualProcedimientoComisionesCFormales.pdf Universidad de Panamá. Estatuto de la Universidad de Panamá (Panamá: Universidad de Panamá, 2008). Available online: http://www.up.ac.pa/ftp/2010/principal/ transparencia/EstatutoAprobado.pdf World Bank. ‘Panama Country Overview’: http://www.worldbank.org/en/country/ panama/overview

Part Three

The Latin Caribbean

14

Cuba: The Impact of the Cuban Revolution Rosi Smith

The 1990s were dark times for Cuba. The fall of socialism in Europe meant more than political isolation in the face of a global consensus that declared bipolar history to be at an end. It meant hunger, atrophy and want. Losing its trading partner and economic support, the Cuban economy collapsed. Gross domestic product (GDP) fell by 35 per cent (Figueroa 1995: 120) and foreign trade by 85 per cent (Wilkinson 2011), and the US government seized the perceived opportunity to hasten the end of Fidel Castro’s leadership by tightening the blockade (Bas 2006: 65). The years that became known as the ‘Special Period’ were characterized by a darkness not only figurative but literal, with power cuts leaving electricity available only a couple of hours each day (Brenner et al. 2008: 277). After relative prosperity and economic equality, Cubans faced a crisis affecting every aspect of daily life: transport ground to a standstill as petrol ran out; fertilizers were unavailable; medical supplies ran perilously low; citizens spent on average fifteen hours a week queuing for basics (Cole 2002: 50); and thousands lost their sight from malnutrition (World Health Organization 2006). It is noteworthy, then, that education spending increased during the 1990s, as a proportion of an admittedly diminishing GDP (Gasperini 2000: 28). Fidel Castro repeatedly emphasized that not one school was closed (even in rural areas where the revolution’s guarantee of education for all meant some schools had only a handful of students (Blum 2014: 423)). As special period hardships attenuated, moreover, and the economy struggled towards recovery, education was an immediate priority. In the early 2000s, class sizes were reduced to twenty in primary and fifteen in secondary (Carnoy et al. 2007: 32), massive investment was put into accelerated teacher training and ‘universalization’ saw universities opened up to unprecedented numbers,

266

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

most studying part-time in their own communities (Colectivo de Autores 2006). Cuba’s commitment to education as an inalienable social good and a force for global development was underlined by the formation in 2005 of the Latin American School for Medicine. This institution has trained, for free, more than 23,000 doctors from across the world, on condition that they return to practise medicine in disadvantaged communities in their own nations (MEDICC website). Placing education ahead of arguably more pressing material concerns may seem surprising, even unwise, to external observers, but is consistent with policy throughout the revolutionary period. Along with free universal healthcare, education has been a lauded success of the revolution. While high-quality analyses published in the early years (see, for example, Fagen (1969) and Gillette (1972)) have been scant in subsequent decades, the basic facts are clear. Its achievements – primary and basic secondary enrolments of more than 99 per cent (Anuario Estadístico de Cuba 2004); 99.8 per cent literacy (world.bymap. org); language and maths scores outstripping most rich nations (Gasperini 2000: 23; Carnoy et al. 2007: 67); the highest teacher to student ratio in the world (Figueroa 1997: 122) and university participation of 69.1 per cent of eighteento twenty-four-year-olds in 2005–6 (Barragán Duarte 2015) – are well known and recognized even by many of Cuba’s ideological opponents, such as former World Bank president, James Wolfensohn (Wylie 2010: 32). It is equally clear that education is used to promote revolutionary ideology and develop civic and personal values compatible with that ideology, a purpose unapologetically acknowledged by the Ministry of Education. So we know (broadly) what the revolution has meant for education. Less often considered in the polarized debate between those who see the Cuban education system as a paragon of egalitarian excellence and those who regard it as a sinister force for indoctrination is what education has meant for the revolution. Simplistically, maintaining generous support for education is a political necessity. The ‘social gains’ achieved by the revolution are a powerful source of legitimacy for the system, compensating for material shortages and limitations on liberties. Despite dissenting voices contending that ‘basic freedoms outweigh benefits like free university education’ (Font 2008: 46), almost 60 per cent of young people say education is the principal benefit they derive from the state (Domínguez García and Castilla García 2011: 156). This trade-off reflects a conception of human rights and the state’s role directly opposed to that of its ideological antagonist, the United States; it holds that ‘second generation’ rights

Cuba: The Impact of the Cuban Revolution

267

(education, health, employment, housing) are the basis of a just society, without which ‘first generation’ rights (freedom of speech, voting rights, religious freedom) are meaningless. Education’s relationship to the revolution is, however, far more nuanced than simple pragmatism. Rather than something the revolution has done for the people, the interaction between education and revolution is one of symbiotic development, in which the Cuban people are vital actors. As the revolution has (re)formed education, educational outlooks and practices have formed the Revolution. Debates over education have long defined the way in which Cuba thinks of itself as a nation. Education under Spanish rule was notable by its absence. In 1894, ‘90 per cent of the population still received no formal education’ (Gillette 1972: 4). Children of the white wealthy classes were generally educated abroad, initially in Spain and then, as resistance to colonial rule grew, in the more ‘progressive’ United States (Pérez Jr 1999: 35). Schools were run by the Catholic Church, and were, therefore, pro-Spanish and politically conservative (Ginsberg et al. 2010: 139). Though limited in availability, education was socially and politically significant. José Martí, the writer, orator and independentista leader whose bust appears outside every school in Cuba is known in as ‘el maestro’ (the teacher) because he viewed culture and education as essential components in the battle for liberty. His followers in the Cuban Revolutionary Party and rebel army were far more likely than those fighting for the Spanish to be poor or black, and, therefore, far less likely to have received any education. This difference was exploited after the war when, attempting to bring about the election of a constitutional committee and government favourable to US interests, suffrage was limited to literate males with over $250 in property – 5 per cent of the adult Cuban population (Arnedo-Gómez 2006: 21). During the US occupation (1898–1902), following its intervention in Cuba’s independence war, educational access increased dramatically. The paltry 312 schoolrooms in use in 1899 rose to 3,800 by 1902 (Fitzgibbon 1964: 46); for the first time, ordinary Cubans had the possibility of becoming educated. This significant investment by the United States was not, however, purely altruistic; it was vital for attempts to Americanize Cuban society – to bring about a hegemony of US values aimed at ensuring that, after military withdrawal, Cubans would seek annexation or, at least, accept continuing economic penetration and political ‘advice’ (Schoultz 2009: 23). New schools were modelled on those in the

268

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

United States, from buildings to curricula (textbooks often direct translations of US equivalents) (Johnston 1995: 2); thousands received teacher training in the United States; and the civics programme was lifted from New York’s programme to assimilate new migrants into ‘American’ values and institutions (Pérez Jr 1999: 160). Cubans rejected annexation, but the newly independent nation was stymied by economic dependency on the United States and the restricted sovereignty offered by the Platt Amendment, which retained the United States’ right to intervene militarily, at will, ‘for the preservation of Cuban independence … life, property, and individual liberty’ (Brenner et al. 1989: 30). The period between 1902 and 1959, often referred to in Cuba as the ‘neo-colony’ because of the continuing extent of US influence, was one of dispute and disorientation regarding the political and civic content of education. There were significant debates between educators (largely in public schools) seeking to inculcate sentiments of patriotism and independence and others (largely in private schools) embracing civic and cultural practices implemented by a United States they viewed as civilized and progressive (Johnston 1995: 3–4). Such ideological questions, however, became academic for many, as Cuban education fell into decline and disarray. Despite Cuba’s comparatively high level of economic development (Salazar Carrillo 1995: 215), proportionately fewer children were in education in 1953 than in 1923 (Jolly 1964: 168). Education spending, although insufficient, could have offered far higher levels of quality and inclusion than those that were present (Jolly 1964: 173). The Ministry of Education, however, was notoriously corrupt; graft was endemic and teachers received a wage for life, regardless of whether they actually taught (Jolly 1964: 172), and many classrooms remained empty, especially in rural areas (Lutjens 1996: 74). Fidel Castro’s ‘History Will Absolve Me’ speech, delivered at his 1953 trial, following the abortive attempt to oust dictator Fulgencio Batista by storming the military barracks at Moncada, set out six fundamental problems in Cuban society that his 26 July Movement believed they could resolve, among them the parlous state of education, which he described as follows: Little rural school houses attended by a mere half of the school age children – barefooted, half naked and under-nourished – and frequently the teacher must buy necessary school materials from his own salary. (Castro Ruz 1989: 34)

The urban–rural divide in education reflected economic and social conditions in all aspects of Cuban life. Havana enjoyed a standard of living comparable

Cuba: The Impact of the Cuban Revolution

269

to far richer nations (Huberman and Sweezy 1989: 7); rural Cuba trailed in sanitation, housing and healthcare, a disparity that cemented racial inequality, as the (predominantly black) countryside played Cinderella to the (predominantly white) cities (Heuman 2014: 163; Matijevic 2008). Lack of contact between different areas led to the marginalization of the concerns of the rural poor. Education was a case in point; middle-class young men and women attended university in high numbers, studying subjects often of little social value for most Cubans. Just 404 students at the University of Havana were studying agriculture or sugar production in 1953–4 (Lutjens 1996: 74). Medicine concentrated on disciplines such as ‘cosmetic and plastic surgery [and] weight reduction procedures’ (MacDonald 2009: 36). Many graduates were unwilling to work in rural areas, and healthcare for the rural poor was almost non-existent. In a country subject to tropical diseases, no courses were offered in immunology or infectious diseases (MacDonald 2009: 35). Fidel Castro’s government’s new attitude towards the countryside was anticipated by the rebels’ practices throughout the insurgency. The guerrilla fighters of the 1956–9 rebellion were unlikely champions of the campesino (countryperson); they were predominantly white, middle class and university educated – doctors and lawyers – part of the privileged elite. Their political beliefs were heterogeneous and undeveloped and the anticipated revolution was basically nationalist (Abendroth 2009: 12), seeking independence and an end to the corruption and gangsterism afflicting Cuban politics. What educated and radicalized these young men and women was their experience of educating and radicalizing others, and that was a singularly rural process. The few who survived the government attack that immediately followed the rebels’ landing in Cuba found themselves in an unfamiliar and hostile environment. They frequently relied on rural Cubans for food, shelter and the new recruits they gradually garnered during the Sierra Maestra campaign. Most importantly, they relied on them not to report their whereabouts to government forces. This dependency necessitated gaining local people’s trust, accomplished partly by working together with campesinos in the fields, providing basic education and healthcare, and even instigating rudimentary systems of justice in remote areas. As well as ensuring their survival, this strategy formed their political outlooks. It also had a prefigurative function, offering the rebels experience of administration and convincing a rural population, sceptical after decades of governments that promised much and delivered little, that these inexperienced youths, mostly in their twenties and early thirties, had what it takes to lead a nation.

270

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

On taking power in 1959, the rebels used mass mobilization to fulfil three distinct functions. First, newly formed mass organizations undertook essential roles such as civil defence, political education and agricultural work that would otherwise have proved problematic for the new government, struggling to rebuild broken institutions, especially given the exodus of much of the professional and administrative classes; secondly, it encouraged ordinary Cubans to feel ownership of the Revolution; and, finally, it enabled the implementation of some of the most ambitious social programmes ever attempted, most famously the Literacy Campaign. At the UN in 1960, Fidel Castro made a dramatic commitment – to wipe out illiteracy (standing at that point at 23 per cent of the population (Veltmeyer and Rushton 2011: 157)) in just one year, declaring 1961 the ‘Year of Education’. Perhaps even more remarkable than the campaign’s success (Cuba reached the UNESCO standard for ‘full literacy’ within that twelve-month period (MacDonald 2009: 58)) was how that success was achieved. Huge numbers were mobilized, urban literates taught neighbours and schools temporarily closed to allow teachers and their pupils to volunteer. Almost half the 271,000 volunteers (Fagen 1969: 47) were city children who went into the countryside and lived with local families they were teaching, utilizing teaching methods that encouraged conversation and engagement in the world view of the student (Blum 2011: 49). The campaign educated the young volunteers, previously shielded from rural poverty and inequality, along with their pupils. One former literacy worker explained: ‘Those months, for me, were like stories I have heard about conversions to a new religion. … I did not need to read of this in Marx, in Lenin, in Martí. I did not need to read of what I saw before my own eyes’ (MacDonald 2009: 54). Rejecting the financial logic of concentrating first on those most likely to be economically active, the campaign focused equally on all sectors of society, offering tuition regardless of age, class, gender or race, with the oldest recorded new literate a former slave of 106 (MacDonald 2009: 47). Given the unapologetically ideological content of the teaching materials used and the relatively low bar set for literacy (the ability to complete simple exercises in a primer and write a letter of thanks to Fidel Castro), one could characterize this egalitarianism as more about ensuring the broadest possible reach for the revolution’s message than any purely educational aim. This contention, however, is belied by the processes of seguimiento (follow-up) pursued throughout the 1960s. Schooling was made universal for school-age children and the government embarked upon a ‘battle’ first for the sixth and then the ninth grade, using

Cuba: The Impact of the Cuban Revolution

271

worker–student pathways to offer free part-time education to any adult wishing to continue studying (many of them new literates). Participation in education during the mid-1960s reached 2,186,500 (Lutjens 1996: 76), meaning that in 1967, 28 per cent of the population were receiving regular instruction, at least half of them at primary level (MacDonald 2009: 86). Even today, inclusiveness in education is pursued not merely beyond the economic requirements of the labour market, but with totalizing fervour. Cuba was early in implementing education for children with physical or learning disabilities, beginning such schooling in 1959 (MacDonald 2009: 210); it sends teachers to the homes of students whose illness or disability prevents them from leaving the house and runs rural schools even where only one or two children are enrolled. These decisions, along with changes to social policy, and the introduction of free nursery schooling (run for many years by Cuba’s women’s organization, the FMC) led to far greater inclusion in higher education and massively improved employment prospects for black Cubans and women. The motivation behind universal education is, however, not simply dedication to the abstract principle of promoting learning and culture; it is a commitment to forming citizens whose values, paradigms, even personalities, accord with the beliefs and practices of revolutionary cubanía, which, combining socialist principles with extant notions of Cubanness, can be seen as the Cuban ideology (Kapcia 2000). Ché Guevara called this citizen the ‘New Cuban Man’. To understand the importance of this construct, one must appreciate that, in orthodox Marxist terms, Cuba in 1959 did not fulfil the objective conditions (developed industrial capitalism) for revolution and transition to socialism. Guevara’s argument was that socialism could indeed take hold, given the appropriate subjective conditions – essentially the will and consciousness of its citizens. To this end, he advocated transforming Cuban society into ‘one huge school’ (Guevara 1968: 391) where education, in its broadest sense, would expand Cubas’ political, cultural, personal and moral constitutions, creating a people capable of making and sustaining the revolution. While the short-lived selective Schools of Revolutionary Instruction (EIR) developed political cadres using a curriculum based on Soviet texts and ideology, ordinary schools propagated in young people values and attitudes associated with a socialism that was thoroughly Cuban. Political education in Marxism–Leninism was (and still is) present in schools but was less emphasized than knowledge of and reverence for a Cuban history framed always and only as a linear narrative of struggle for sovereignty and against oppression (Smith 2015: 108).

272

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

In keeping with the importance of mobilization and participation in Cuba, schools develop both civic habits (through elected student representatives, monitors and the Pioneer youth organization) and collective behaviours. Collectivism is encouraged through ‘communist emulation’, whereby rewards are given only when all members of a class or group reach a particular target, meaning that in order to succeed confident students have to help and support those struggling (Blum 2011: 153). Cuban schools are integrated into their communities: parents’ organizations are strong and teachers regularly visit pupils at home; cultural expression is vital to school life, with frequent and high-quality musical, dance and theatrical performances (a commitment strengthened in recent years by the introduction of art instructors in thousands of schools, encouraging art appreciation and access to culture (Velázquez López 2005: 12)); local workplaces act as ‘godparents’ to nearby schools; and every school day begins with reading and discussion of current news stories (Lutjens 1996: 130). An essential element both of the New Cuban (Wo)Man and of Cuba’s attempt to attain the subjective conditions for revolution was the idea that ‘material incentives’ to work could be rendered less significant than the ‘moral incentives’ of recognition, love of work and the good of society. While workers were encouraged to study and volunteer in their own time, school children became student-workers, required to complete agricultural labour as part of their schooling. Well-equipped boarding schools, known as escuelas en el campo (schools in the countryside), where students spent half their day completing agricultural work and the others in class, were set up in rural areas in an attempt to foster love of work and values of cooperation associated with collective living (Fernández 2000: 91). Although testimony suggests that even recent students found the experience beneficial in forming values and building independent adult identities (Smith 2015: 174), these schools became increasingly unpopular throughout the 1990s and 2000s, as the special period led to declining living conditions. Raúl Castro announced in 2009 that all such boarding schools were to be closed (Blum 2014: 427). Also discontinued, but a characteristic element of Cuban schooling from 1966 to 2012, were the escuelas al campo (schools to the countryside) – stints of several weeks’ agricultural work in the countryside (Blum 2011: 56). These too were criticized by parents concerned about conditions and struggling to provide the extra food that children would take to supplement unappetizing rations. Reports of their efficacy are mixed. Damian J Fernández states that young people regard them as ‘a disorder, a joke, where the young do the least amount of work and

Cuba: The Impact of the Cuban Revolution

273

the most amount of partying possible’ (Fernández 2000: 91), whereas Denise Blum, who went with students on a contemporary escuela al campo, described that, despite many young people’s reluctance to going on the trip, the difficult circumstances were markedly effective in encouraging collective behaviours and solidarity (Blum 2011: 202). The political emphasis in Cuban schools is replicated in universities, where there is almost universal membership of the Federation of University Students (FEU), which organizes political and social events, represents students’ interests and influences the placement of students in work once their degrees are complete. Seventy-nine per cent of students in traditional universities are members of the Young Communists (Domínguez García, undated: 17), generally signalling a later transition to membership of the Cuban Communist Party (PCC). University curricula also place Cuban history and political education in the same prominent position seen in schools. Entrance exams require all applicants to pass history (Juventud Rebelde 2015), and the first year of all degrees includes a course on Cuban history. Access to university saw a ‘77-fold [increase] between 1958 and 1990’ (Eckstein 1997: 109), and around 3 per cent of the Cuban population enrolled in higher education in 1987–8 (Lutjens 1996: 101). This increase, however, was based on the social value of higher education at least as much as on the intrinsic rights of individuals to study. Jettisoning the pre-revolutionary emphasis on student choice, the post-1959 government allocated places based on the country’s need for graduates in various professions; by 1980, over 40 per cent of university students were studying pedagogy, 17 per cent technical sciences and just 5.5 per cent humanities (Lutjens 1996: 102). Today, places in socially useful but unpopular subjects, such as agriculture and education, are filled using a points-based system: potential students identify ten subjects and rank them by preference. Each subject (depending on popularity and number of places available) requires a different score, with very popular subjects (notably foreign languages, which open the door to jobs in tourism) requiring results in the high nineties. It has been argued that central control over not just university places but also what research is carried out, restricts the academic and political freedoms of Cuban universities, which had retained notable independence from government even under the corrupt and sometimes dictatorial regimes of the ‘neo-colonial’ period (Wickham Crowley 1992: 191). One result of this control, however, is that research is the property of the nation and can be freely used for programmes of social value. The recent notable success of Cuban scientists in the field of biomedical research is at least

274

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

partly attributable to Cuba’s alternative approach to intellectual property (ReidHenry 2010: 120). A similar decision, and one indicative of the value placed by the revolution on the cultural and educational development of all of its citizens, was seen in the early years, when copyright was ignored and cheap copies of international works of literature were reproduced and made available to ordinary Cubans (MacDonald 2009: 131). At no time since 1959 has education been limited to formal, institutional instruction. Mass organizations immediately took on a broad educational role in communities: musicians and artists are paid by the state; culture houses were set up in every community; and cultural events, such as cinema, theatrical and musical performances and sporting events, were made free or affordable. Cubans access varied culture in high numbers, with mainstream Cuban cinemas showing everything from Hollywood blockbusters to minor international art films and documentaries. The less quantifiable, but still more noticeable, result is a palpable sense of cultural and intellectual confidence among Cubans, including where levels of formal education are not high. Researching in Cuba continually highlights how even young people, who are frequently characterized by their elders as less culturally and socially engaged, are able to discuss with selfassurance a broad range of political, social and cultural issues (Smith 2015: 347). Fears over the cultural impact of the special period first raised at a conference of the Union of Cuban Writers and Artists (UNEAC) in 1998 led to a renewed emphasis on informal education and cultural development (Frederick 2009: 100). Recent projects have included the University for All programmes (offering free access to education through television programmes and supportive material), huge and well-attended book fairs that tour the country and the placing of an art instructor in every school and culture house. The power and potential of these non-formal educational organizations is demonstrated by the success of the National Centre for Sex Education (CENESEX), an outgrowth of the Cuban women’s movement that researches, educates and campaigns to facilitate social change, most notably revolutionizing Cuban society’s attitudes and policy in relation to LGBT communities (Kirk 2011). Education policy in Cuba in the 1960s matched the mood and priorities of the time, which stressed on mass participation and increasing educational access ahead of consistent high quality and organization. While retaining its high-priority status, education in Cuba has undergone a number of policy shifts and reversals in the years that have followed, reflecting wider developments in political emphasis. As the initial revolutionary fervour subsided and new systems became embedded, the political reality of Cuba’s economic reliance on the

Cuba: The Impact of the Cuban Revolution

275

Soviet Union led to institutionalization and a reduction in political iconoclasm. The zafra (sugar harvest) of 1970, when the population was mobilized in an attempt to achieve a record ten-million-tonne harvest, was widely regarded as an expensive, ill-advised experiment (Guerra 2012: 309) and as the ‘last hurrah’ of the intense participation of the early years. In education, institutionalization was encompassed in a policy of perfeccionamiento (improvement), and the basic structures introduced at this time still operate. There is a separate ministry for higher education, but in all other areas, including adult education and special education, structures, curricula and texts are set nationally by the Ministry of Education, with its Consejo de Dirección setting policy and strategic direction. The organization of provision based on central direction is then provided by provincial and municipal bodies scrutinized by local democratic structures. Another important force is parent-led bodies such as school councils and the FMC’s ‘Militant Mothers’, which provide practical and directional support to schools. Membership of this organization peaked at 1.7 million, and its role within schools has included everything from cleaning the dormitories of boarding school by the students and helping monitor attendance to bringing about the dismissal of head teachers they consider not performing as required (Lutjens 1996: 145). Perfeccionamiento built on almost universal access, developing curricula and focusing on teacher training until, by the end of the 1980s, 94 per cent of teachers held degrees in education (Gasperini 2000: 67). It also reflected a wider move towards pragmatism, recognizing that the weight previously placed upon academic, particularly university, education had exceeded economic reality and was failing to produce sufficient numbers of workers with vocational training for agriculture and industry. This produced a policy of ‘deschooling’, which reversed the previous 60:40 split in high school places between pre-university and technical schools and dramatically reduced the number of university places (Eckstein 1997: 115). While the economic arguments for this policy were significant, it was profoundly unpopular in Cuba, where high-level academic education was seen as a right and entrance into ‘professional’ fields highly prized. This conflict between the inalienable right to education and economic and vocational opportunities continues to be a substantial and largely unresolved problem for policymakers in Cuba. From the mid-1980s, there was a reaction against the institutionalization and perceived subservience to the Soviet Union of the 1970s and early 1980s, which was seen as leading to complacency among young Cubans brought up in a relatively stable and comfortable political and economic climate.

276

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

This reaction was formalized into a new policy direction by Fidel Castro in 1986; recognizing the ‘past errors and negative tendencies’ of this previous period, he announced the beginning of a phase of ‘rectification’: a return to the prioritization of moral incentives and mass participation. A central change to education policy was the decision to introduce discrete provision of civic education, and curricula and texts were planned that had at their core the promotion of ‘Cuban’ values of solidarity, internationalism and struggle. The new texts underlined the importance of revolutionary figures, such as José Martí and Ché Guevara, portrayed work, strict moral continence and social participation as inherently patriotic and revolutionary, and told the ‘story’ of the Revolution as a linear progression with unambiguously positive outcomes (Smith 2015: 127). By the time these texts were in place, however, Cuba had changed dramatically and irrevocably. The dissolution of the Soviet Union and the onset of the special period disoriented and traumatized a population accustomed to having their basic needs provided by the state through collective endeavour. Far from reaching the zenith of perfectly functioning socialism, young people now had to reconcile themselves to a standard of living far lower than that enjoyed by their parents’ generation. Inside school, they saw increased class sizes and scarce resources. Outside school, they saw malnutrition, material deterioration of housing and infrastructure, and rapid increases in inequality. This rise in economic inequality has been the most pernicious long-term effect of the special period. Cuban wages, although determined by profession (Yaffe 2008), have never been steeply differentiated during the revolutionary period, which, combined with state provision of free education and healthcare, subsidized housing and a ration card for basic foodstuffs, had meant inequality was minimal. The distorting dollar black market, however, which arose during the 1990s, necessitated the legalization of the dollar (afterwards replaced by the convertible peso) (Sobe and Timberlake 2010: 359). At a conversion rate of 24 Cuban pesos to one CUC, the real value of workers’ salaries plummeted – a problem that has not been resolved today, with Raúl Castro admitting in 2007 that state wages are insufficient for survival (Sullivan 2011: 13). Possession of dollars became the key to a good standard of living, and those without access to the dollar economy through remittances from relatives abroad could only obtain dollars through work in tourism, where, although wages were still paid in Cuban pesos, bonuses and tips could be received in CUC. New inequalities, disturbingly, appear to be falling most severely on groups, such as black Cubans living in the marginalized barrios that were most disadvantaged prior to the revolution. A

Cuba: The Impact of the Cuban Revolution

277

further effect is that many highly educated Cubans are relinquishing careers in valuable but poorly remunerated areas, such as medicine, to work in the service sector. This crisis was particularly severe for teachers, where long hours and onerous responsibilities precluded the second jobs and other moneymaking stratagems that many Cubans used to supplement their incomes, prompting an exodus from the profession. In a bold move, reminiscent of the Literacy Campaign, the government instigated a scheme of accelerated training of sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds as teachers in both primary and secondary education. Thousands of maestros emergentes (emergent or emergency teachers) signed up for a gruelling eight-year stint, in which they fulfilled a full teaching timetable while completing their high school education and university degrees in the evening and at weekends. The prevalence of such teachers, who quickly became the majority in many schools (particularly in Havana), led to profound changes in the character of the profession and of Cuban schools, not merely because they were less experienced and qualified but also because of their demographic – more youthful, less exclusively female, less likely to see education as a long-term career. Along with reductions in class sizes, extensive use of video classes to supplement teacher knowledge, the change to one teacher for all subjects in basic secondary (with the exception of PE and foreign languages) and the end to the increasingly unpopular escuelas en el campo make it possible to speak of a new system of schooling in Cuba in 2010 as compared to 1980. Many aspects, such as the prominence of video classes and the reliance on maestros emergentes have received significant criticism, with many Cubans speaking of falling educational standards, particularly in literacy and numeracy (although this must be recognized as a fall from a very high base level). In the comparatively secure economic climate of the 2010s, emergente training is no longer used and investment in education remains high. Changes to curricula and outdated textbooks are also currently in progress. Difficulties recruiting and retaining teachers, however, remain pressing problems that continue to be met with provisional solutions, such as the use of retired teachers and university students (Blum and Dawley-Carr 2016). The maestros emergentes programme, along with schemes to train young people as social workers, nurses and art instructors, precipitated a new form of higher education, known both as municipalization and universalization. The principal incentive used to attract young people into the schemes was the promise of a university place without taking the normal stringent entrance exams. As the projects ballooned, however, and it became evident that the many thousands of

278

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

new students could not be accommodated within the existing university system, a structure of Sedes Universitarias Municipales (SUM) was set up. Satellite sites of existing universities, 774 SUM were formed by 2004 with at least one in each of Cuba’s 168 municipalities (Universalización de la Universidad, 2004: 16). Housed in schools and other public buildings in the evening and at weekends, the SUM offered part-time degrees in a limited number of (mostly social science) subjects, espousing an alternative pedagogy stressing independent study skills and pastoral support. The flexible approach allowed students to take study breaks and complete their degrees in a variable number of years. Gradually extending their intake from emergentes to incorporate workers, parents and others unable to access traditional universities, the scheme raised numbers in higher education to unprecedented levels, with 360,000 studying in the municipalized system in 2005–6, many of them from disadvantaged backgrounds (Colectivo de Autores 2006: 2). This was an important benefit, given that, since the ‘deschooling’ process of the 1980s and 1990s, students in traditional universities were increasingly likely to be white and the children of professionals (Domínguez 2004: 114–18). Circumventing entrance exams, however, provoked accusations that the calibre of students in the municipalized universities was lower than in traditional universities and that their degrees were not of equal standing. These debates replicated wider conversations in the nation. Emergente and universalization programmes were integral to the Battle of Ideas, a raft of social policy initiatives to redress the social consequences of the special period and (re)assimilate disengaged youth that represented a momentous shift in Cuban social policy: a move away from universal, egalitarian support and ‘meritocratic’ access to education to targeted intervention to benefit the most disadvantaged (Gómez Cabezas 2012: 37). Such moves, particularly their emphasis on young people neither working nor studying, encountered criticism for using valuable collective resources to advantage those perceived as not having contributed to society in the ways traditionally valued in the Cuban social consciousness. Opening access to marginalized groups was particularly significant because the prevalence of social science subjects meant thousands of students emerging conscientized – equipped to analyse the problems affecting them and their communities and, potentially, to act through mass organizations and local democracy to challenge and change their own reality. In vocational terms, however, universalization’s concentration on social science subjects exacerbated Cuba’s already-acute problem of oversupply in certain sectors. Young Cubans’ frequent complaint that they cannot exercise their chosen profession, due to oversupply or because state wages are inadequate, represents

Cuba: The Impact of the Cuban Revolution

279

a challenging, perhaps insuperable, contradiction in education policy, causing many highly educated and relatively politically conformist young Cubans to consider emigration. Treating education as a necessary condition for full human existence and full societal participation is laudable – a cornerstone of the revolution and the values of human dignity for which it stands. And young people believe that too. Despite concerns over their professional futures, they consistently restate that education transcends economics – an intrinsic good. Fidel Castro’s aspiration that a tractor driver could gain a degree without wishing to cease driving a tractor (Jiménez Padilla et al. 2014) is, nevertheless, unrealistic and denies young people the chance to become the citizens and protagonists their education has formed them to be. Neither the expanded access to higher education of the 2000s nor the recent retrenchment to concentrate on higher standards, lower numbers, shorter courses and recognition of globalization (e.g. the decision to make proficiency in English a requirement for attaining a degree) (Blum and Dawley-Carr 2016) resolves that central problem. Squaring this circle is a task for today’s young Cubans. The capacity of the Cuban Revolution to develop and adapt in the face of internal and global change, while maintaining core ideological tenets, is proven. As a result of universal access to an education system whose quality, in terms of academic and cultural excellence and concentration on political and social values, continues to be outstanding, young Cubans’ understanding of the problems they and their country face is sophisticated and articulate. The professional and economic expectations raised by education in Cuba continue to constitute an unresolved and potentially explosive problem for the Revolution. It may be, however, that its very survival of the special period and its aftermath of increased marketization and social division is due in great part to its continued commitment to an education system that continues to create highly qualified, culturally developed and politically conscious new women and new men – citizens capable of (re) making the revolution for a new century.

Bibliography ‘Funcionarios del MES dialogaron on-line sobre el ingreso a la Universidad’. Juventud Rebelde 14 February 2015. Abendroth, Mark. Rebel Literacy: Cuba’s National Literacy Campaign and Critical Global Citizenship (Dulworth: Letwin, 2009). Anuario Estadístico de Cuba 2004. http://www.oei.es/quipu/cuba/cub04.pdf (accessed 11 May 2010).

280

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

Arnedo-Gómez, Miguel. Writing Rumba: The Afrocubanista Movement in Poetry (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2006). Barragán Duarte, José Luis. ‘Primer mapa latino de la educación superior’. http:// historico.unperiodico.unal.edu.co/ediciones/113/08.html (accessed 18 May 2015). Bas, Japji Anna. ‘Reorientation in Agriculture’ in Cuba: In Transition? CUNY, 2006. http://www.gc.cuny.edu/CUNY_GC/media/CUNY-Graduate-Center/PDF/Centers/ Bildner%20Center%20for%20Western%20Hemisphere%20Studies/Publications/ Bas3.pdf (accessed 18 May 2015). Blum, Denise F. Cuban Youth and Revolutionary Values: Educating the New Socialist Citizen (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2011). Blum, Denise. ‘Cuban Educational Reform During the “Special Period”: Dust, Ashes and Diamonds’. In A Contemporary Cuba Reader: Reinventing the Revolution, edited by Phillip Brenner et al., 423–31 (Plymouth: Rowman and Littlefield, 2014). Blum, Denise and Dawley-Carr, J Ruth. ‘TEACHERS WANTED’ in Cuba Counterpoints, 2016, accessed at http://cubacounterpoints.com/archives/4328 (accessed 15 November 2016). Brenner, Phillip et al., eds. ‘The Platt Amendment’. In The Cuba Reader: The Making of a Revolutionary Society, 30–1 (New York: Grove, 1989). Brenner, Phillip et al., eds. A Contemporary Cuba Reader: Reinventing the Revolution (Plymouth: Rowman and Littlefield, 2008). Carnoy, Martin et al. Cuba’s Academic Advantage: Why Students in Cuba Do Better in School (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007). Castro Ruz, Fidel. ‘History Will Absolve Me’. In The Cuba Reader, edited by Phillip Brenner et al., 31–5 (New York: Grove, 1989). Cole, Ken. ‘Cuba: The Process of Socialist Development’. Latin American Perspectives, 29, no.3 (May 2002): 40–56. Colectivo de Autores. La Nueva Universidad Cubana y su contribución a la universalización del conocimiento (La Habana: Félix Varela, 2006). Díaz-Briquets, Sergio. ‘Remittances to Cuba: An Update’, ASCE (Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy) conference Cuba in Transition, 2008. Domínguez, María Isabel. ‘Higher Education in Cuba: Democratization and the Role of Women’. In The Challenges of Public Higher Education in the Hispanic Caribbean, edited by María J. Canino and S. Torres-Saillant, 103–22 (Princeton: Marcus Weiner, 2004). Domínguez, María Isabel. Justicia social y juventud: retos y perspectivas para la sociedad cubana en el nuevo siglo (Havana: CIPS, undated report). Domínguez García, María Isabel and Castilla García, Claudia. ‘Prácticas participativas en grupos juveniles de Ciudad de la Habana’. Revista Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales, Niñez y Juventud, 1, no. 9 (2011): 141–60. Eckstein, Susan. ‘The Coming Crisis in Cuban Education’. Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy and Practice, 4, no.1 (1997): 107–20. Fagen, Richard. The Transformation of Political Culture in Cuba (Stanford: Stanford University Press. 1969).

Cuba: The Impact of the Cuban Revolution

281

Fernández, Damián J. Cuba and the Politics of Passion (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2000). Figueroa, Oneida Álvarez. ‘El sistema educativo en los noventa’. In Papers 52. Centro de Investigaciones de Economía Internacional (1997): 115–37. Fitzgibbon, Russell H. Cuba and the United States (New York: Russell and Russell, 1964). Font, Mauricio A. ‘Cuba and Castro: Beyond the Battle of Ideas’. In Font Changing Cuba/Changing World, 43–72 (New York: Bildner Center for Western Hemisphere Studies, 2008). Frederick, Laurie. ‘Pre-emptive nostalgia and La Batalla for Cuban Identity: Option Zero Theatre’. In Cuba in the Special Period: Culture and Ideology in the 1990s, edited by Ariana Hernández Reguant (London and New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2009). Gasperini, Lavinia. ‘The Cuban Education System: Lessons and Dilemmas’. Country Studies: Education Reform and Management Publication Series, 1, no.5 (July 2000). Gillette, Arthur. Cuba’s Educational Revolution (London: Fabian Society, 1972). Ginsberg, Mark et al. ‘Constructing Worker-Citizens In/Through Teacher Education in Cuba: Curricular Goals in the Changing Political Economic Context’. Globalisation, Comparative Education and Policy Research, 9, pt.2 (2010): 137–63. Gómez Cabezas, Enrique Javier. ‘El trabajo social en el pensamiento de Fidel Castro Ruz’. In Trabajo Social en Cuba. Retos en el siglo XXI, edited by Caballero Labaut and Ana María, 31–47 (Havana: Editorial Unión, 2012). Guerra, Lillian. Visions of Power in Cuba: Revolution, Redemption, and Resistance, 1959–1971 (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 2012). Guevara, Ernesto Che. ‘Man and Socialism in Cuba’. In Gerassi Venceremos!: the speeches and writings of Ernesto Che Guevara, 387–400 (London: Weidenfield and Nicholson, 1968). Heuman, Gad. The Caribbean: A Brief History (London: Bloomsbury, 2014). Jiménez Padilla, Tamara et al. ‘El proceso de universalización para la especialidad de cultura física; un sueño hecho realidad’ in EFDeportes.com, Revista Digital. Buenos Aires - Año 19 - Nº 194 - Julio de 2014. Johnston, Laurie. ‘Education and Cuba Libre, 1898–1958’. History Today, 45, no.8 (1995). Jolly, Richard. ‘Education’. In Seers Cuba: The Economic and Social Revolution, edited by Dudley Seers, 161–282 (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1964). Judson, Fred. Cuba and the Revolutionary Myth: The Political Education of the Cuban Rebel Army (Boulder and London: Westview, 1984). Kapcia, Antoni. Cuba: Island of Dreams (Oxford: Berg, 2000). Kirk, Emily J. ‘Setting the Agenda for Cuban Sexuality: The Role of Cuba’s CENESEX’. Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, 36, no. 72 (2011): 143–63. Lutjens, Sheryl L. The State, Bureaucracy, and the Cuban Schools: Power and Participation (Westview : Boulder, Colorado, 1996).

282

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

MacDonald, Théodore H. The Education Revolution: Cuba’s Alternative to Neoliberalism (Croydon: Manifesto, 2009). Matijevic, Danijel. ‘Love, embittered: review of Louis A Pérez Jr.’s on becoming Cuban: identity, nationality, and culture’, 2008. http://www.lepanoptique.com/sections/ histoire/love-embittered-review-of-louis-a-perez-jrs-on-becoming-cuban-identitynationality-and-culture/ (accessed 19 May 2015). MEDICC (Medical Educational Cooperation with Cuba) website. http://medicc.org/ ns/?page_id=63 (accessed 18 May 2015). Pérez Jr., Louis A. On Becoming Cuban: Nationality, Identity and Culture (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1999). Reid-Henry, S. M. The Cuban Cure: Reason and Resistance in Global Science (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010). Salazar Carrillo, Jorge. ‘Interdependence and Economic Performance in Cuba’. In Cuban Communism/8th Edition, edited by Irving Louis Horowitz (New Brunswick: Transaction, 1995). Schoultz, Lars. That Infernal Little Cuban Republic: The United States and the Cuban Revolution (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009). Smith, Rosemary. The Lost Generation?: Education and the Search for the new Cuban Citizen Identity. Thesis, University of Nottingham, 2015. Sobe, Noah B., and Renee N Timberlake. ‘Staying the (Post) Socialist Course: Global/ Local transformations in Cuban Education’. In Post-Socialism Is Not Dead: (Re) Reading The Global In Comparative Education, edited by Iveta Silova, 351–68 (Bingley : Emerald Group Publishing, 2010). Sullivan, Mark P. ‘Cuba’s Political Succession: From Fidel to Raúl Castro’, CRS Report to Congress, 2007. Velázquez López, María Victoria. ‘Formación de instructores de arte. La experiencia cubana’. Course 21, Pedagogía conference, La Habana, 2005. Wickham Crowley, Timothy P. Guerrillas and Revolution in Latin America: A Comparative Study of Insurgents and Regimes Since 1956 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992). Wilkinson, Steven. ‘Cuba can cope without Chavez’. The Guardian, 05 July 2011. worldbymap.org. http://world.bymap.org/LiteracyRates.html (accessed 11 May 2010). World Health Organisation. ‘Neurological Disorders: A Public Health Approach’ in Neurological Disorders: Public Health Challenges, 2006. http://who.int/mental_ health/neurology/chapter_3_b_neuro_disorders_public_h_challenges.pdf (accessed 10 October 2014). Wylie, Lana. Perceptions of Cuba: Canadian and American Policies in Comparative Perspective (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010). Yaffe, Helen. ‘Cuba’s Wage Changes have Nothing to do with a Return to Capitalism’. The Guardian, 20 June 2008.

15

Dominican Republic: An Overview Molly Hamm and Rebeca Martínez

Introduction The Dominican Republic is an upper-middle-income country in the Spanishspeaking Caribbean whose education system has historically been marked by underfunding of the state schools and generally poor academic results. Data from the Second and Third Regional Comparative and Explanatory Studies (SERCE and TERCE) in Latin America show that third- and sixthgrade students in the Dominican Republic performed worse in all subjects tested – reading, math and science – than in any other country in the region (LLECE 2008, 2014). These results include countries that have a lower per capita income and where wealth is distributed more inequitably. Notably, the results are equally poor for rural, urban, state and private schools, showing a countrywide need for improved education quality. Table 15.1 provides background information about the country and its education results. Many elements contribute to the overall low performance of the education system, including limited school time due to lack of classroom space and nonadherence to the school schedule, large class sizes, discipline problems, low quality of entrants to the teaching profession and inadequate teacher preparation (SEE, 2008). Despite the pervasive challenges, the Dominican Republic has set ambitious goals for educational reform and invested significantly in promising education programmes and policies to strengthen the system’s ability to provide a high-quality education for all.

284

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

Table 15.1 Country profile, Dominican Republic Population:

10,478,756 inhabitants

Population growth rate: GDP:

1.23% $138 billion total $13,000 per capita (upper-middle income) 7.3% 61.6% services, 31.2% industry, 6.3% agriculture 41.1% of population lives below poverty line 45.7 3.8% 9% in primary school 8% in secondary school

Rate of growth: GDP composition: Poverty rate: GINI Index: Investment of GDP in education: State education expenditure per pupil (percentage of GDP per capita) Formal education system:

Examination system: Gross enrolment rate:

Net enrolment rate: Not attending school: School repetition: School dropout rate: Overage Population: Average tears of schooling:

First year of mandatory schooling: Pre-primary: age 5 Primary school: 6 years, ages 6–12 Lower secondary: 2 years, ages 13–14 Upper secondary: 4 years, ages 15–18 National exams determine grade promotion in the eight and twelfth grade 97% female, 108% male primary school 85% female, 82% male lower secondary 78% female, 66% male upper secondary 85% female, 88% male primary school 66% female, 58% male, secondary school 7% at primary school level, 18–21% at secondary school level 8.6% in primary school, 10.8% in secondary school 2.6% in primary school, 5.7% in secondary school 12–15% in primary school, 18–20% in secondary school 11.8 years

Sources: World Bank (2014), CIA World Factbook (2015), SEE (2008), MINERD (2014d), EPDC (2014).

Complying with the 4 per cent mandate: Increased investment in education The educational sector in the Dominican Republic suffers from a lack of resources and underinvestment. Although the country’s constitution requires

Dominican Republic: An Overview

285

that 4 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) be spent on education, the government has traditionally spent only 2 per cent (OECD 2008). In 2010, a civil society movement spearheaded by the Coalición por una Educación Digna (CED) pushed for the government to comply with the 4 per cent mandate in the 2013 national budget, characterizing the issue as an investment rather than expenditure (Coalición Educación Digna 2011). During the 2012 presidential elections, candidates pledged their support to increase educational spending. When Danilo Medina of the Dominican Liberation Party (Partido de la Liberación Dominicana or PLD) was elected as president, his inaugural address emphasized the importance of investing 4 per cent of GDP in education. Decentralization, early childhood education, the extended school day, curricular reform, vocational training and strengthening the teaching profession were among his top educational priorities, significantly shaping modern reform efforts (Medina 2012). The CED continues to monitor educational spending in the country, advocating for transparency in budget allocation and expenditure and clarifying discrepancies between the approved and executed budget. Although educational investment reached 3.7 per cent of GDP in 2013 (World Bank 2015), the CED has criticized the government for underspending in critical areas such as early childhood education and overspending on infrastructure and the construction of new schools (Coalicion Educación Digna 2014).

Education as a national development strategy Providing quality education for all is a key goal in the country’s 2030 National Development Strategy (MEPyD 2012). The Ministry of Economy, Planning and Development (MEPyD) and the National Council for State Reform presented the strategy as Law 1–12, outlining a long-term vision for national development and determining governmental commitments to realize that vision. In the education sector, the national development strategy includes addressing teachers and the teaching profession; curriculum reform for improved learning outcomes; increasing the focus on science, technology and foreign languages for competition in a knowledge society; strengthening monitoring and evaluation systems; increasing access to early childhood education; and diversifying educational offerings to include vocational and technical training and adult education. The Ministry of Education of the Dominican Republic (MINERD)’s renewable Ten-Year Education Plan 2008–18, or Plan Decenal, outlines ten policy priorities

286

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

in the education sector. These policy priorities include setting standards for compulsory education at the early childhood and primary school levels; expanding and diversifying secondary and adult education to prepare youth and adults for the workforce and higher education; revising the national curriculum; establishing strong monitoring and evaluation systems to ensure school quality; ensuring compliance with the school schedule and calendar; training highly qualified education professionals and promoting the retention of existing personnel; promoting educational equity by supporting students from the most vulnerable social sectors; encouraging participation of families, communities, and non-government organizations in educational policies, programmes, and projects; promoting continuous improvement by maintaining a school-based system that is flexible and participatory; and mobilizing the public and private sectors to procure necessary resources to achieve desired objectives (SEE, 2008). In April 2014, President Danilo Medino’s call for a comprehensive social pact for education materialized when governmental authorities and the Economic and Social Council (CES) of the Dominican Republic signed the National Pact for Education Reform 2014–30. More than 9,000 people participated in the consultations, submitting 35,677 proposals to shape national policy (MINERD 2014d). The pact process provided an opportunity for diverse actors to debate and come to agreement on key priorities for the education sector in alignment with the Ten-Year Plan (Pacto Nacional 2015).

Building the foundation of the modern education system: Law 66–97 While Dominican Republic’s Constitution established access to free and compulsory education in 1966, the Organic Law of Education 66–97, passed on 9 April 1997, established the basis of education policy in the country. It replaced Law 2909 from 1953 and guarantees the right to a free education without discrimination for all inhabitants in the country. It regulates the activities of the Dominican government and its decentralized institutions within the education sector, while also outlining the values and principles that underpin the Dominican system of education, including respect for life and human rights, democratic coexistence, solidarity and the search for truth. The education system is explicitly based on Christian principles, as evidenced by the book of gospels that is part of the country’s national shield and slogan of Dios, Patria, Libertad, or God, Country, Freedom (Ley 66–97, 1997).

Dominican Republic: An Overview

287

Families have the right to choose the type of education that their child will receive. The government must ensure equal educational opportunity in the quantity and quality of services offered by state and non-governmental providers. The government must also provide social, economic, and cultural support to those families and learners who are most vulnerable. The community and its development are at the centre of educational policies, planning, programmes, projects and strategies. Law 66–97 recognizes both formal and informal education within the national system. The formal system extends from early childhood to higher education, and is systematized by an official national curriculum with explicit goals and objectives as well as a defined school calendar and schedule. Informal education has similar aims for developing specific knowledge, attitudes and skills, but is adapted to meet the needs of particular populations, such as adults and out-of-school youth. This system includes greater flexibility in how and when that education is delivered, including accelerated programmes, evening school schedules and weekend classes.

Reforming the education system’s structure: Ordinance 03–13 Law 66–97 divided the educational system into four levels: initial, basic, middle and upper. Initial education addressed the needs of children from birth to five years, basic education consisted of first to eighth grade in two cycles each lasting four years, middle education consisted of ninth to twelfth grades in two cycles each lasting two years, and upper education consisted of higher education, including universities and technical training programmes. This structure was in operation until 2013, when Ordinance 03–13 was passed by the National Education Council (Consejo Nacional de Educación), the highest educational decision-making body, which is presided over by the minister of education. Ordinance 03–13 changed the structure of the education system to align it with the International Standard Classification of Education. This policy had two goals: to align educational levels with the appropriate developmental stages of children and adolescents, and to facilitate the international comparison of statistics and educational results. Based on these changes, the initial level (or early childhood) is composed of six years, with two cycles each of three years. The first year of mandatory education is at the age of five years. The basic level is now called ‘Primary Education’. It is for six- to twelve-year-olds and lasts for

288

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

Table 15.2 Structure of Education System until 2013 Age Grade 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Year 4 Year 3 Year 2 Year 1 12th grade 11th grade 10th grade 9th grade 8th grade 7th grade 6th grade 5th grade 4th grade 3rd grade 2nd grade 1st grade Pre-primary

Cycle or modality

University

Non-university

2nd cycle of Middle Level 

3 modalities: general, technical professional and arts 

1st cycle of middle level (common across all schools) 

Level Upper level (higher education)

Middle level

2nd cycle of basic level Basic level 1st cycle of basic level

1st year of mandatory education

Initial level`

Source: UNESCO-IBE 2006

six years, with two cycles each of three years. The middle level is now called ‘Secondary Education’. It targets twelve- to eighteen-year-olds and lasts six years, with two cycles each of three years. The first three-year cycle is the same for all modalities, and the last cycle has a different curriculum depending on which of the three modalities (general, technical professional or arts) is being offered. Due to space constraints, primary schools must continue offering seventh and eighth grades in their building until those students can be transferred to a nearby secondary school. Schools have five years to complete the transitional process, which ends in 2018 and coincides with the last year of the country’s Ten-Year Education Plan (SEE 2008). In addition, two subsystems govern special education and adult education. The special education subsystem provides specialized services for children

Dominican Republic: An Overview

289

and youth with special needs or who are identified as being gifted or talented. Although all children and youth are guaranteed the right to an education, in practice it is estimated that only 50 per cent of those with severe mental, physical or socio-emotional needs have access to formal education (MINERD 2014a). The Ministry of Education is working towards a more inclusive educational system that will enable students with special needs to attend regular schools via resource centres and centres for attention to diversity (CAD). In addition, this subsystem also provides special education centres as an alternative to regular schools in cases where the general school system cannot provide the necessary curricular adaptations and specialized services.

Table 15.3 Structure of Education System since 2013 Age Grade 22 21

Year 4 Year 3

20

Year 2

19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6

Year 1 12th grade 11th grade 10th grade 9th grade 8th grade 7th grade 6th grade 5th grade 4th grade 3rd grade 2nd grade 1st grade Pre-primary (mandatory) Kinder Maternal      

5 4 3 2 1

Cycle or modality

University

Non-university

Level Upper (higher education)

2nd cycle of 3 modalities: General, technical Secondary level professional and arts Secondary level 1st cycle of secondary level

2nd cycle of primary level Primary level 1st cycle of primary level

2nd cycle of initial level Initial level 1st cycle of initial level

Source: Consejo Nacional de Educación 2013

290

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

The adult education subsystem has two purposes: to provide a comprehensive education for adults who did not complete their studies in the regular educational system, and to provide technical training for graduates who desire additional learning opportunities. The adult education system includes the following components: adult literacy programmes; basic education programmes that provide accelerated training to those fourteen years and over who wish to complete their primary education; middle education programmes for those who have graduated from primary school but need a specialized programme to finish secondary school; and professional development courses that provide training alternatives for youth and adults who have dropped out of the regular school system and desire to enter the labour market. Technical and vocational training programmes are also offered as part of the adult education system through specialized institutions such as the National Institute for Professional and Technical Training (Instituto Nacional de Formación Técnico Profesional or INFOTEP).

Competency-based curriculum reform The Ministry of Education provides a national curriculum for all teachers and students in all government schools in the country. In 2012, the National Education Council (Consejo Nacional de Educación) passed an ordinance requiring the Ministry of Education to systematically review and update the national curriculum, which had been in force since 1995 (Ordinance 1–95). This change is related to the Ten-Year Education Plan’s call for the curriculum to be reviewed periodically and to transition from a primarily teacher-centred curriculum to focus more explicitly on student learning. In practice, teaching and learning systems in the Dominican Republic are often highly traditional with a focus on repetition, memorization, assimilation and reproduction of content knowledge as transmitted by the teacher. The curriculum revision sought to transform this mindset, leading to a constructivist approach that facilitates a democratic and participatory learning process (MINERD 2014a). Although the curricular revision process itself was participatory – involving parents, educators, diverse professionals, the private sector, educational foundations, institutes and ministries in consultations around the country  – the final revision and implementation has been fairly top-down. The new curriculum is focused on students developing fundamental competencies,

Dominican Republic: An Overview

291

defined as the abilities a student must develop to act autonomously in diverse settings by using certain learned procedures, concepts, attitudes and values. MINERD considers competencies to be the effective mastery of skills that are needed by a society in order to address problems and contribute solutions. The fundamental competencies in the revised curriculum are as follows: ethics and citizenship, communication, logic, critical and creative thinking, problemsolving, science and technology, environment and health, and personal and spiritual development (MINERD 2014a). Each competency includes relevant subject matter content, teaching and learning strategies, resources and learning activities, and evaluation methods. Teachers are encouraged to use group activities, project and problem-based learning, research projects and dialogue, among other strategies, to ensure learning. Suggested evaluation strategies include debates, observations, case studies, reflective diaries and portfolios (MINERD 2014a). Many of these strategies have been adapted from common practices in innovative education systems around the world. Mastery of the fundamental competencies is integrated throughout each student’s educational journey. The first two levels of mastery are assigned to the initial and primary grades. By secondary level, students are expected to have mastered each curricular competency, preparing themselves for entry into higher education and the labour market (SEE 2008). The revised curriculum is correlated with the restructuring of the grade levels and cycles in the country’s education system. The curriculum for adult education is also being revised in order to address the diverse needs of adult learners and provide more practical experiences that equip them with the necessary technical and professional skills to meet their social and economic needs (MINERD 2014a). The revised curriculum for the system of state schools is being implemented in stages. The process of implementation began in the 2012–13 school year (MINERD 2014a). As of 2015, the curricula for early childhood (initial education) and first cycle of primary education (first to third grades) were tested and finalized after having been piloted in classrooms across the nation. The curriculum for the second cycle of primary education (fourth to sixth grade) was being validated in classrooms during the 2015–16 school year (IDEC 2015). The curriculum for the first cycle of primary education includes the following subjects: language arts, mathematics, social sciences, natural sciences, humanistic and religious education, physical education, arts education, English as a foreign language and special optional workshops that complement the core curriculum. The second cycle of primary education includes the same subjects

292

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

and adds French as a foreign language (MINERD 2014d). While schools are required to identify teachers for each subject in the curriculum, the qualifications of each teacher varies significantly across the country, as it is not always possible to identify a qualified teacher for the vacancy. The development of the secondary education curriculum has been delayed for approximately two years due to delays in the development and validation of lower-level curricula. The curriculum for the first cycle of secondary education (seventh to ninth grade) is common to all students. In the second cycle (tenth to twelfth grades), secondary schools provide the following three tracks or modalities: general education, technical and professional education, or arts education. In order to standardize secondary education competencies and enable international comparisons, the government is undergoing an intensive process to develop a National Qualifications Framework. The purpose of the framework is to provide competency-based education that is based on the needs of the labour market. The framework will align all certificates, diplomas and titles awarded by the government with the knowledge, skills and personal and professional competencies expected of graduates. The framework development process is being undertaken by the MINERD, the Ministry of Higher Education, Science and Technology (MESCyT), the Ministry of Labour, the Ministry of the President, the Ministry of Economy, Planning and Development and INFOTEP (Echavarri 2015; IDEC 2015). The government’s goal is for all new curricula to be implemented in every public school in the country by 2018 (SEE 2008). The curriculum reform process has presented several challenges, including delays in the printing and distribution of textbooks and curricular materials to schools. In one study, only 30 per cent of teachers had adequate textbooks and reading materials to teach the curriculum (INAFOCAM 2015). Teachers have also struggled to deliver the new curriculum effectively. A recent study by the National Institute for Teacher Education and Training (Instituto Nacional de Formación y Capacitación del Magisterio or INAFOCAM) showed that in one district, 40 per cent of classrooms demonstrated little coherency between lesson objectives and the development of competencies. For example, only 2 per cent of language arts teachers utilized strategies that developed competence in reading comprehension. In addition, more than 60 per cent of teachers developed their lessons in a traditional format rather than using student-centred strategies (INAFOCAM 2015). In many cases, teachers are not adequately trained to implement the complex changes required by the new curriculum, thus reverting to the curriculum and pedagogy with which they are most comfortable using

Dominican Republic: An Overview

293

in the classroom. In addition, many school directors do not have the training necessary to provide leadership at the school level to ensure the curriculum is successfully implemented. Indeed, school director positions are highly political appointments, and, in many cases, the directors are not local to the school community, often decreasing their buy-in and commitment to school performance. This in turn leaves teachers feeling disenfranchized and lacking support systems to meet high expectations. While teachers and the teachers’ union have not organized actively against the reforms, this passive resistance has complicated the ability of the reforms to show success at the local level.

Increasing instructional time and extended school day Historically, students in the Dominican Republic have attended school on a shift system due to lack of physical classroom space available for the schoolage population. While the shift system ensured that high numbers of students could access education, it also resulted in students receiving far fewer hours of schooling (SEE 2008). The half-day shift system makes few hours of class time available. Research shows that many class hours were not used for instruction. In one study, only 500 of the 1,080 hours allotted by the official curriculum were used productively for instruction (SEE 2008). As a result, the Ministry of Education prioritized fulfilment of the school day and calendar year. In 2010, the MINERD’s Mission 1000x1000 campaign advocated for 1000 hours in quantity and quality of instructional time throughout the state school system. Nearly 19,500 teachers who completed the challenge were given a financial bonus (MINERD 2010). Increased public scrutiny to ensure quality use of instructional time has led to an extended eight-hour school day (8.00 am – 4.00 pm). The extended school day, or jornada extendida, requires 1,800 instructional hours per year at all levels. The extended school day ensures that teachers have sufficient time to cover the new national curriculum. In addition to the newly revised core curriculum, the schedule allows for four weekly hours dedicated to workshops such as music, art, theatre, choir, robotics, physical education and more. The workshop model is flexible in terms of how time and school space are used. The workshop model provides additional opportunities for students to develop key competencies, reinforce themes learnt in the academic curriculum and enjoy a diversity of enrichment activities. Workshop teachers are contracted on an hourly basis, but

294

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

Table 15.4 Distribution of hours, extended school day model Duration in years Cycles Level Initial Primary Secondary Academic Modality Arts modality Technical professional modality

Total

First

Second

6 6 6

3 3 3

3 3 3 3 3 3

3

Number of weeks

Hours Hours per week per year

45 45

40 40

1,800 1,800

45 45 45

40 40 40

1,800 1,800 1,800

Source: MINERD-2004a

many schools do not have the funds to hire facilitators, nor do they have the materials necessary to implement these complementary courses. As a strategy for reducing school dropout rates and child labour, the government provides lunch and breakfast and/or snack depending on the needs of the school population. The provision of food at school has alleviated certain economic pressures from many families living in poverty, yet there have been organized protests speaking out against the perceived low quality of the food provided – including accusations that the food has caused illness among students. The extended school day model has required significant investment in educational infrastructure. Within four years, MINERD plans to incorporate 28,000 new classrooms and rehabilitate 23,130 existing classrooms in the public school system, although current progress shows that this goal will likely not be met (IDEC 2015). By the 2015–16 school year, a total of 12,215 new and rehabilitated classrooms were expected to be ready for instruction. Between 2013 and 2014, there were 17,263 teachers incorporated into the system to cover the demand created by the extended day schools. An estimated 602,584 students and families were benefiting from the jornada extendida in 2014 (MINERD 2014d). Several challenges have arisen from this extensive education reform effort. Significant delays in the construction and delivery of new schools and classrooms have occurred due to a lack of available land as well as delays in payments to builders and landowners (IDEC 2015). These delays have caused uncertainty among many school directors, teachers, students and families, who receive conflicting information about when the transition to full-day

Dominican Republic: An Overview

295

school will begin. Although new schools are supposed to be outfitted with cafeterias, school libraries and science laboratories, many have not received the materials and equipment necessary to operate. In addition, there is a lack of space for activities during the workshop period and many teachers suffer from a significantly increased workload (IDEC 2014). Finally, working and learning conditions are poor in many of the schools. A recent study showed that several newly constructed schools did not meet safety requirements for earthquakes and would be susceptible to severe damage or collapse in an emergency (IDEC 2015). In one district, 71 per cent of bathrooms did not work or were in poor condition, and lacked water or the provision and quality of water was extremely poor. Power cuts that make it difficult, if not impossible, to use electronic aids and poor ventilation were also cited (INAFOCAM 2015).

The improvement of teacher training and education In order to successfully implement the new curriculum and the extended school day model, the Ministry of Education has invested significantly in teacher training and development. Between 2012 and 2014, investment in teacher education and training saw a 59 per cent increase in the national budget (MINERD 2014d). In order to transform the teaching profession and increase the quality of teaching, new professional standards and teaching profiles have been outlined. Researchers and education professionals from the Dominican Republic reviewed standards from higher-performing countries in Latin America including Chile, Mexico and Puerto Rico. The new teaching standards are divided into four dimensions: student learning, curriculum content, teaching and learning processes and professional characteristics. Each dimension is further subdivided into standards as shown in Table 15.5. The standards and their indicators are meant to evaluate teacher performance not only within the classroom but also in the wider school community, including their work with colleagues, parents and administrators. The MINERD has reached a historic agreement with the national teachers’ union, Asociación Dominicana de Profesores (ADP) in order to establish a performance evaluation system that aligns with the standards. In order to enter into the teaching profession, candidates must complete a university teaching programme offered at a number of higher education institutions. In addition to specialized education departments within

296

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

Table 15.5 Revised teaching standards Dimension

Standards

1. Student learning

1.1 Student development 1.2 Differences in learning styles 1.3 Learning environments 2.1 Knowledge of curriculum content 2.2 Development of skills and abilities 3.1 Evaluation strategies, tools and methods 3.2 Instructional planning 3.3 Instructional strategies 4.1 Communication style and language 4.2 Professional development and ethical practices 4.3 Leadership and collaboration

2. Curriculum content 3. Process of teaching and learning 4. Professional and personal commitment

mainstream universities, there is an institute of higher education dedicated specifically to teacher education: the Instituto Superior de Formación Docente Salomé Ureña, or ISFODOSU. To increase the quality of graduates, universities must adapt their pre-service teaching curriculum to the newly adopted teacher profiles. MINERD is also developing an accreditation system to ensure quality of university education programmes (IDEC 2015). Once teaching candidates have completed a university programme and received their certification, they must pass a competitive examination in order to enter the state school system. Candidates who complete a degree in other areas and want to enter the secondary school system may sit for the examination and, if successful, are contracted for one year until they meet the teaching certification requirements necessary for a long-term contract. Private schools, on the other hand, have more flexibility in terms of setting qualifications for new teachers and have control in managing the hiring process locally. In the state system, the competitive examination (concurso de oposición) is composed of a series of academic tests based on the new teaching standards. In addition to the written examination, candidates are evaluated on their professional background and are given a personal interview. Although the examination has historically only been applied to the primary level, MINERD has worked to extending it to secondary teachers. In 2015, 36,884 candidates sat for the exams, of which only 31.1 per cent passed (MINERD 2015). The low success rates of the competitive examination produce a teacher shortage, as there

Dominican Republic: An Overview

297

are not enough eligible teachers to fill the vacancies advertised by MINERD. Successful candidates enter the education system on a one-year probationary term during which they are evaluated according to the teaching standards. At the end of the year, teachers may be recertified for a permanent position based on certifications, trainings, ongoing professional development and their end-ofyear evaluation (MINERD 2014b). Ongoing professional development for in-service teachers is usually provided at the district level, with technical specialists in each area responsible for overseeing teachers at assigned schools through observations and workshops. INAFOCAM, however, has worked with two universities to develop a schoolbased professional development programme that is likely to be extended to the rest of the country. The programme includes training and development at school sites where teachers receive support and coaching based on school and teacher improvement plans. Teachers can also receive scholarships through INAFOCAM and MESCyT in order to improve their qualifications through diplomas, certificates, workshops and seminars. In 2014, INAFOCAM provided 53,385 scholarships to secondary school graduates, teachers, technical specialists and school directors to participate in different educational programmes offered by the institute (IDEC 2014). Although 87 per cent of Dominican teachers have completed their university education, many still do not demonstrate a mastery of the content they are required to teach. In 2013, tests representing teaching content were administered to 1,021 primary and secondary school teachers. At the national level, average academic performance on the exam was 41 out of 100 points, with no significant difference between primary and secondary teachers. Mathematics and Spanish language received the lowest percentage points, while teachers seemed to demonstrate higher mastery of social sciences content (INAFOCAM 2014). Limited academic content knowledge among teachers has serious implications for the quality of the education system and, as we have seen, school leadership. Some Dominican policymakers from the Ministry of Education attribute low teacher quality to a lack of comprehensive policies shaping the teaching profession, deficits in the education and training of those who enter the teaching profession, low admission standards for candidates entering teaching programmes, poor work conditions that do not incentivize teacher performance, clientelism and political appointments for teaching positions, and a general lack of responsibility for student results (MINERD 2014d). The government has already begun to address many of these concerns in their reforms. Notably, teacher salaries have

298

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

steadily increased each year since 2013. In 2013, teachers received a 20 per cent salary increase from their 2012 base salary, and in 2014, an additional 10 per cent increase. A proposed 12 per cent increase for 2015 meant that state school teachers would receive a monthly salary of RD$39,909 or US$907 (MINERD 2014d). Improving working conditions and making the teaching profession more attractive to qualified candidates is a key strategy of MINERD.

Presidential initiatives Early childhood education Early childhood education has been a key area of concern for the Dominican government since 2013. Across the country, there is extremely limited coverage of pre-primary school services as well as prenatal and early childhood healthcare options, constraining the development of children living in poverty. In the Dominican Republic, only 16 per cent of students who receive early childhood education are from low-income families (UNICEF 2012). In 2013, there were only 280,000 children enrolled in the second cycle of early childhood (initial) education (MINERD 2014d). As a result, the Presidential Department of Special Programmes (Dirección General de Programas Especiales de la Presidencia, or DIGEPEP) launched the Quisqueya Begins with You (Quisqueya Empieza Contigo, or QEC) project. The QEC project targets children from birth to five years and their families, and focuses on developing an early care system that improves the coverage and quality of services for young children (DIGEPEP 2015b). The project is holistic and addresses the health, education and developmental needs of mothers and their children at various stages from birth to five years. A presidential commission with four thematic sub-commissions has monitored and overseen the goals and actions. Through Quisqueya Empieza Contigo, the government had aimed to reach 466,776 children between zero and four years in the most vulnerable communities by 2016. An additional 189,570 five-year-olds were to be integrated into the public school system at the pre-primary level. In order to reach these goals, 250 early childhood centres were to be built and 1,000 community centres were to receive early childhood development services for children and families (MINERD 2014d). However, by June 2015, only 42 of the desired 1,000 community centres were functioning and only 18 early childhood care centres (CAIPI) had been inaugurated under the jurisdiction of the newly established

Dominican Republic: An Overview

299

National Institute for Comprehensive Early Childhood Care (Instituto Nacional de Atención Integral a la Primera Infancia, or INAIPI). After its inauguration in January 2015, INAIPI also began overseeing the 52 childcare centres (CAINI), formerly operated by the National Council for Children and Adolescents (Consejo Nacional para la Niñez y la Adolescencia, or CONANI). In addition, 790 of 1,279 new classrooms at the pre-primary level have been built and outfitted with materials (IDEC 2015). Since 2014, the early childhood education reforms have been significantly behind schedule in meeting proposed goals, despite the fact that 2015 was named as the ‘National Year for Early Childhood’. Most of the delays are related to construction and outfitting of new educational centres as well as the assignment of human resources. These delays can be seen in low expenditures compared to projections, with only 65.7 per cent of the allocated budget spent in 2014. The Foro Socioeducativo estimates that as of June 2015, there were 84,250 infants who could have been beneficiaries of QEC and who were not able to participate due to delayed progress (IDEC 2015).

Adult education and literacy Results from the National Office of Statistics show that the adult illiteracy rate decreased from 11.3 per cent to 6.1 per cent between 2010 and 2014 (IDEC 2015), thanks to an ambitious adult education and literacy project led by the DIGEPEP. The Quisqueya Learns with You (Quisqueya Aprende Contigo, or QAC) programme is the Dominican Republic’s national plan to eradicate illiteracy. The project uses learning centres (núcleos de aprendizajes) and volunteer literacy teachers (alfabetizadores) to address social exclusion through the teaching of reading (DIGEPEP 2015a). By 2016, the government plans for 851,000 Dominicans to be newly literate, with 415,000 integrated into the adult education system to finish primary school (MINERD 2014d). As of 2014, the programme showed impressive results with 863,514 individuals enrolled in learning centres and 594,327 achieving literacy. In order to provide ongoing support and additional services for adults and newly literate citizens, the Dominican government and partners from the public and private sectors are updating the flexible adult education model. QAC learning centres will transform into educational spaces for adult learners to access primary education, with 100 educational centres selected to implement the new model.

300

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

Parents and families Article 185 of Law 66–97 created the Association of Parents, Guardians and Friends of the School (Asociacion de Padres, Madres, Tutores y Amigos de la Escuela, or APMAE). The association is not political and provides an opportunity for each school site to have an APMAE committee to support teachers and administrators. Many schools, however, do not have functioning parent associations, and in communities where they exist, there is often little decisionmaking power vested in its members. Efforts to increase parent participation have focused on strengthening the parent associations and providing teachers with resources and workbooks to use with parent groups. These initiatives have been especially focused at the early childhood and primary education levels (SEE 2008). Due to widespread poverty across the country, the government has made efforts to identify and better support families of the children from the most marginalized communities. The National Institute for Student Well-Being (Instituto Nacional de Bienestar Estudiantil, or INABIE) supports the most vulnerable students through school meals and basic healthcare, private school scholarships, school uniform and basic school supplies, and cultural field trips (INABIE 2015). In addition, the Solidarity Card (Tarjeta Solidaridad) provides access to a social protection and welfare system that works to minimize extreme poverty. Nearly 800,000 families benefit from the system. As part of the solidarity programme, families are eligible for school attendance incentives (Incentivos a la Asistencia Escolar, or ILAE). For every child between the ages of six and sixteen enrolled in first to eighth grade, the family receives RD$150 Dominican or US$3.40 per month. The programme covers a maximum of four children per family, and payments can be used for school supplies, uniforms, medicine or other related purchases. In addition, there is a school promotion bonus (Bono Escolar Estudiando Progreso, or BEEP), which provides financial support to students up to twenty-one years of age enrolled in secondary school. Between RD$500, or US$11.40 per month, and RD$1000, or US$22.70 per month, is provided to assist with the purchasing of food for the family budget (ADESS 2015).

Evaluation and accountability Article 60 of Law 66–97 establishes a National System for the Evaluation of Education Quality as a means of determining the overall effectiveness and

Dominican Republic: An Overview

301

efficiency of the Dominican education system. The responsibilities of the system include providing objective information about school performance, establishing systematic and continuous evaluations of student learning, conducting national examinations at key points in the student learning cycle, analysing determinants of education quality and utilizing the results of research and evaluation to improve education quality (Ley 66–97, 1997). Ordinance 03–2002 establishes the administrative body in charge of evaluation and accountability for education quality, the Dominican Institute for Evaluation and Research on Educational Quality (Instituto Dominicano de Evaluación e Investigación de la Calidad Educativa, or IDEICE). As standardized assessments become increasingly emphasized in education systems around the world, each country must grapple with questions about how, when and why student learning will be evaluated. The Ministry of Education in the Dominican Republic currently applies standardized national exams, or pruebas nacionales, at the end of basic and middle-level education (eighth and twelfth grade) and in the third cycle of adult education. The government will need to align assessments with the new education system structure and change exam years to align with the end of each cycle (third, sixth, ninth and twelfth grades). MINERD is also looking to align the evaluations with the new competency-based curriculum and change the frequency and type of evaluations administered (IDEC 2015). Currently, the examination covers four curricular areas: Spanish language, mathematics, social sciences and natural sciences. The assessment has a total value of thirty points and determines whether students can pass on to the next level of education or graduate from the system. The national exams count for 30 per cent of a student’s final grade, whereas the school’s final grade is valued at 70 per cent (MINERD 2014c). For several years, diagnostic assessments in mathematics and reading comprehension have been conducted with a sample of third and fourth graders (approximately 14,737 students in regular schools). These examinations do not have promotion consequences for students. A sample of 9,000 tenth graders across 200 schools also participated in a diagnostic evaluation in the areas of Spanish language, mathematics, social sciences and natural sciences. Each school receives a report of school results, which are compared to results from other schools in the local and regional districts (IDEC 2014; IDEC 2015). On average, students in the country perform quite poorly in the national examinations. Based on the thirty-point scale, the average 2014 exam score for eighth graders in the public school system was 17.62 in language arts, 14.62 in mathematics, 15.26 in social sciences and 14.97 in natural sciences. Only 57 per cent of twelfth grade public school students passed on their first attempt at

302

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

the national exam in 2014 (MINERD 2014c). The latest results of the national examinations show that, on average, students from the extended day schools have higher pass rates and overall scores than students in regular half-day schools, thus confirming our observations above. The average grades in each of the four subject matters tested are also higher for extended day students (IDEC, 2015). The Dominican Republic has also participated in regional and international assessments. In March 2015, the country participated for the first time in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) with a sample of 5,187 students 15 years and above in 196 schools (IDEC 2015). The country also participated in the pilot of the International Civic and Citizenship Education Study from the International Association for the Evaluation of Education, a full study yet to be published took place in 2016 (IDEC 2014). The Dominican Initiative for Quality Education (Iniciativa Dominicana por una Educación de Calidad, or IDEC), founded in October 2012, also provides additional accountability. The IDEC is designed to provide a space for dialogue between the government, civil society, international organization and the private sector, in order to identify and propose actions that could improve the pre-university education system. The Ministry of Education chairs IDEC and its member institutions include the Political and Social Commitment to Education (Compromiso Politico y Social de Educación), United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation, Inter-American Development Bank, World Bank, European Union, UNICEF, French Development Agency and the Organization of Iberoamerican States. The IDEC is composed of ten working groups that correspond to the ten policies presented in the Ten-Year Education Plan. The working groups monitor progress towards educational goals through 2016. IDEC develops a semesterly progress report that provides detailed updates on goals set by the Ministry of Education. These reports serve both a transparency and an accountability function.

Conclusion The Dominican Republic has made significant strides in enhancing the quality of its educational system. Comprehensive reforms are in place to address some of the system’s deepest and most entrenched challenges, demonstrating the government’s commitment to producing improved outcomes for children and youth. Increased investment and strengthened accountability systems are

Dominican Republic: An Overview

303

contributing to the success of these reforms and ensuring transparency. Despite tremendous progress, many challenges still lie ahead. The large gap between policy and practice has shown that ambitious goals can be extremely difficult to implement. Changes in learning outcomes and teacher practices have not kept pace with the desired results. In order to truly see long-term change, greater investment in systems to support schools, teachers and learners is needed.

Bibliography Administradora de Subsidios Sociales, ADESS. ‘Programas de Transferencias Monetarias Condicionadas’ (Santo Domingo: ADESS, 2015). Available online: http:// www.adess.gov.do/v2/P_SoloTexto.aspx?EntId=241. (accessed 18 September 2015). Central Intelligence Agency, CIA, ‘The World Factbook: Dominican Republic’ (2015). Available online: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ dr.html. (accessed 30 October 2015). Coalición Educación Digna. ‘Consejo de Educación aprueba solicitar al Gobierno el 4.09 del PIB para la educación’. 15 September 2011. Available online: http:// educaciondigna.com/2011/09/15/consejo-de-educacion-aprueba-solicitar-algobierno-el-4-09-del-pib-para-la-educacion/(accessed 30 October 2015). Coalición Educación Digna. ‘La CED responde al MINERD quien plantea movimiento del 4% los “ha dejado solos”’. 3 December 2014. Available online: http:// educaciondigna.com/2014/12/03/la-ced-responde-al-minerd-quien-plantea-quemovimiento-del-4-los-ha-dejado-solos/(accessed 30 October 2015). Consejo Nacional de Educación. (2013). Ordenanza No. 03-2013. Available online: http://www.educando.edu.do/portal/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/ Ordenanza-03_2013_estructura-sistema-educativo-RD.pdf (accessed 15 May 2017). Dirección General de Programas Especiales de la Presidencia, DIGEPEP. ‘Quisqueya Aprende Contigo’. 2015a. Available online: http://digepep.gob.do/quisqueyaaprende-contigo (accessed 22 September 2015). Dirección General de Programas Especiales de la Presidencia, DIGEPEP (2015), ‘Quisqueya Empieza Contigo’. 2015b. Available online: http://digepep.gob.do/ quisqueya-sin-miseria/quisqueya-empieza-contigo (accessed 22 September 2015). Echávarri Arbizu, Francisca María. Marco Nacional de Cualificaciones para República Dominicana: Bases (Santo Domingo: Ministerio de Educación, 2015). Available online: http://www.oei.es/etp/Marco_Nacional_Cualificaciones_Bases_ RepDominica.pdf (accessed 30 October 2015). EPDC – Education Policy and Data Center. Dominican Republic National Education Profile (Washington, DC: FHI360, 2014). Available online: http://www.epdc. org/sites/default/files/documents/EPDC%20NEP_Dominican%20Republic.pdf (accessed 18 September 2015).

304

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

IDEC. Informe semestral de seguimiento y monitoreo, primer semestre 2014 (Santo Domingo: Iniciativa Dominicana por una Educación de Calidad, 2014). IDEC. Informe semestral de seguimiento y monitoreo, primer semestre 2015 (Santo Domingo: Iniciativa Dominicana por una Educación de Calidad IDEC, 2015). INAFOCAM. Dominio conceptual: Necesidades formativas de los docentes de la República Dominicana (Santo Domingo: Instituto Nacional de Formación y Capacitación del Magisterio, 2014). Available online: http://www.inafocam.edu.do/ portal/data/pdf/pub/Estudio_dominio_conceptual.pdf (accessed 30 October 2015). INAFOCAM. Sistematización del primer año de ejecución de la Estrategia de Formación Continua Centrada en la Escuela (EFCCE) (Santo Domingo: Instituto Nacional de Formación y Capacitación del Magisterio, 2015). Available online: http://www. inafocam.edu.do/portal/data/2015/SISTEMATIZACION_DEL_PRIMER_ANO_ DE_EJECUCION.pdf (accessed 30 October 2015). Ley 66-97: Ley Orgánica de Educación de la República Dominicana (Santo Domingo, 1997). Available online: http://www.educando.edu.do/files/5513/9964/5391/Ley_ General_Educacion_66-97.pdf (accessed 18 September 2015). LLECE – Laboratorio Latinoamericano de Evaluación de la Calidad de la Educación. Reporte técnico: Segundo Estudio Regional Comparativo y Explicativo: Los aprendizajes de los estudiantes de América Latina y el Caribe (Santiago: UNESCO Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean, 2008). Available online: http:// unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0019/001902/190297s.pdf (accessed 12 August 2015). LLECE – Laboratorio Latinoamericano de Evaluación de la Calidad de la Educación. Comparación de resultados del segundo y tercer estudio regional comparativo y explicativo (Santiago: UNESCO Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean, 2014). Available online: http://www.unesco.org/new/fileadmin/ MULTIMEDIA/FIELD/Santiago/pdf/Primera-Entrega-TERCE-Final.pdf (accessed 12 August 2015). Medina, Danilo. ‘Discurso de Toma de Posesión del Excelentísimo Señor Presidente de la República Dominicana, Lic. Danilo Medina Sánchez’. El Nuevo Diario, 16 agosto, 2012. Available online: http://www.elnuevodiario.com.do/app/article. aspx?id=298803 (accessed 22 September 2015). MEPyD – Ministerio de Economía, Planificación y Desarrollo (2012). Ley 1-12: Estrategia Nacional de Desarrollo 2030’, Santo Domingo, Ministerio de Economía, Planificación y Desarrollo. Available online: http://economia.gob.do/mepyd/ wp-content/uploads/archivos/end/marco-legal/ley-estrategia-nacional-dedesarrollo.pdf (accessed 5 August 2015). MINERD – Ministerio de Educación de la República Dominicana. Memoria 2010 (Santo Domingo: MINERD, 2010). Available online: http://www.minerd.gob.do/ Transparencia/InformeLogros/Memoria%202010.pdf (accessed 30 October 2015). MINERD – Ministerio de Educación de la Republica Dominicana. Bases de la Revisión y Actualización Curricular (Santo Domingo: Ministerio de Educación, 2014a).

Dominican Republic: An Overview

305

Available online: http://www.ibe.unesco.org/curricula/dominicanrepublic/dr_ alfw_2014_spa.pdf (accessed 30 October 2015). MINERD – Ministerio de Educación de la República Dominicana. Estándares Profesionales y del Desempeño para la Certificación y Desarrollo de la Carrera Docente (Santo Domingo: MINERD, 2014b). Available online: http://www.minerd. gob.do/documentosminerd/EPDD.pdf (accessed 18 September 2015). MINERD – Ministerio de Educación de la República Dominicana. Informe resultados pruebas nacionales 2014, primera convocatoria (Santo Domingo: Dirección de Evaluación de la Calidad de la Educación, 2014c). Available online: http://www. minerd.gob.do/documentosminerd/INFORME%20ESTADISTICO%20DE%20 PRUEBA%20PRIMERA%20CONVOCATORIA%202014%201%20VF.pdf. (accessed 22 September 2015). MINERD – Ministerio de Educación de la República Dominicana. Rendición de cuentas 2014 (Santo Domingo: Ministerio de Educación, 2014d). Available online: http:// www.educando.edu.do/portal/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/rendicion-de-cuentas2014ultima-version-3.pdf (accessed 5 August 2015). MINERD – Ministerio de Educación de la República Dominicana. Sólo el 31 por ciento de los aspirantes a profesores superó las pruebas en los Concursos de Oposición (Santo Domingo: MINERD, 2015). Available online: http://www.minerd.gob.do/ documentosminerd/Resultados%20concurso%20de%20opcición%20Docente.pdf (accessed 4 November 2015). OECD. Reviews of National Policies for Education – Dominican Republic (Paris: OECD Publishing, 2008). Pacto Nacional para la Reforma Educativa en la República Dominicana 2014–2030 (Santo Domingo: Palacio Nacional, 2015). Available online: http://pactoeducativo. do/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Pacto-Nacional-para-la-Reforma-Educativa-en-laRepublica-Dominicana.pdf (accessed 18 September 2015). SEE - Secretaría de Estado de Educación, SEE. Plan Decenal de Educación 2008-2018: Un instrumento de trabajo en procura de la Excelencia Educativa (Santo Domingo: Secretaría de Estado de Educación, 2008). Available online: http://www.minerd.gob. do/documentosminerd/Planificacion/planes/PLAN_DECENAL_final.pdf (accessed 5 August 2015). UNESCO-IBE. (2006). Sistema educativo de República Dominicana. World Data on Education, 6th edition. Available online: www.oei.es/historico/pdfs/Dominicana_ datos2006.pdf (accessed 15 May 2017). UNICEF. Análisis de situación de la infancia y la adolescencia en la República Dominicana (Santo Domingo: Ministerio de Economía, Planificación y Desarrollo, 2012). Available online: http://www.unicef.org/republicadominicana/Analisis_ Situacion_Ninez_corregido_ago13__web(1).pdf (accessed 18 September 2015). World Bank. Data on Dominican Republic’. 2014. Available online: http://data. worldbank.org/country/dominican-republic (accessed 18 September 2015).

16

Haiti: Education at the Crossroads Pierre Lubin and Roselor François

Introduction There are just ten countries in the world with adult literacy rates below 50 per cent; Haiti is one of them.1 Furthermore, only 4 per cent of children who attended school in Haiti completed the nine years of primary school and thereafter entered secondary school.2 Against the backdrop of these alarming education statistics, the Haitian Ministry of Education (Ministère de l’Education Nationale et de la Formation Profesionnelle) is incapable of fulfilling its basic constitutional mandate – namely, make education available to all free of charge, ensure that all public and private school teachers are properly trained and fairly compensated, and regulate all educational and vocational activities. Incongruently, 50 per cent of Haitian students do not attend school;3 nearly 80 per cent of Haitian teachers have never received pre-service training4 and 50 per cent of public sector teachers lack basic qualifications,5 not to mention 90 per cent of primary schools in Haiti are non-public and managed by communities, religious or non-governmental organizations.6 It, therefore, comes as no surprise that conversations about Haitian education – even among high-profile educationalists – are often reduced to advocating building more schools in order to increase access. Even when discussions go beyond ‘access’ and address quality of education, seldom do they go beyond improving system oversight and finding methods to strengthen basic literacy and numeracy so that more students can pass the national exams. In other words, the movers and shakers of Haitian education are fixated on finding ways to build more schools that more or less function like the Catholic congregational schools, which are considered the ‘very best’ Haitian schools. It begs the question, however: Is increasing access, strengthening supervision

Haiti: Education at the Crossroads

307

of schools and teaching students the three Rs7 (well enough to pass tests) the panacea to Haiti’s educational woes? In fact, various debilitating aspects of this system have been identified: it promotes French culture at the expense of Haitian culture (Hurbon 2004), and the pedagogy used to instruct student is not grounded in Haitian culture either (Madhere 2010). Both its language policy and curriculum, which heavily favour French, impede learning, creativity and scientific thinking (DeGraff 2009). The system also reinforces elite closure8 (DeGraff 2013). That is, it disadvantages the vast majority of Kreyòl monolingual Haitians and greatly advantages the tiny elite who speak French (Hebblethwaite 2012). This inherently anti-democratic (Tardieu 1990) and non-pragmatic (Dejean 2010) system produces an untold number of self-alienated individuals (Tontongi 2007) who in turn reproduce a separate and unequal society (Price-Mars 2002). As Locher (2010) has posited, the fragmented system is an internally inefficient9 social filtering entity whose main product is dropouts. Attentive to the foregoing incomplete list of issues, we argue as follows: the strategy of building more schools and staffing them with better-trained teachers who can competently teach the three Rs and supervisors who can rationally supervise and update their ministerial superiors of their schools’ progress (or lack of) will outright fail to resolve the above-mentioned deeply imbedded ills. Instead, that approach will continue to repeat an unacceptable outcome and make it more difficult, if not impossible, to either change or seriously repair the system. The reason for this is fourfold. First, the Haitian schooling system was established in the early nineteenth century by a Haitian elite with an astonishing taste for French culture10 and a bewildering distaste for everything and anything that reminded them of African culture.11 (Bear in mind, 95 per cent of the Haitian population is of African ancestry.) Second, assisted by the same elite (many of its members schooled in France), the system was subsequently shaped by imperialist French-Catholic agents to benefit France – not Haiti.12 Third, the system’s philosophical underpinnings are inherently anti-Haitian culture and interest.13 Fourth, arguably it remains the principal neo-colonial agent of socialization in Haiti because, from the early nineteenth century till present, the Catholic congregational schools continue to be the main promoters of French culture in Haiti and the principal manufacturers of the Haitian elite.14 By and large, most Haitian sectors still consider these institutions as exemplary institutions, and other schools try to copy them.15 We argue further that the system must be discontinued and undergo revolutionary change so that it works in the interest of Haiti and

308

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

all Haitians. That requires transformational leadership, not transactional leadership (Burke 2002). To make our case, we proceed as follows: in the first section, we briefly examine three key legal documents and a list of instruction-related recommendations made by a French diplomat circa 1825–30. The recommendations aimed at advising French authorities on the best strategies for France to establish a neocolonial regime in Haiti (Brière 2007). We end this section by highlighting some of the important and relevant features of what ordinary Haitians as well as most researchers of Haitian education generally consider the crème de la crème schools in the Haitian schooling system.16 This is to demonstrate that two of the three legal documents and the recommendations have left their ineffaceable imprints on the system’s nomenclature and functioning. In the second section, we provide a snapshot of three major education reforms which occurred during the twentieth century that attempted to make changes in the system. Our synopsis demonstrates that all three failed to resolve any of the above-mentioned fundamental problems, nor did they repair the system in any meaningful way. We end the section with four important lessons that well-intent change agents must heed. Lastly, given the system’s historical neo-colonial raison d’être – a reality not fully apprehended by most conversationalists, reform agents or policy elites – we conclude that it must be radically transformed. We also propose the brand of leadership that is necessary to carry out this transformation.

Instruction during the colonial era The past is never dead. It’s not even past. –William Faulkner In a Faulkner sense and as Joint (2006) encourages, researchers of Haitian education must interrogate Haiti’s extant past to gain an appreciation of the present state of education in Haiti. The following four questions about the schooling system are a good place to start the interrogation: 1. 2. 3. 4.

Who were the actors who conceived, created and shaped the system? What were the motives and goals of the actors for creating the system? What specific measures did the actors take to materialize their goals? What were the outcomes of the specific measures taken?

Haiti: Education at the Crossroads

309

As mentioned in the introduction, there are three legal documents and a list of education-oriented recommendations that form the bedrock of the system. One of these legal documents was promulgated during the colonial era, while the other two and the recommendations occurred in the postcolonial period. In the order that they occurred, they are as follows: 1. 2. 3. 4.

Le Code Noir of 1685 Haitian Constitution of 1805 Mollien’s Recommendations, circa 1825 to 1831 The Concordat of 1860

Taken together, their examination is useful in answering the above four questions as well as illuminating the basis for the aforementioned entrenched issues in Haitian education.

Le Code Noir Circa 1630, buccaneers and French pirates known as flibustiers (freebooters) began to settle on the Tortuga Island, an island situated in the northwestern waters of Haiti. The freebooters attacked and looted passing vessels, and, increasingly, they moved into the mainland and successfully challenged the Spaniards, the original European colonizers of the territory, for control of the island (Zéphir 2010: 57). It would not be long before their success gave France a bold idea: take control of the entire island. So, in indeed a bold move in 1665, France assigned Bertrand d’Oregon as governor of the island and renamed it Saint Domingue.17 The French now needed to establish their own system of exploitation on the island. To that end, they introduced the exclusif (or le Colbertisme) economic model, which is a system that stipulated that the colony could only buy from and sell goods to France, and France set all the prices (‘Tout par et pour la métropole’). Slave labour was the engine of that system, and slave masters needed a mechanism to keep the economic engine running smoothly so to speak. That need is best summarized by a French deputy to the Constituent Assembly, Antoine Pierre Joseph Marie Barnave: Il est donc physiquement impossible que le petit nombre de blancs puisse contenir une population aussi considérable d’esclaves, si le moyen moral ne venait à l’appui des moyens physiques. Ce moyen moral est dans l’opinion qui met une distance immense entre l’homme noir et l’homme de couleur, entre l’homme de couleur et l’homme blanc (It is physically impossible for a small number of Whites to contain a population of slaves if moral medium is not used to support

310

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

the physical means. This moral medium is in the opinion that puts an immense distance between Blacks and mulattoes, between mulattoes and Whites).18

Victor Schoelcher a French abolitionist, explains further this position when he writes the following: Le salut des maîtres blancs disséminés au milieu d’un nombre tri-centuple d’esclaves noirs résidait dans la fiction de leur supériorité sur ces derniers, et par suite, dans la seconde fiction de l’inhabilité des noirs à jamais acquérir cette supériorité (The salvation of white masters circulating among a population of black slaves that is 300 times more than the population resided in the fiction of their superiority to the slaves, and also in the second fiction of the inability of Blacks to never acquire such superiority).19

Le Code Noir, promulgated in 1685 by Louis XIV, fulfilled the need expressed by Deputy Barnave above. It is the first legal document that one comes across, which stipulates what kind of instruction slaves in the colony should receive and how the process should be executed. Of the sixty articles in the document, the first four make it plain that blacks should receive instruction in Catholicism and absolutely in no other faiths. For example, the first article orders the eviction of all Jews from the colony because of their declared non-Christian beliefs; the second states that all slave masters take responsibility for ensuring that their slaves are baptized and instructed in the Catholic, Apostolic, Roman religion within a week of acquisition or be fined; the third explicitly forbids the public exercise of any other religion than Catholicism; and the fourth specifies that unless an overseer is Catholic, a slave master cannot assign him the responsibility of commanding slaves, and a slave master who commits such offence will have his slaves confiscated, and the overseer will be punished for accepting such responsibility.20 According to French historian Antoine Gisler (2000), French authorities instructed the colonization companies that were created for the development of the West Indies to recruit Catholic clergies to baptize and instruct the slaves.21 This is why, reports former Haitian priest Laennec Hurbon, there were hundreds of Catholic missionaries in the colony of Saint Domingue (modern-day Haiti), which included the orders of Capuchins, Carmelites, Jacobins, Dominicans and Jesuits.22 Antoine Gisler (1992: 46) reports that most of these priests were also slave owners. Valentin Vastey, a former slave, corroborates the foregoing point when he shares his understanding of the role of the priesthood ministry in the colony: ‘Les prêtes étaient autant d’instruments payés et employés pour nous empêcher de secouer le joug de l’esclavage. Ces prêtes nous représentaient sans cesse dans leurs sermons que les blanc étaient d’une nature supérieurs à la nôtre’ (The priests

Haiti: Education at the Crossroads

311

were paid instruments and employed to keep us under the yoke of slavery. In their sermons they relentlessly taught us that whites were innately superior).23 Rayford Logan (1930) posited that formal schooling was practically neglected in the colony. This was the case for whites and free mulattoes and blacks. The colonial administrators’ principal priority was taking the wealth of the colony via the exploitation of the slaves’ labour. This is why, noted Logan (1930: 406), from its creation until its destruction, the colony contributed but one book to French literature. This fact prompted Logan to further write as follows: ‘There was consequently no tradition, no preparation, no comprehension, practically no legacy of educational achievements’ (407). Because of this lack of educational opportunities in the colony, white colonialists and free wealthy mulattoes (and some non-mixed blacks) often went to France to study, explains Tardieu (1990). As for catechism, it survived. As it was for the slaves in the colony of Saint Domingue, it is an inescapable requirement and an essential part of student evaluation in the Catholic congregational schools, the main manufacturers of the Haitian elite.

Schooling in the postcolonial era Who controls the school, controls the country, controls religion, controls the future. –Bishop Joseph Shanahan

Haitian Constitution of 1805 Haiti claimed its independence on 1 January 1804, and, under the direction of Haiti’s Founding Father Jean Jacques Dessalines, Haitians wrote the Haitian Constitution of 1805. That constitution is the first legal document that addresses the educational needs of Haiti in the postcolonial period, and it illustrates that Dessalines prioritized education.24 Article 11 in the subsection titled ‘Preliminary Declaration’ and Article 19 in the subsection titled ‘General Dispositions’ are illustrative of this. The former states every citizen must have a trade, and the latter stipulates that each of the then-six military divisions shall have a public school to instruct young people. Dessalines’s ambitious goal did not come to past, as he was assassinated by fellow Haitian combatants on 17 October 1806. The country was subsequently divided into two major camps until 1820.

312

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

Henri Christophe, a black Grenadian-born Catholic, ruled the north; Alexandre Pétion, a mulatto Haitian-born Catholic schooled in France’s Military Academy, commanded territories in the south and the west. Both generals of the Haitian Revolution built schools in their respective territories primarily for the elite, not for the masses (Trouillot 1990). This is especially true of Pétion who created a high school modelled after the French Lycée without creating any elementary schools. His high school – Lycée Pétion, founded in 1816 as the first secondary school in the country – was not created for children of ex-slaves who had no prior education. As for Christophe, he built a number of elementary schools modelled after the British Lancastrian model as well as a Royal Academy. Pétion died of yellow fever in 1818, and Christophe committed suicide in 1820. Pétion’s acolyte Jean-Pierre Boyer succeeded him. Like his mentor, Boyer was also a mulatto Haitian-born Catholic formally schooled in France. He successfully reunited the country in 1820 and ruled until 1843. Boyer disliked schools; thus, once he had control of the North, he shut down all the schools that Christophe had built.25 This is why and how the Lancastrian model of schooling disappeared from Haitian territory. To Boyer, an unschooled populace was less of a threat to his regime. Paradoxically, he is also credited for being the first Haitian president to unify Haiti’s schooling system. Continuing the French classical schooling model – first imported by Pétion – Boyer, in 1843, established the Haitian Ministry of Public Education and appointed Honoré Féry as Haiti’s first minister of education. He is not only remembered for unifying the country and closing schools, but, above all, he is mostly remembered for agreeing to pay a defeated France a huge sum of money to have recognized Haiti’s independence and so inviting Haiti’s former colonizers to return to their former colony. Dessalines’s dream of making education accessible to all Haitian youths seemed to have died and buried along with him. More than 200 years later, Haiti has the highest percentage of illiteracy, the lowest enrolment rate and the most problematic schooling system in the region. Nonetheless, in general, the value for education lives deeply within the Haitian psyche. The high demand for education in Haiti – the country with the lowest gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, US$846, in the Americas26 – is illustrative of this. For example, 59 per cent of Haitians live under the national poverty line ($2.44 per day), and 24 per cent live under the national extreme poverty line ($1.24 per day);27 yet, despite this staggering level of poverty, 82 per cent of primary and secondary school students attend private, fee-based schools.28 The private school industry is a booming industry in Haiti because what was articulated in the 1805 Constitution still inhabits the hearts and minds of Haitians. Even Haitian families who live in

Haiti: Education at the Crossroads

313

abject poverty are willing to pay for educational services that are provided in the shoddiest conditions, and they will do the unthinkable (e.g. empty out diseaseinfested latrines with their naked hands) to earn just a pittance to send their children to school. In other words, Haitian families do not sit and wait for the Haitian elite, who, historically has paid nothing but lip service to the educational mandates of the Constitution. Our next examination sheds light on why and how the Haitian elite, from the get go, was (and continues to be) mis-educated (Woodson 1933) to work against the collective interest.

Mollien’s recommendations Haiti’s independence meant a huge economic loss for France, and it did not take long for France to deeply feel the impact. After all, as C. L. R. James puts it in his The Black Jacobins, in 1789, Saint Domingue – ‘the greatest colony in the world, the pride of France and the envy of every imperialist nation’ – was responsible for two-thirds (66 per cent) of France’s overseas trade.29 Such a loss in commerce was a crippling blow, especially for a nation which was also at war with other European nations from 1799 to 1815 in what historians commonly refer to as the ‘Napoleonic Wars’. France considered recolonizing Haiti as a rational option to revive its economy. To that end, it embarked on a neo-colonial mission in its former colony, which had broken away from its domination in 1804. Charles X, the then-king of France, recognized Haiti’s independence in April 1825. This came after France had engaged in a series of sabre-rattling acts, which led Boyer to agree to give French merchants customs privileges and to also pay France an exorbitant indemnity of 150 million francs for the loss and damage of properties incurred by French citizens during the Haitian Revolution. (It should be noted that the idea of indemnifying France came from a Haitian mulatto president, Alexandre Pétion, when he proposed that to a French emissary named Dauxion-Lavaysse.30) Beyond that, under the guise of diplomatic recognition and relations, France actively embarked on a reconnaissance mission to figure out the best way to bring back its former colony under its clutch. GaspardThéodore Mollien, a young monarchist, was the ideal French diplomat for that particular mission, and French studies scholar Jean-François Brière (2007) in his informative article, ‘Du Sénégal aux Antilles: Gaspard-Théodore Mollien en Haïti, 1825-1831’, describes some of Mollien’s undertakings in Haiti during the six years that Mollien spent there. Mollien was under thirty when he was assigned the post of vice consul in the northern Haitian city of Cap-Haïtien, but had an impressive curriculum vitae.

314

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

He had already been on several missions in Africa, served in the French Foreign Service, represented France as a diplomat in Colombia and made a name for himself in Europe by publishing about some of his breathtaking adventures, including being a crew member of the famous shipwrecked Medusa in 1816. The proslavery conservative was the right man for the job. He aptly put his skills to work during his assignment in Haiti for the advancement of his country’s interest. As Brière (2007) cogently put it: ‘Il était clairement partisan de l’établissement de ce que nous appellerions aujourd’hui un régime néocolonial sur Haïti’ (He was clearly a proponent of establishing in Haiti what we refer to today as a neo-colonial regime).31 He explored the country, interrogated the inhabitants, observed the residents’ customs and habits and used his collected data to write extensive reports, which he sent to his superiors. (He even wrote one of the first history books on Haiti.) He recommended to them that France, unlike the United States and England, should not only pursue commercial expansion, but also vigorously push for political and cultural influence in Haiti if it were serious about regaining control of the terrain. In this regard, according to Brière (2007), among other suggestions, Mollien also recommended that France adopt the following educationally related measures: ● ●

● ● ●

Send French teachers and priests to instruct especially the Haitian elite. Do not do anything to upset and turn the mulatto Haitians against France. Mollien saw that particular group as genuine lovers and natural allies of France and thus preservers and promoters of both French culture and interest in Haiti. Concentrate on making Haitians believe that they are French. Shape the Haitian mind to consume only products of French industries. Create a French newspaper in Haiti that reinforces France’s influence and supremacy project, but be sure to let a black person run it.

Mollien’s advices did not fall on deaf ears. All one has to do is visit what are considered the elite schools of Haiti or interview students from these institutions, and it will be quite visible that the seeds Mollien planted took root, grew, blossomed and are indeed quite salient in the landscape of Haitian education. It will also be clear that the Haitian elite, in general, fantasizes about being somebody that they can never be: French – no matter how much effort they put forth. To a great extent, Mollien’s ideas found a home and constitute a big chunk of the philosophical foundation of the schooling system. The Concordat of 1860 officially materialized his ideas.

Haiti: Education at the Crossroads

315

The Concordat of 1860 It took fifty-six years for the Vatican to finally recognize Haiti as a sovereign nation, and that recognition came in a package with a high price tag: the Concordat of 1860. Whatever the cost, it was inconceivable to the mulatto president Fabre Nicolas Géffrard – a fervent Catholic and equally a staunch opponent of Vodou – that Haiti not have normalized relations with the Holy See. He was willing to pay the price for Haiti to be a full-fledged Catholic nation, and for Haiti’s schooling system – the one that Mollien envisioned and the Haitian elite sought after – to be spearheaded by the Catholic Church. So, the Concordat bolstered the church’s sphere of influence over the entire schooling system. The Church of France was tasked with the responsibility of educating Haiti’s youth (Viélot 1975). In conjunction with the Haitian elite – their end product – it did more than elevate French culture way above Haitian culture; it outright taught Haitians, especially the elite, to denigrate and despise various aspects of Haitian culture, notably Vodou and Kreyòl. For example, it was not until after 1946 that Haitian history was taught in the congregational schools. And as Viélot wrote in 1975, ‘Very few of the 12 % of Haitians who can read and write today can claim they had not been exposed to the brainwashing of lessons during which students had to repeat the famous phrase, “Our ancestors, the Gauls”’ (p. 118). The church had the ideal human resource to teach Haitians self-hate. For example, the French missionary Léon Bonnaud (1938, v) in his book, L’Apostolat en Haiti: Le Journal d’un Missionnaire, affirms, ‘C’est de Bretagne, en effet, que partent, pour cette île lointaine, la plupart des apôtres que Dieu destine à son évangélisation. Presque toutes les paroisses bretonnes ont fourni à la Mission d’Haïti, un ou plusieurs de leurs enfants (Indeed, it is from Bretagne that most of the apostles of God left to go on their evangelization mission. Almost all of the Bretton parishes provided to the Mission one or many of their children to the Mission in Haiti).32 Undeniably the bulk of clergy educators were from Bretagne, France, a conservative and anti-revolutionary zone in the post-French Revolution period that was known for being monarchist and proslavery, notes Phillip Delisle (2003) in his book Le catholicisme en Haiti au XIX siècle. Le rêve d’une ‘Bretagne noire’ (1860-1915). This is why, for example, from the signing of the Concordat to 1940, the priest society of Saint-Jacques supplied Haiti with 15 bishops and 850 priests – a whopping 700 of them were Brettons.33 Our fieldwork in Haiti confirms what other scholars have said about the features of Catholic schools. They are the leaders of the schooling industry in Haiti, and the other schools in the system, by and large, take their cues from them

316

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

in terms of what to teach and how to teach. As Haitian educationalist Auguste Joint (2006: 313) states, the Catholic schools set the tone, and are the deciders of what needs to be kept or changed in the schooling system. The following are some of the characteristics of these model schools: ●

●

●

●

●

● ●

●

●

● ●

●

Compared to most other schools, they are well administered, adequately staffed and have sufficient teaching materials and physical space. The administrators and instructors are tough disciplinarians who will not hesitate to use corporal and psychological punishment to keep things under control. The instructors are able to teach their subjects in French; however, this does not necessarily mean that all of them are fluent in French. Instruction is in French, and the use of Kreyòl on campus is generally forbidden and punished. The curriculum and books used are written by Les Frères de l’Instruction Chrétienne (FIC) as well as imported from France and Québec. Also, the FIC’s input is weighty in the creation of the national exams. Compared to other schools, their passing rate of national exams is high. French culture, values and mannerisms are upheld (e.g. competence in French, prayers to European saints) to reinforce what is commonly referred to as La mission civilisatrice Française (French civilizing mission). In addition to the banning of Kreyòl in school, many other essential aspects of Haitian culture are also prohibited (e.g. to do, say or display anything that is perceived as having to do with Vodou is totally banned). Students are well trained in bat pakè (rote learning or memorize lessons by heart). Group work is rare, if ever. Catholic schools are the principal manufacturers of the Haitian economic, political, social and intellectual elite. Though, in recent times, more and more elite families (who can afford it) are sending their children to what is known as ‘international schools’ (e.g. anglophone Union School, francophone Lycée Français). They employ a relatively rigorous process to select students. During the process, they try to determine socio-economic profile, prioritizing mixedrace and affluent Haitians. For example, some of the methods that they use to select students are as follows: interviews to determine socio-economic status, preference given to alumni’s children, letter of recommendations from notables and admission tests.

Haiti: Education at the Crossroads

317

The foregoing characteristics are not exhaustive, but do shed some light on the functioning of these ‘very respectable’ schools that the other ‘respectable’ and ‘not so respectable’ schools try to emulate, provided they have the means to do so. However, a number of prominent Haitian scholars – Jean Price-Mars, Jacques Roumain, Yves Dejean, Michel DeGraff, Laennec Hurbon and Auguste Joint – who have studied different aspects of the system have not hesitated to critique some of the practices of these elite institutions. To them, some of these practices are part of the problem, as they mar and debilitate the system. Thus, they have called for reforming the system. For example, Yves Dejean and Michel DeGraff have been at the helm of the battle to make Kreyòl – the mother tongue of almost all Haitians – the language of instructions at all levels of schooling instead of French, a language that only about five out of every hundred Haitians speak.34 Similarly, a number of outsiders and donor agencies – the US government, The World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank and so forth – have long called for and have exercised both political and economic pressure on various governments to reform the system so that it fits within a neo-liberal structure. As such, there have been numerous attempts to reform the system, dating back as early as 1915.

Major education reforms Prou (2009) identifies three major attempts to repair system – namely, during the US occupation of Haiti, 1915–34; The Dartigue Reform of the 1940s; and The Bernard Reform of the 1970s and 1980s.35 These reforms may not have accomplished what they set out to accomplish; however, they brought to light certain aspects of the system which must be noted, appreciated and critiqued. In this regard, we use the following three questions to summarize them: 1. Who were the principal actors? 2. What aspects of the system did they try to reform and for what purpose? 3. What were the outcomes?

Reform under US occupation The first major attempt to bring changes to the system came during the time when the United States invaded Haiti in 1915. As the metaphoric police with the big stick in the region, the United States deemed that Haiti was politically

318

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

unstable and incapable of paying its international debts, and that these factors attracted the presence of European debt-collecting troops in the hemisphere. In other words, the United States saw the western hemisphere as its backyard, and it did not want any unwanted European strangers in it. So, under the pretext of restoring political and economic stability, it invaded Haiti in 1915 and remained there until 1934. It was during this period that the first serious attempt to bring changes to the schooling system occurred. Leon Pamphille (1985), investigating the American impact on Haitian education during the occupation, posits that the system underwent major restructuring in terms of transplanting new pedagogy, curricula and administration. He explains that a curriculum that was primarily unvaried in the past, ‘shifted from classical to vocational emphasis’.36 He adds that these educational transfers failed, however, primarily because American colonizers failed to allow Haitian educators to participate meaningfully in the innovations, especially since Haitians had their own ideas on how to improve their schools. For example, Pamphille (1985) notes that Haitians outright rejected Dr George Freeman’s (American-born director of the Service Technique during the occupation) designed educational plan, which attempted to revamp both the Haitian education and economic systems by dismantling forty national schools, which he contended ‘followed a strictly classical curriculum’, while erecting twelve industrial schools.37 Logan (1930), writing on the same subject, posits that to many Haitians the plan seemed to imply that Haitians are best suited for vocational training only and that was inconsistent with their values and aspirations. From the get go, the reform had no chance of succeeding. Haitians, in general, mistrusted Americans, as they perceived the US Marines stationed in Haiti as racist oppressors. The influential Catholic Church – historically an organ of French imperialism during both the colonial and neo-colonial eras – opposed the reform. The French-speaking elite, primarily trained in Catholic institutions, viewed the reform as an American imposition, attempting to eliminate the French classical educational model. The Haitian masses – whose ideal is the Haitian elite – saw it as a scheme to create two separate and unequal systems, a classical ‘superior’ one for the urban elite and a vocational-agricultural ‘inferior’ one for the rural masses. Almost all, if not all, sectors opposed it. Haitians resisted, protested and battled American soldiers until the occupation ended in 1934. Before the occupation, only a small percentage of Haitians attended school. In truth, the occupiers used Haitian monies to build schools, thus expanded schooling access in the country, especially in the rural parts of Haiti where relatively few schools existed prior to the invasion. They also made

Haiti: Education at the Crossroads

319

significant contributions in the areas of health and hygiene. Nonetheless, the direct imposition of American culture and intellect on the Haitian people – for twenty-nine years – yielded a mere 2.5 per cent increase in the nation’s literacy rate; it went from 8.2 per cent to 10.7 per cent, reports Viélot (1975: 125). After the US departure, the educational changes gradually faded away, but did not disappear completely, as there were on and off efforts to incorporate vocational training into the French classical model. The idea to make the system more vocational and agricultural would resurface again in the post-US occupation period, leading to the second major reform in the system’s history.

The Dartigue Reform of the 1940s Like his American mentors, Maurice Dartigue misapprehended what he was getting into. That is, he knew what he wanted to change, but did not know how to change a system that seemed to be culturally locked. As a US-trained Haitian public official, Dartigue was very dissatisfied with and very critical of the Haitian elite. Additionally, he was disappointed with the overall state of affairs in Haiti and particularly the schooling system in his time. To him, transforming the schooling system was the ultimate solution. On the one hand, he was an opponent of the French classical model, which he viewed as a destructive element in nation-building efforts. On the other hand, he was a proponent of the American vocational-agricultural model. He also favoured borrowing educational goods and pedagogical best practices from the United States and everywhere else. He contended that this approach was indispensable for economic, political, social and cultural progress in Haiti. So, after completing a master’s degree at Teachers College, Columbia University in New York City, Dartigue returned to Haiti. He was the director of rural education during the final year of the occupation, and post-US occupation during Élie Lescot’s presidential term, he served as minister of public instruction, labour and agriculture from 1941 to 1945. In her examination of Dartigue’s proclivity for collaborations with the United States – former occupiers that had not too long ago left the Haitian territory – Chantalle Verna explains that the Haitian reformer believed that if Haiti really wanted to resolve its educational, economic and political problems and also maintain its cultural sovereignty, it had to absolutely collaborate intellectually with the United States.38 He believed that Haitians, including and especially the elite at the time, were alienated as well as intellectually and politically ill-prepared to help move the country forward. What is more, he strongly held that the elite’s overreliance on French culture, clergy educators and educational model was integrally

320

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

problematic in that it prevented Haitians from developing their own culture. He also maintained that French paternalism blocked Haitians from creating a stable economic system and fashioning an education system that corresponds to Haitian reality. As such, he went out in full-throttle fashion to reform the system. According to Verna (2007), ‘He advanced reform efforts intended to broaden access to public education, professionalize Haiti’s civil service system, acquire resources by collaborating with foreign nations (particularly the United States), and promote a Haitian national culture that was self-defined, rather than dependent on French culture’.39 He was an advocator for infusing agricultural training into educational programmes, especially in rural Haiti. His initiative also allowed for the use of the mother tongue during the first two years of primary schooling. But, at the end of the day, Dartigue’s initiatives were outright resisted, especially by the French-speaking elite. Dartigue and the mulatto president, under whom he served, were viewed by an incalculable number of Haitians as representatives of American imperialism, trying to ‘Americanize’ a French system. As Prou (2009) notes, his educational policies were dismissed as an ‘old wine in a new bottle’,40 and the wine was not French. He encountered great hostility, and fearing for his life, Dartigue went into exile. One can say with serenity that the Dartigue legacy laid the foundation for Haitian policy elites to collaborate with both US government and nongovernmental agencies to receive aid for developing the schooling system, and not rely solely on France and French clergies. In the end, however, the French classical model prevailed, and education in Haiti progressively returned back to its usual state. Meaning, the Catholic schools (mainly located in Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti) continued to be the definers of what a stellar Haitian education meant: French as the language of instruction; French curriculum; and textbooks written in French, expressing French content and culture and written for French students – not Haitians. In the opening line of his famed poem, Harlem, Langston Hughes asks, ‘What happens to a dream deferred?’ In the Haitian case, the dream to modify the schooling system sagged like a heavy load into the 1950s and 1960s and exploded in the 1970s. It yielded the Bernard Reform.

Bernard Reform It, too, failed. Against the backdrop of an economy run into the ground by a licentious US–France-supported dictator, Jean Claude ‘Baby Doc’ Duvalier, foreign and local reformers collaborated in the 1970s and 1980s – once again – to try to repair the system. The reformers, like the ones of the two previous

Haiti: Education at the Crossroads

321

reforms, maintained that a reformed schooling system was necessary to give the downtrodden Haitian economy a much needed push to get it rolling on the road of ‘development’. Though not for the right, moral or progressive reasons, the dictatorial regime saw the reform as the perfect opportunity. It was an opening for the despotic government to calm growing tension, emanating from various oppositional sectors throughout different parts of the country. It also served to mollify watchdog organizations that had been very critical of the regime’s egregious human rights violation record. Arguably above all other things, it was an occasion for the corrupt government to secure relatively huge sums of aid from international institutions such as the InterAmerican Development Bank (IDB), which had been pressuring the Haitian government to align its schooling system with the demands of both national and international labour markets. In addition to the serious issues underscored in the introduction above, the reformers also had the following age-old educational problems to contend with: insufficient schools, scarce teaching materials, untrained and poorly trained teachers, low graduation rates, high retention rates, high dropout rates, malnourished students, outdated pedagogical methods, irrelevant French curriculum and, at best, a poorly supervised system. But, as Prou (2009: 30) notes, the most controversial aspect of the Bernard Reform which eclipsed all other facets was the introduction of Kreyòl as a language of instruction only during the first four years of schooling. During his investigation of teachers’ attitude of Kreyòl, Leslie Jean-Francois (2006) noted that the aim of the reformers was neither to replace French with Kreyòl nor to put the mother tongue on equal footing with the dominant language; instead, it was merely a pedagogical best practice to get Haitian students – of whom the overwhelming majority are monolingual Kreyòl speakers – to learn French more effectively as well as more efficiently. That is, it has been long established – since the early 1950s – that learners learn best in languages that they are competent in. And while French was and still remains the language of the schooling system, not more than 5 per cent of Haitians speak it at varying degrees.41 Alarmingly, 80 per cent of Haitian teachers lack competence in it, too.42 So, one does not need to be a pedagogue to understand why Kreyòl is the most potent language to use to teach Haitians, if mastery of subjects is the aim. Common sense is sufficient to inform that judgement, but, paradoxically, not in the Haitian case. The Bernard Reform encountered wide resistance. The Catholic Church resisted. Simon Fass (1988) reports that although the Catholic Church successfully used Kreyòl to promote literacy in its various dioceses, it stood firmly against its

322

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

implementation in its sponsored schools, as they considered ‘French the ideal pathway to enlightenment’ (p. 261). Of course this meant, in general, even the Haitian reformers were not committed to the reform, nor did they really want it, for many of them – if not all – were either Catholics or by-products of Catholic schooling or both. That is why they intentionally botched it. Haitian teachers and parents opposed as well. Their behaviour is not an enigma at all. Haiti in the 1970s and 1980s was (and still is) a country where the elite – the most ‘successful’ Haitians – by and large, speak French and idealize French culture. Haitian teachers wanted ‘success’, too. They desired upward mobility for their children, and they know that speaking French and being able to mimic French culture is cultural capital in Haitian society. Speaking French is rewarded with power and privileges, for it is the language of power that gives entry into the halls of power in Haiti. French is a social marker that confers prestige not only in Haiti, but also in Haitian communities throughout the Haitian diaspora, and to be a Haitian living in Haiti and not speak it means a slew of negative things – uneducated, poor, uncouth and so on. Haitian teachers and parents knew this, and they would not have it; they wanted instruction in French, as it is done in the ‘very best’ schools. Fass (1988) reports that millions of dollars vanished and went unaccounted for; consequently, the international donor agencies that pressed for and financed the reform in the first place, realizing that battle was lost, systematically pulled out until they ceased all disbursements. ‘Was Bernard education reform a success or failure?’ is one of the three questions that Prou (2009) uses to guide his analysis of the reform.43 He concedes (and we concur) that the reform lent itself to reorienting the system by bringing some changes in the areas of bilingual education, curriculum modification, school reorganization and recognition of Kreyòl; however, he advances that the reform did not help to improve Haiti’s economic structure, nor did it strengthen its political and social institutions. He, therefore, concludes the initiative was predestined to fail from the onset because neither the foreign actors nor the local agents demonstrated the commitment, ownership and political will that were necessary to assure the reform’s success. There are patterns. Combined, all three initiatives provide very important lessons, which well-intentioned change agents must pay attention to: 1. All three reforms were either initiated and controlled by outsiders or heavily influenced by foreigners. That (and the lack of transparency) engendered suspicion. There is a popular saying that Haitians frequently use to express their mistrust of Haitian officials and professionals who collaborate with

Haiti: Education at the Crossroads

323

foreigners in especially non-transparent projects: Yo mare nan pye tab kominote entènasyonal la (They are tied up at the feet of the international community’s table). 2. In all three cases, the reformers adopted a top-down approach, not a participatory one. That created or intensified avoidable resistance to change. 3. The reformers of all three reforms misjudged the power of the Catholic Church and overlooked its historical imperialist mission and record in Haiti. That was sheer carelessness and naïveté. 4. The reformers undoubtedly took note of some of the perils of the official curriculum, especially in the congregational schools. This kind of curriculum is explicit, and all eyes can see it. However, they were either unaware of or had seriously underestimated the powerful consequences of both the null curriculum and hidden curriculum. The former are messages that are – wittingly or unwittingly – silenced or omitted (e.g. that there were books, libraries and universities on the African continent in the pre-colonial era). The latter kind carries implicit messages and has hidden objectives (e.g. students are complimented in French and punished in Kreyòl). As international educator Ratna Ghosh (2008) postulates, it is the hidden curriculum which potentially does the most damage; it is insidious, and its results in the schooling process can be as violent as guns, bombs and wars. As the timeless Haitian proverb goes: Ti bwa ou pa wè se li ki toujou kreve je w (the twig that we fail to see is the one that always punctures the eye and blinds us permanently). Mollien knew what he was doing. It behoves present and hopeful reformers of Haitian education to know what they are up against.

Conclusion In summary, the Haitian schooling system is the by-product of a French neocolonial project that undid the Haitian liberation project of 1804. French diplomats/agents meticulously studied the terrain and systematically planned France’s hegemonic control over Haiti. That is, instead of returning with its army to challenge its former slaves, France returned with its teachers, its clergies, its explicit and hidden curricular, its textbooks and its schools to seize the minds of Haitians, starting with the Haitian elite. That approach – the ‘mis-education’ of the Haitian elite – proved to be very effective.

324

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

It works so well that reforms after reforms, both minor and major ones, have failed to meet their stated objectives to say the least. In part, the Haitian colonial past is not dead and is kept alive in the brains of Haitians, chiefly by the ‘very best’ schools that Haiti has to offer. And in large part, conversations about Haitian education is almost exclusively about building more schools, training teachers to teach the three Rs better, and supervising the system more effectively. It seems that the conversationalists are either unmindful of the system’s history and the ideas which shaped it or are naive about their effects. The system is rotten at the core. Presently, there are a panoply of educational initiatives taking place in Haiti. It is cacophonous. These efforts are largely uncoordinated and also occurring in the midst of political, social and economic instability. In the middle of the cacophony, there are some positive accomplishments, such as the establishment of the Kreyòl Academy (Akademi Kreyòl) to strengthen the language and encourage its usage in teaching and learning; also, there is the MIT–Haiti Initiative, a collaborative effort between Haitian educators and the University of Massachusetts Institute that aims to use technology and Kreyòl as essential teaching tools in order to modernize and democratize education in Haiti. Conversely, there are also some negative things that are happening on the other side of the aisle, such as the mushrooming of ‘schools’ called ‘lekòl nan valiz’ all throughout the country. In actuality, these entities are fictitious schools that only exist on paper and are housed in a briefcase and are created to obtain subsidies from PSUGO, a programme which was created at the ministry level of education (MENFP) with the stated purpose of subsidizing free and obligatory schooling for all eligible students. Invariably, all the educational initiatives currently on the ground – ‘good’ or ‘bad’ ones – are appropriately categorized under what W. Warner Burke in his book, Organization Change: Theory and Practice, calls ‘continuous (or evolutionary) changes’, being led primarily by a type of leadership that is best characterized as transactional leadership. According to Burke (2002: 143), this kind of change normally concentrates on making continuous improvements in one or a combination of the following areas: information technology, management practices, work flow processes or reward system. Because the system’s history unequivocally demonstrates that it was not created to serve Haiti’s interest, we are convinced that it must experience discontinuous (or revolutionary) change. This kind of change focuses on how a system interfaces with its external environment; it also focuses on the system’s mission, goals and, strategies, and, in the Haitian case, it must definitely target the system’s culture. Also, this kind of change necessitates transformational leadership (a topic we will explore in greater detail in future publications).

Haiti: Education at the Crossroads

325

This revolutionary change should ideally be conducted in a similar manner that reformers in Quebec, Canada, carried out as major educational reforms during ‘La Révolution tranquille’ (The Quiet Revolution) in the 1960s. First, the Quebecers, in general, believed in the sincerity of the movement’s leadership. The educational changes took place during the government of Jean Lesage – a progressive leader who, Quebecers believed, was truly working in Quebec’s best interest. They trusted the leadership. Second, prominent members of the clergy (e.g. Monsignor Marie-Alphonse Parent, who presided over the Parent Commission, the commission which proposed the reforms) placed the interest of Quebec above that of the Catholic Church. Lastly, Quebecers had agency. Meaning, they owned the changes; it was their decision to change the system to make it work for Quebec and all Quebecers. Their decision came from within, and it was not controlled – overtly or covertly – by non-Quebecers. Likewise, Haitians need to own and control educational reforms in Haiti. After all, the system is supposed to be the Haitian education system – a system that works for Haiti’s advancement and the good of all Haitians.

Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

UIS – UNESCO (2013). Crane et al. (2010). World Bank (2013). USAID (2015). USAID (2015). USAID (2007). In the field of education, the three Rs refers to the three fundamental skills of education: reading, ’riting (writing) and ’rithmetic (arithmetic). 8. ‘Elite closure’ is a term coined by sociologist Carol Meyers-Scotton. According to the sociologist, it is a type of social mobilization strategy by which a dominant group preserves its powers and privileges via linguistic choices. 9. Internal efficiency refers to the capacity of an education system or a school to produce student learning and graduates in a cost-effective manner. 10. Pressoir (1935: 1–60). 11. Magloire-Danton (2005: 150–70). 12. Nicholls (1970 : 400–14). 13. Joint (2006 : 47). 14. Joint (2006 : 47). 15. Joint (2006 : 47).

326

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

16. When referring to the system that should be responsible for instruction in Haiti, we prefer to use ‘schooling system’ instead of ‘education system’ because as critical educators we believe, on the whole, what that system is doing is not qualified to be called ‘education’. We think Carter G. Woodson’s term ‘mis-education’ best describes the system’s activities. For a thorough elaboration of the term, see Woodson (1933). 17. Zéphir (2010: 57). 18. Gauthier (2010). 19. Victor Schoelcher cited in Bangou (1997 : 31–2). 20. See Sala-Molins (2003), ou le calvaire de Canaan for a complete analysis of Le Code Noir, 1987. 21. Gisler (2000 : 46). 22. Hurbon (1991 : 54). See also Hurbon (2004 :70). 23. Valentin Vastey cited in Nicholls (1978 : 177–212). 24. Janvier (1886). 25. Viélot (1975: 116). 26. http://www.worldbank.org/en/country/haiti/overview 27. http://www.worldbank.org/en/country/haiti/overview (retrieved on 9 September 2015). 28. http://blogs.worldbank.org/psd/haitis-private-schools. 29. CLR James, The Black Jacobins, IX. 30. Brière (2007 : 71–9). 31. Brière (2007 : 74). 32. Bonnaud (1938). 33. Rouger, ‘Entre les Bretons,’ 34. DeGraff (2013). 35. Prou (2009: 29–69). 36. Pamphille (1985: 108). 37. Pamphille (1985: 104). 38. Verna (2007 : 24). 39. Verna (2007: 25). 40. Prou (2009: 33). 41. DeGraff (2013). 42. Hebblethwaite (2012: 255–302). 43. Prou (2009 : 29).

Bibloiography Bangou, Henri. Aliénation et Désaliénation dans les Sociétés Post-esclavagistes: Le Cas de la Guadeloupe (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1997).

Haiti: Education at the Crossroads

327

Bonnaud, Léon. L’Apostolat en Haïti. Journal d’un Missionnaire (Paris: Imprimerie des Apprentis-Orphelins de Saint-Michel, 1938). Brière, Jean-François. ‘Du Sénégal aux Antilles: Gaspard-Théodore Mollien en Haïti, 1825–1831’. French Colonial History, 8 (2007): 71–9. Brutus, Edner. Instruction Publique en Haïti, 1492–1945 (Port-au-Prince: Imprimerie de l’État, 1948). Burke, W. Warner. 2002. Organization Change: Theory and Practice (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2002). Crane, Keith, James Dobbins, Laurel E. Miller, Charles P. Ries, Christopher S. Chivvis, Marla C. Haims, Marco Overhaus, Heather L. Schwartz and Elizabeth Wilke. Building a more Resilient Haitian State (Santa Monica: RAND CORP ARLINGTON VA NATIONAL SECURITY RESEARCH DIV, 2010). DeGraff, Michel. ‘Creole Exceptionalism and the (Mis)education of the Creole Speaker’. In The Languages of Africa and the Diaspora: Educating for Language Awareness, 124–44 (Bristol: Multilingual Matters, 2009). DeGraff, Michel. ‘Men Anpil, Chay pa Lou: An nou Sèvi ak Lang Kreyòl la pou Bon Jan Edikasyon ak Rechèch an Ayiti’. (2013). Available online: http://lingphil.mit.edu/ papers/degraff/degraff_20130414_kreyol_ak_teknoloji_nan_edikasyon_ann_Ayiti_ rev1023.pdf (accessed 23 December 2016). Dejean, Yves. 2010. ‘Creole and Education in Haiti’. In The Haitian Creole Language: History, Structure, Use, and Education, edited by Arthur K. Spears and Carole M. Berotte Joseph, 199–216 (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2010). Delisle, Philippe. Le Catholicisme en Haïti au XIXe Siècle: Le Rêve d’une “Bretagne Noire” (1860–1915) (Paris: Éditions Karthala, 2003). Fass, Simon. Political Economy in Haiti: The Drama of Survival (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1988). Fremin, Marie. Tontongi, Critique de la francophonie haïtienne (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2007). Gauthier, Florence. ‘De la Révolution de Saint-Domingue à l’Indépendance d’Haïti. Comment Sortir de l’Esclavage? 1789-1804’. Le Canard Républicain (2010) Available online: http://www.xn--lecanardrpublicain-jwb.net/spip.php?article267 (accessed 24 December 2016). Ghosh, Ratna. ‘Racism: A Hidden Curriculum’. Education Canada, 48, no. 4 (2008): 26–9. Gisler, Antoine. ‘L’Église et l’Esclavage aux Antilles françaises’. In Le phénomène religieux dans la Caraïbe: Guadeloupe, Martinique, Guyane, Haïti, edited by Laennec Hurbon, 43 (Paris: Éditions KARTHALA, 2000). Gisler, Antoine, Hurbon, Laennec and Gutierrez Gustavo. Évangélisation d’Haïti 1492– 1992: Introduction (Port-au-Prince: Conférence Haïtienne des Religieux, 1992). Hebblethwaite, Benjamin. ‘French and Underdevelopment, Haitian Creole and Development: Educational Language Policy Problems and Solutions in Haïti’. Journal of Pidgin & Languages, 27, no. 2 (2012): 255–302.

328

Education in Mexico, Central America and the Latin Caribbean

Hurbon, Laennec. Comprendre Haïti: Essai sur l’État, la Nation, la Culture (Paris: Karthala, 1987). Hurbon, Laennec. Religions et Lien Social: L’ Église et l’État Moderne en Haïti (Paris: Cerf, 2004). Hurbon, Laennec, Gilles Danroc, Pablo Richard and Verdier Denis. Évangélisation d’Haïti 1492–1992: Esclavage et Évangélisation (Port-au-Prince: Conférence Haïtienne des Religieux, 1991). Janvier, Louis-Joseph. Les constitutions d’Haiti, 1801–1885 (Paris: C. Marpon et E. Flammarion, libraires-éditeurs, 1886). Jean-Francois, Leslie. “Attitudes des Éducateurs Envers le Français et le Créole: Le Cas d’Dhaiti”. Ph.D. dissertation, Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College (Baton Rouge, 2006). Joint, Louis Auguste. Système Éducatif et Inégalités Sociales en Haïti: Le Cas des Écoles Catholiques (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2006). Logan, Rayford. ‘Education in Haiti’. Journal of Negro History, 15, no. 4 (1930): 401–60. Locher, Uli. ‘Education in Haiti’. In The Haitian Creole Language: History, Structure, Use, and Education, edited by Arthur K. Spears and Carole M. Berotte Joseph, 177–97 (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2010). Madhere, Serge. ‘Cultural Context, Cognitive Processes, and the Acquisition of Literacy’. In The Haitian Creole Language: History, Structure, Use, and Education, edited by Arthur K. Spears and Carole M. Berotte Joseph, 249–63 (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2010). Magloire-Danton, Gérarde. ‘Antenor Firmin and Jean Price-Mars: Revolution, Memory, Humanism’. Small Axe, 9, no. 2 (2005): 150–70. Nicholls, David. ‘Politics and Religion in Haïti’. Canadian Journal of Political Science/ Revue canadienne de science politique, 3, no. 3, (1970): 400–14. Nicholls, David. ‘Race, Couleur et Indépendance en Haïti (1804–1825)’. Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine (1954-) 25, no. 2 (1978): 177–212. Pamphille, Leon. ‘America’s Policy-making in Haitian Education, 1915–1934’. The Journal of Negro Education, 54, no. 1 (1985): 99–108. Pressoir, Catts. ‘Histoire de l’Enseignement en Haïti’. Revue de la Société d’Histoire et de Géographie d’Haïti, 6, no. 17 (1935): 1–60. Price-Mars, Jean. La Vocation de l’Élite (Port-au-Prince: Les Éditions Fardin, 2002). Prou, Marc. ‘Attempts at Reforming Haiti’s Education System: The Challenges of Mending the Tapestry, 1979–2004’. Journal of Haitian Studies, 15, no. 1/2 (2009): 29–69. Sala-Molins, Louis. Le Code Noir ou le calvaire de Canaan (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2003). Tardieu, Charles. L’Éducation en Haïti de la Période Coloniale à nos Jours (Port-auPrince: Imprimerie Henri Deschamps, 1990). The World Bank Web site. ‘Latin America & Caribbean. Our Goal: Education for All in Haiti’. Available online: http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/

Haiti: Education at the Crossroads

329

COUNTRIES/LACEXT/0,contentMDK:21896642~pagePK:146736~piPK:146830~t heSitePK:258554,00.html (accessed 24 December 2016). Tontongi. Critique de la Francophonie Haïtienne (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2007). Trouillot, Michel-Rolf. Haiti: State against Nation. The Origins and Legacy of Duvalierism (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1990). UIS – UNESCO Institute for Statistics. Adult and Youth Literacy: National, Regional and Global Trends, 1985–2015 (Montreal, June 2013). USAID/HAITI Web site. ‘Haiti. Education’. https://www.usaid.gov/haiti/education Verna, Chantale Francesca. ‘Maurice Dartigue, Educational Reform, and Intellectual Cooperation with the United States as a Strategy for Haitian National Development’. Journal of Haitian Studies, 13, no. 2 (2007): 24–38. Viélot, Klébert. ‘Primary Education in Haiti’. In The Haitian Potential: Research and Resources of Haiti ed. Vera Rubin and Richard P. Schaedel (New York: Teachers College Press, 1975): 114–43. Woodson, Carter G. The Mis-education of the Negro (New York: AMS Press, 1933). Zéphir, Flore. ‘The Languages of Haitians and the History of Creole: Haiti and its diaspora’. In The Haitian Creole Language: History, Structure, Use, and Education, edited by Arthur K. Spears and Carole M. Berotte Joseph, 55–80 (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2010).

Subject Index accountability 11, 192, 208, 211 and evaluation 184–5, 186, 300–2 external 42 no real system of 253 practices 2, 159 in reforms of 2015 in Mexico 68, 70 systems 6, 303 ActionAid Guatemala 188 action research interviews 106 model 109 Administradora de Subsidios Sociales (ADESS) 300 agency 325 French Development Agency 302 National Coordination for Higher Education Evaluation (CENEVAL), private testing agency 101 Spanish International Cooperation Agency 157, 302 United States Agency for International Development (USAID) 152, 302 assessment 7, 44, 152, 171, 206 based on memorization 152 for carrera magisterial 62 comprehensive 99 General Education Law in 159 National Assessment and Accreditation Council (CNEA) 234 national assessment of pupils 195, 206, 209 national curriculum for 201 PISA Examination 138, 251, 302 for promotion 62 as reform strategy 95 SERCE exam 252 standardized 301 Autoridad del Canal de Panamá 259 bureaucracy 47, 48, 51 to control school system 55

corporatism and clientelist practices 107 for efficiency of bureaucrats 239 in hiring and training 255 for management of basic education 54 stifles innovation 53 Catholic Church 175, 176, 325 against Bernard Reform 321 opposing reform 318, 323 private education 19 PRONADE programme 180–2 pro-Spanish and politically conservative schools 267 repression against 143 schools under control of 17, 315 Catholic schools 315–16 characteristics of 316 definers of stellar Haitian education 320 Central America. See also individual countries Costa Rica 5–6 El Salvador 6–7 Guatemala 8–9 Honduras 9–11 Nicaragua 11–13 Panama 13–14 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) 284 centralization 36, 99 curriculum and result 185 de facto 31 of duties of SEP 48 education reform 46, 50 evaluation system 42 false centralization 79 of teacher hiring 114 of teacher pay and advancement 100, 103 change 30, 123 Burke’s view 324

332

Subject Index

Clark’s view 42 conditioning factors 2 constitutional change 76 in Costa Rican educational system 120 to curricula 277 educational change 35, 44, 47 to education policy 276 in El Salvador 6 fundamental changes 90 institutional change 42, 44, 50, 55 in labour regulations 89 in management structure 205 necessity of 45 in Nicaragua 11 revolutionary change 307, 325 social mobility 135 in statutory framework 202–5 in system 5, 317 in teaching profession 277 chaotic system 17, 21, 174 civil society 302 association 79 movement 285 organizations 225 civil war Central American countries 119, 120, 122, 123, 124 Costa Rica 5 El Salvador 6, 7, 141, 143, 144, 161 Guatemala 8, 9, 169, 171, 176, 179, 175 Haiti 17 Nicaragua 11 clientelism 23, 33, 34, 35, 36, 82, 138, 200, 297 ancien régime of 37 persistence of 39 Coalición por una Educación Digna (CED) 285 collaboration 30, 81, 201 with international institutions 107 among public educational institutions 234 with teachers 99 with United States 319 colonialism 6, 141 colonial era 308–9 Concordat of 1860 315–17 Haitian Constitution of 1805 311–13

Le Code Noir of 1685 309–11 Mollien’s Recommendations, circa 1825 to 1831 313–14 Commission for Historical Clarification 176 comparison international comparison 287, 292 monthly salaries 155 competency -based curriculum 301 -based curriculum reform 290–3 complex systems clientelism and associated forms of corruption 34 policymaking, top-down process 33–4 technocratic authoritarianism 34 Consejo Nacional de Evaluación y Acreditación Universitaria de Panamá (CONEAUPA) 248, 254, 256, 257 Consejo Nacional de Universidades, Nicaragua 231 control 17, 48, 273 federal control 31, 81, 112 of financial resources 54 legal power control over schools 55 meaning 1 military control 6, 10 political control 50, 122, 178 pseudo-technocratic control 39–40 quality control 7, 151 SEP control over salaries 54 social control 4, 5, 22, 23 corporatism 51, 74, 78, 82, 107 corruption 4 Cuba 269 Dominican Republic 16 Guatemala 178 Honduras 198 Mexican society 34, 81, 101, 102, 103 in Nicaragua 11 SNTE corruption 54 Costa Rica 5–6 contemporary society average schooling of population 128–9 disjuncture between demand and supply 130

Subject Index educational socialization 128 employment rate and level of education 131, 132, 136 higher education institutions 131, 132 ‘justness of gender’ programmes 129 primary education 129 private education 134 quality of education 130 school dropouts 133, 134, 135 secondary education 129–30 shift system and problem 129 time spent in school 130 training and job market 131 unemployment rate 132, 133 upward social mobility 128, 131 utility and commitment to education 127 educational system 121–2, 123–4 abolition of army 122 democratization 123 establishing system of social security 122–3 establishment of independent institutions 123 social mobility and education 127–33, 136 theoretical viewpoint 124–5 ways of studying 125–6 crime 7, 8, 172, 176 Cuba 15–16 access to university 273 varied culture 274 annexation, rejection of 268 attitude towards countryside 269, 272 civic habits 272 collective behaviours 272 commitment to values 271 communist emulation 272 ‘deschooling’ process 278 full literacy 270 Literacy Campaign 270 National Centre for Sex Education (CENESEX) 274 1961 the ‘Year of Education’ 270 ‘one huge school’ 271 policy of perfeccionamiento (improvement) 275

333

revolution cornerstone of 279 education and 267 global change 279 social gains 266 special period 265 rise in economic inequality 276 teachers changes in character of profession 277 crisis for 277 falling educational standards 277 Union of Cuban Writers and Artists (UNEAC) 274 cultural capital 4, 19, 22, 23, 129, 130, 174 French culture in Haitian society 322 Panama 238, 245 schooling as indicator 127, 135, 136 cultural heritage 13 curricul(um)a 151–3, 316 bilingual 216 childhood 164 creative 39 construction 174 design 147 hidden curriculum 323 national 7, 186, 198, 201, 204, 207, 287 nationwide 182 null curriculum 323 and pedagogy 184, 211 primary and secondary 232 reform 253, 285 competency-based 290–3 standards 2, 108, 113 data 314 on changes 125, 126 collection 19 negative data 132 reliable 54 from UNESCO Institute for Statistics 61 decentralization 7, 37, 152, 205, 285 of education 66, 230 many aspects of administration 39, 46 not successful in Mexico 79 and parental involvement 157–8 Sandinista policy 223 ‘School Autonomy’ system 223

334

Subject Index

democratization 123, 221 demographic dividend 216 development economic 15, 18, 82, 120, 123, 172, 202, 222, 268 political 82, 123 social 15, 82, 119, 123, 172, 202, 222 strategy 227, 232 education as national development strategy 285–6 devolution 81, 108–10 new institutional approaches 108 of power 109 of school management 111–12 state variations 109 sustaining reform 109–10 training programmes 108 dictatorship in Costa Rica 122 in Dominican Republic 16 in Guatemala 8 in Haiti 17 in Nicaragua 11, 220 of Porfirio Díaz 3 Dirección General de Programas Especiales de la Presidencia (DIGEPEP) 298, 299 disarticulation/poor articulation 33, 111 diversification 76, 219 cultural 9, 102 education 224, 233, 249, 285, 286 ethnic 9 linguistic 9 social 177 diversified cycle 170 Dominican Republic competency-based curriculum reform 290–3 challenges 292–3, 294 fundamental competencies 291 National Qualifications Framework 292 revised curriculum, implementation 291 country profile 284 dictatorship 16 education as challenge 16–17 as national development strategy 285–6

evaluation and accountability 300–2 Dominican Initiative for Quality Education 302 Dominican Institute for Evaluation and Research on Educational Quality 301 National System for the Evaluation of Education Quality 300 regional and international assessments 302 extended school day 293–5 challenges 294–5 improvement of teacher training and education 295–8 INAFOCAM 297 increased investment in education 284–5 increasing instructional time 293–5 challenges 294–5 low performance of education system 283 mass migration 16 Medina, Danilo 17 modern education system, building foundation of 286–7 parents and families 300 presidential initiatives adult education and literacy 299 early childhood education 298–9 National Year for Early Childhood 299 statistical details 16 structure of education system 288, 289 reforming 287–90 down-up curriculum reform 196 dropout rates in Costa Rica 129, 130, 133, 134, 135 in Dominican Republic 284, 294 in El Salvador 147, 148, 149, 150 in Guatemala 183 in Haiti 307, 321 in Honduras 200 in Mexico 14, 24, 30 in Nicaragua 225, 228, 230, 232, 233 in Panama 251 education administration 35 adult in Cuba 275

Subject Index in Dominican Republic 285, 286, 288, 290, 291, 299, 301 in El Salvador 147 in Nicaragua 226, 232 attainment 10, 92, 100, 194, 196, 197 comparative 22 compulsory 7, 16, 60, 63, 90, 96 in Dominican Republic 286 in Honduras 194, 203 school age 61 schooling 59, 67 coverage bureaucratic ‘cement coverage’ 53 in Costa Rica 5, 123, 129, 130, 138 in Cuba 15 in Dominican Republic 16, 298 in El Salvador 6, 7, 142, 147, 148, 149 in Guatemala 9, 169, 170, 183, 186, 187 in Haiti 18 in Honduras 11, 195, 201, 203, 205 in Nicaragua 12, 215, 217, 221, 222, 223, 228, 232 deficit 6, 9, 145 delivery 109, 205 democratization 221 dysfunctional system of 23, 177, 238, 239 equity 55, 81, 84, 187, 286 educational inequity 230, 232 gender equity policy 146 in public education 37 and quality 74, 76, 226, 229, 232, 233 evaluation 20, 71, 102 (see also assessment) National Coordination for Higher Education Evaluation (CENEVAL) 101 National Institute for Educational Evaluation (INEE) 33, 45, 72, 76, 77, 78, 82, 89, 90, 95 function 18, 22–4, 37 implementation 6 improvement 70, 77, 79, 82, 97, 141, 201, 239 inequalities 35, 169, 276 institutions 1, 5, 29, 33, 34, 36, 122, 123

335

establishing 193–4 National Institute for Educational Evaluation (INEE) 33, 45, 72, 76, 77, 78, 82, 89, 90, 95 international examinations 195, 302 PISA Examination 20, 302 investment 172, 285, 294, 295 judgements 321 labour market 135, 136, 137, 138, 249 moral 186 multigrade 150–1 past, present, prospects of, in El Salvador decentralization and parental involvement 157–8 education system organization, 145–7 processes of evaluation and feedback 158–9 reform initiatives and challenges 161–2 teacher and principal training 153–7 policy 5, 12, 48, 88, 89 in Cuba 274, 276 in Dominican Republic 286 elements in development of 137 in Panama 243 private 18, 19–20 quality 23, 29, 285 relevance 231 reform barriers to social involvement 81–2 constitutional reform 88–9 economic obstacles 80–1 legal and administrative obstacles 78–80 management and reform implementation 82–3 obstacles 100–1 opposition 50–3 political obstacles 77–8 viability 2, 44 role 22–4 statistics 18–19 selection 1 stakeholders 33, 94, 109, 202 systems accomplishments 164 challenges 19 Costa Rican history 119 Cuban history 271

336

Subject Index

Dominican Republic history 16–17 El Salvador history 6–7 failures 30 Haitian history 315 Nicaragua history 11, 220 universal coverage 12, 123, 195, 201, 205 years of 6, 8, 10, 198 Education Policy and Data Center (EPDC) 284 EDUQUEMOS 216, 225, 226, 228 egalitarianism 270 El Salvador 6–7 Catholic religion 142 civil war 143 current education system 145–7 education historical construction 145 turbulent system 141 educational reforms 143 Education with Community Participation (EDUCO) 158 local oligarchy 142 normal schools 142 post-war period 144 reform initiatives and challenges 161–2 statistical data 141 student enrolment 148–9, 150 system of ‘popular education’ 157 teacher and principal training 153–7 worsened quality of life 142 Escuela Normal de Santiago Juan Demóstenes Arosemena 247–8 ethnicity 2 Evaluación Nacional del Logro Académico en Centros Escolares (ENLACE) 30, 67, 68, 97, 114 evaluation institutions 21 ENLACE 30, 67, 68, 97, 114 INEE 33, 45, 72, 76, 77, 78, 82, 89, 90, 95 teachers 37, 53, 98, 101 examinations 301 competitive examination 296 PISA Examination 20, 21, 251, 252 exogenous influences 1

experimentation effective privatization 181 powers to parents 182 worst-performing schools 181 extension 6, 45, 60 of compulsory schooling 59, 67 of first real system of national education 187 length of training/education 60 of school day 208 Facultad de Ciencias de Educación de la Universidad de Panamá 249, 250, 255, 256 FEREMA 197, 198 Foro Socioeducativo 299 functionalism 124 gangs 7, 144, 162 gender 2, 148, 152, 270 equity 162 gender equity policy 146 gender gap 251 gender violence prevention 153 issues 24 ‘justness of gender’ programmes 129 globalization 2, 6, 15, 279 Guatemala 8–9 accountability and evaluation 184–5 curriculum and pedagogy 184 funding and prioritization 186 language barriers 183 militarization of education 174 noninvolvement of pupils 187 parents and community 185 primary school coverage 183 teachers and directors 183–4 professional development 184 pupil-teacher ratio 182 reign of terror 173 research and standards 186 towards right direction 188 right to education 173 school organization 184 secondary schools 185–6 spring 1944–54 174–5 spring reverts to winter 1954–96 175–7

Subject Index Guatemalan system genocide 169 historical contextualization 172–3 out-of-school youth 172 population 169 and practice of education 169 schooling absence of data for rural areas 171 de facto situation 170 diversified cycle 170 national system of education 172 prevocational cycle 170 primary schooling 170 secondary school teachers 170 statistical and official overview 170 habitus 126, 135 Haiti 17–18, 306–8 Catholic congregational schools 306 instruction during colonial era 308–10 Concordat of 1860 315–17 Haitian Constitution of 1805 311–13 Le Code Noir of 1685 309–11 Mollien’s Recommendations, circa 1825 to 1831 313–14 major education reforms 317 Bernard Reform 320–3 Dartigue Reform of the 1940s 319–20 reform under US occupation 317–19 taste for French culture 307 hidden curriculum 323 higher education 4, 60, 113 in Costa Rica 129 attention towards 130 certificates awarded by 131 and unemployment rate 133, 136 in El Salvador 146, 147 for teacher training 153 in Guatemala 170, 177 in Nicaragua 217, 219, 226–7 National Council for Higher Education 222 in Panama 244, 246, 254 current performance in 251 demographics of 254–5 hiring and training 255–6 institution performance 256–8 Honduras 9–11 changing statuary framework 202–5

337

Basic Law of Education 203–4 Foro Nacional de Convergencia, national forum 202 major events 203 management structure, changes in 205 municipalities role 205 proposed reform groups 204–5 climatic variation 191 educational sector in challenges 192 Congress of the Ley de Escalafón (Teacher Promotion Law) 194 education capital 194 establishing educational institutions 193–4 Ley de Escalafón (Law governing service conditions of teachers) 194 quality of education 195 right to education 193 TIMSS 195 education system explaining factors 196 classroom management 198 community 196 family background 196–7 financial 200 lack of incentives 199 nonfunctioning reasons 200 schools 199–200 teacher performance 198 teachers 197–8 teacher unions 198 Universidad Pedagógica Francisco Morazán (UPNFM) 197 in First Regional Study of Educational Quality 195 implementing reform 205–8 building information system 205–6 expanding learning opportunities 208 improving governance of education system 207 improving management of teachers 207, 208 increasing parents role 208 major challenges 206 online posts 208

338

Subject Index

recurring problems on teacher deployment 207–8 System for Administration of Educational Centres 206 System for Human Resources Administration (SIARH) 208 System for Planning 206 updated information, need for 206 initial steps for educational reform 200–1 Ley Fundamental de Educación (Basic Law of Education) 192 no teachers’ strikes 192 reforming educational sector access to twenty-first-century skills 211 changing statuary framework 202–5 curriculum and pedagogy 211 educational infrastructure 210 ICT introduction 212n11 implementing reform 205–8 increasing school age population 210 initial results of reform 209 statistical data 191–2 wastage 192 human development Nicaraguan education in Somoza period 215, 217–19 agro-export developmental model 217 Alliance for Progress 219 Central American Institute for Business Administration (INCAE) 219 Cordoba Movement 218 educational districting 219 National Autonomous University of Nicaragua (UNAN) 218 National Training Institute (INA) 218 rural school teachers 217 unqualified teachers 218 Nicaraguan education system 216 Basic and Secondary Education Subsystem 216 challenges for sustainable human development 233

demographic dividend 216 and economic plans 234 inequities in access and quality of education 232 linking technical education programmes 234 low budget allocations for education 232 measurable impact indicators 234 multisector partnerships 234 National Human Development Plan (NHDP) 233 Technical Education Subsystem 216 Tertiary Education Subsystem 216 youth as hope 233 Nicaragua, neo-liberal period 223–7 early childhood education 224–5 literacy, and youth and adult education 226 primary and secondary education 225 quality of learning in basic education 225 reestablishing peace 223 ‘School Autonomy’ system 223 technical and higher education 226 voluntary contributions 224 human rights 16, 22, 74 constitutional commitments 84 education as 145, 192, 286 protecting 85 n.3 sustainable education based on 12 identity school identity 7, 152 system of national identity 1, 22 ideology 4, 127, 178 Cuban ideology 271 revolutionary ideology 266 technocratic modernity 239 (im)migration 120, 144, 150, 161, 241, 242 as cause for school dropout 150 corruption and 16 in Haiti 17 young Cubans 279 implementation 2, 291, 322 of carrera magisterial, problems of for changing system 5

63

Subject Index education reform programme 205 building information system 205–7 expanding the learning opportunities 208 improving governance of education system 207 improving management of teachers 207–8 increasing role played by parents 208 Literacy Campaign 270 multigrade strategy 150 as negotiation 107 pedagogical support programmes 205 policy implementation 37, 41, 42, 45 process of 23 of reforms 32, 82–3, 99, 100 sale of plazas, measures for 69 indigenous civilians 8 girls 7, 8 Iniciativa Dominicana por una Educación de Calidad (IDEC) 302 inspectors 89, 104 institutionalization 275 of early education 221 of education provision 76, 78 Instituto de Educación de la Universidad Centroamericana (IDEUCA) 231 Instituto de Estudios Estratégicos y Políticas Públicas (IEEPP) 236 Instituto Nacional de Estadísticas (INE) de Honduras 212 n.2, 212 n.4 Instituto Nacional de Evaluación Educativa (INEE) 20 Instituto Nacional de Formación Técnico Profesional (INFOTEP) 290 Instituto Nacional de Formación y Capacitación del Magisterio (INAFOCAM) 292 Instituto Nacional de Información de Desarrollo (INIDE) 231 Instituto Nacional de Tecnología (INATEC) 236 Instituto Nacional para la Evaluación de la Educación (INEE), Mexico 20, 36, 37, 40, 72, 89 n.3 educational reform 82, 83, 96, 98 first national teaching post competition 49

339

in improving educational quality 101, 102 and National Coordinator of Education Workers (CNTE) 78 INEE Act 45, 47 new labour rules 90–2 new structure 100 ‘teaching to the test’ 33 Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) 19, 197, 226, 302, 317, 321 Inter-American Dialogue. See FEREMA interventions 9, 71 judging educational system 209, 321

84, 151, 175,

knowledge 126 by church-sponsored schools 22 in problem solving 20–1 on quality of education 297 relevant knowledge 89, 90, 95, 97 knowledge economy 62, 70 knowledge elite 239 Laboratorio Latinoamericano de Evaluación de la Calidad de la Educación (LLECE) 213, 304 labour market 290 access to 135, 136 competency-based education 292 Costa Rican 129, 138 education and 20, 109, 137 labour mobility 124 land reform 12 large-scale reforms carrera magisterial benefits 104 n.4 test results 104 n.5 compulsory public education, constitutional reform 88 changes in labour regulations 89 political parties, agreement with 88 proposals 89 reform on Articles 3 and 73 of Constitution 89 educational reforms, in Mexico changes and consequences 44 explanations 43

340

Subject Index

growing world culture 42 international capitalist organizations 42 legal formulation of 45–7 local political struggles 42 logic of policy execution 47–50 opposition to reform 50–53 possibilities for success 53–54 top-down approach 42 reform potentials and challenges 100–1 fundamental obstacles 100–1 job security 101 power of negotiation 101 role of evaluation, new labour regime of 90 eradication of union involvement 92–3 new labour rules 90–1 salary increments and attainment level 92 service conditions 93–4 support to teachers 93–4 Latin Caribbean. See Cuba; Dominican Republic; Haiti lifelong learning 226 literacy rate in Costa Rica 5, 129 in Cuba 16 in Dominican Republic 16, 299 educational statistics 19 in Guatemala 8, 178 in Haiti 17, 306, 319 in Honduras 9 in Nicaragua 12, 220, 226, 231 in Panama 14 market forces. See labour market Marxists 124, 271 material capital 127 mechanism administrative repression mechanisms 54 open competition mechanisms 104 n.9 for permanent improvement of basic compulsory education 96 in reforms of 2015, Mexico 68, 89 universal coverage of education 205 voluntary contributions 224

Medical Educational Cooperation with Cuba (MEDICC) 266 Mexicanos Primero 80, 82, 102 Mexico 2–3, 3–4 de jure and de facto system 31 dropout rates 30 educational reforms changes and consequences 44 explanations 43 growing world culture 42 international capitalist organizations 42 legal formulation of 45–7 local political struggles 42 logic of policy execution 47–50 opposition to reform 50–3 possibilities for success 53–4 top-down approach 42 education development in 75–6 education, inward looking and hierarchical 32 entry into world economy 4 gap between policy and classroom reality 36–8 Mexican school-age population 59 carrera magisterial 61–4 of compulsory school age 61 initial preparation of teachers 60 political setting 65–8 problem in education system 59 prospect of self-correction 60 pupil–teacher ratios 60 radical solution 59 reforms of 2015 68–71 teaching plaza 64–5 UNESCO database 60 National Institute for Educational Evaluation (INEE) 33 need for quality education 29 philanthropic ogre 32 political setting in 65–8 pseudo-technocratic control over learning 39–40 rational versus politicized administration 38–9 reform and scepticism 33 Spanish-speaking country 29 state educational administration 32 statistical details 29–30

Subject Index themes for meaningful education 33–4 war on drugs 4 middle class 187 private schools 13, 23, 245 state education 14 UNESCO’s view 19 university education 269 urban 177, 197 Ministerio de Economía (MINEC), El Salvador 161 Ministerio de Economía, Planificación y Desarrollo de República Dominicana (MEPyD) 285 Ministerio de Educación de la República de Panamá (MEDUCA) 244, 251 Ministerio de Educación de la República Dominicana (MINERD) accreditation system 296 competencies 291, 301 country profile 284 extended school day model 294 framework development process 292 historic agreement 295 Mission 1000x1000 campaign 293 Plan Decenal 285 qualified candidates 298 Ministerio de Educación (MINED), El Salvador 141, 143, 144, 145, 158 centralized structure 147 General Education Law 157 indicators of internal efficiency 149 multigrade schools 151 SEP implementation 163 student enrolment 148 for student retention 164 Teaching Career Law 154 Ministerio de Educación (MINED), Nicaragua 224 Ministerio de Educación (MINEDUC), Guatemala 171, 175, 179, 186 experiment in privatization 180–2 minorities 4, 6, 7, 32, 191 mode of centralization 79 mode of production 33, 113, 135, 136, 258 modes of interpretation 99 modernity 14 technocratic modernity 239, 258

341

multiculturalism 3, 178, 204 multinational corporations 3, 8, 173 nationalism 9, 22, 172 national curriculum in Dominican Republic 17, 286, 287, 290, 293 in El Salvador 7, 151–3 in Guatemala 186 in Honduras 198, 201, 204, 207, 211 in Mexico 31 national unity 6 Government of Reconciliation and National Unity (GRUN) 227 neo-colonialism 273, 308, 323 neo-liberalism 3 networking 34 Nicaragua 11–13 education during Sandinista Revolution 220–3 armed conflict expansion 222 bilingual intercultural programme 221 illiteracy 223 ‘Nadezhda Krupskaya’ UNESCO Literacy Award 220 National Literacy Campaign 220 national universities 222 policy of ‘planting schools’ 221 political content in curriculum 221 Popular Education Collectives (CEP) 220 Sandinista National Liberation Front 220 education in Somoza period 215, 217–19 agro-export developmental model 217 Alliance for Progress 219 Central American Institute for Business Administration (INCAE) 219 Cordoba Movement 218 educational districting 219 National Autonomous University of Nicaragua (UNAN) 218 National Training Institute (INA) 218

342

Subject Index

rural school teachers 217 unqualified teachers 218 education system 216 Basic and Secondary Education Subsystem 216 challenges for sustainable human development 233 demographic dividend 216 and economic plans 234 inequities in access and quality of education 232 linking technical education programmes 234 low budget allocations for education 232 measurable impact indicators 234 multisector partnerships 234 National Human Development Plan (NHDP) 233 Technical Education Subsystem 216 Tertiary Education Subsystem 216 youth as hope 233 neo-liberal period 223–7 early childhood education 224–5 literacy, and youth and adult education 226 primary and secondary education 225 quality of learning in basic education 225 reestablishing peace 223 ‘School Autonomy’ system 223 technical and higher education 226 voluntary contributions 224 post-revolutionary Sandinista period access and retention 227–9 adult literacy 231 demographic bonus 230–1 educational decentralization 230 Government of Reconciliation and National Unity (GRUN) 227 inequity 230 learning quality and equity of basic education 229–30 National Council of Evaluation and Accreditation (CNEA) 231 National Human Development Plan (NHDP) 227

National Technological Institute (INATEC) 230 productivity and innovation 231 public and private investment in education 227 public spending in education 228 technical and professional education, need for 230–1 youth, potential of 231–2 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) 23, 170, 179, 180, 306 Avivara 171 Citizen Eye 49 Mexicanos Primero 80, 82, 102 Ojo Ciudadano 82 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) 29 Organization of American States 10 Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) 29, 30, 244, 245, 251, 253 Organización de Estados Iberoamericanos 20 Pacto por México 77, 90 Panama 13–14 concept of ‘quality’ 238 education system challenges 242–3 demographics of 244–6 Escuela Normal 247–8 government solution 253–4 official structure of 243–4 theoretical approach 239–42 higher education system 254 demographics of 254–5 ejecutoria 255, 257 hiring and training 255–6, 258 institution performances 256–7 quality of education 257 teacher training courses 256 weakness of 257–8 idealization of quantification 239 poorest systems of education 238 schools 251–3 University of Panama 249–51 bachelor in primary education 249

Subject Index degree in diversified secondary and upper-secondary education 249 list of courses 250 professorship in education 249 unanswered questions 251 parental and community participation 30, 158, 185 parental involvement 11–12, 111–13 parent-teacher relations 300 patron-client state 38 peace process 8 pedagogical coaching 91, 92, 95, 96 pedagogical competencies 153 pedagogical incoherence 113 pedagogical resources 103 pedagogy 102, 153, 184, 248, 273, 307, 318 model of 42 performance countries’ performance 282 higher education institution performances 256–8 management and administrative performance 85 students’ performance 39, 62, 67, 77, 98 reform potentials and challenges 100, 101 teachers’ performance 39, 50, 67, 76 job security 101 performance level 96 for quality education 95–6 personalism 38 philanthropic ogre 4, 32 PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) Examination 20, 21, 30, 70, 71, 113, 138, 251, 302 policy education policy in Cuba 274, 276 in Dominican Republic 286 elements in development of 137 in Panama 243 gender equity policy 146 implementation 37, 41, 42, 45 policymaking 33–4 Teacher Professional Development Policy 155 political system 4, 32, 43

343

population of Costa Rica 5 of Cuba 16 in Dominican Republic 16 in El Salvador 7 in Guatemala 8, 9 of Haiti 17 in Honduras 10 of Mexico 3 in Nicaragua 12 in Panama 13, 14 poverty in Cuba 270 in Dominican Republic 284 in El Salvador 7, 144 in Guatemala 8, 173, 176 in Honduras 191 in Mexico 32 alleviation 82, 109 in Nicaragua 217 overcoming poverty 227 in Panama 13, 243 pragmatism 267, 275 preparatorias 4 problem solving, system of 20, 291 professional development 63, 64, 122, 184 continuous 62 mechanism of 68 ongoing 297 programme 69 teachers’ 77 professionalization 92–3 Programa Estado de la Nación (CONARE) 131, 132, 133, 134, 137, 138 Programa Nacional de Autogesti ó n para el Desarrollo Educativo (PRONADE) 180–2 effective privatization 181 powers to parents 182 worst-performing schools 181 Programme for International Student Assessment. See PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) Examination quality education centralization of recruitment and promotion 99

344

Subject Index

demanding system of evaluation 99 documentation on working conditions 99 reform evaluation 96 teachers’ performance 95–6 Quisqueya Empieza Contigo (QEC) 298 reading comprehension 138, 292, 301 reading programme 107 reading skills 10, 171, 221 Dominican Republic 283 Panama students grade 252 SERCE Study 225 TERCE Study 229 recentralization 108 of teaching payment 54 research 29 resistance 14, 36, 198 to Bernard Reform 321 passive resistance 293 silent resistance 38 retention rates 135, 321 reward 220 poorly performing teachers 194, 198 sanctions for teachers absenteeism 49 role of education (see education) of parents 182, 208, 300 Sandinistas 11, 12, 222 school autonomy 7, 83, 85, 152, 223, 230, 233 attendance 8, 191, 300 classroom 21, 292 duties 91, 92, 253 reality 36–8 identity 7, 152 improvement 158, 210, 256, 286 management 6, 42, 77, 84, 111–13 local school management 93 reform 90 preparatory 146 pre-primary 180, 194, 201, 298 primary 180, 183, 194, 284, 298 organization 2, 103, 109, 184 rural 8, 150, 183, 184, 185, 217 secondary 129, 146, 185–6, 194, 217 traditional 10, 158 urban 174

school day 22, 130 in Cuba 272 in Dominican Republic 285 extended school day 293–5 in El Salvador 155 in Honduras 208, 209 selection 1 Secretaría de Educación Pública (SEP), México 66, 67, 93, 108 Secretaría de Estado de Educación (SEE) República Dominicana 283, 284, 286, 288, 291, 292, 293, 300 Secretaría Nacional de Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación (SENACYT) 253–4 Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores de la Educativos (SNTE) 66, 88 skills basic 7 mathematics 10, 221, 225 reading (see reading skills) social apprenticeship 1 background 2, 113, 134 capital 14, 120 cohesion 163 conditions 7, 83, 84, 164, 215, 268 context 9 control 4, 5, 22, 23 class 13, 32, 124, 135, division of labour 1, 2, 31, 111 inclusion 9, 203 justice 76, 84, 222 participation 75, 84 definition 81 obstacles 81 positions 7, 13, 164, 187 sciences 42, 124, 278, 291, 297, 301 structure 3, 120, 124, 126, 218 values 12, 146, 269, 273, 279 socialist principle 271 socialist reform 65, 143 socialization 128, 146, 307 social mobility, Costa Rica and education 127–33, 136 theoretical viewpoint 124–5 ways of studying 125–6 society developed 15 developing 7, 164

Subject Index rural 4 urban 4 solidarity, mechanical 22 space 22, 31, 316 classroom space 183, 283, 293 educational space 299 specialization CENEVAL 101 in preparation for higher education 129 programme 290 services 288–9 training 136 state, modern 3, 80 standards 186 curriculum standards 2, 20, 108, 193, 211 professional standards of teaching 62, 295 revised teaching standards 296 standardized testing 151 statism, authoritarian 4, 74 ineffective authoritarianism 35 streaming, technical 129, 130 structure of education system 288, 289 INEE structure 100 students gender 2 gender equity policy 140 gender gap 215 issues 24 ‘justness of gender’ programmes 129 ethnicity 2, 4, 9, 22 issues 24 revolt 4 sustainability 2, 215 challenges for sustainable human development 233 targets 76, 203, 272 teacher placement 7, 153–7 Academic and Pedagogical Competencies Evaluation (ECAP) 153 General Education Law 153 salaries 155, 156 Teaching Career Law 154, 157

345

prestige 7, 155, 230, 232 professional development 63, 69, 70, 77, 184, 297 carrera magisterial 62 mechanisms for 68 Programme for Teacher Professional Development 82 Teacher Professional Development Policy 155 social regard 7, 155 training in-service 2, 6, 9, 21, 61, 96, 157, 184, 297 pre-service 2, 9, 21, 61, 204, 296, 306 quality 6, 153, 157, 240, 295 tenure 91, 92–3 technical training 4, 285, 287, 290 technocratic authoritarianism 34 thinking creative 21, 291 imaginative 4, 22, 71 top-down model 42, 45, 50 training-for-work 4 Trends on International Math and Science Study (TIMSS) 195 Truth Commission 8 UNESCO 19, 158, 252 database 60, 61 university, national 4, 147 Universidad de Panamá 240, 249, 254, 255, 256, 257, 258 Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Nicaragua (UNAN) 218 USAID (United States Agency for International Development) 152, 182, 186, 302 -supported orientation course 157 violence 200 in Costa Rica 5 in Guatemala 8 prevention 162 social violence 162 vocational training 216, 221, 233, 253, 285, 290, 318, 319

346

Subject Index

washback effects 315 World Bank 8, 13, 19, 124, 158, 163, 182 loan 186, 188 macroeconomic database 179 youth 233 and adult literacy

231

doubling population 59 gangs 162 leaving school 7 literacy and adult education 226 literacy rate 129 out-of-school youth 172 unemployed 7

People Index Abendroth, M 269 Aguilar, C. R 201 Aguilar, L. F 80 Altschuler, D 23 Alvarado, B. F 188 Álvarez, I 86 Alwin, D. F 125 Anderson, M. E 178 Arnedo-Gómez, M 267 Arnove, R. F 11, 222 Arríen, J. B 11, 219 Asensio, C 215, 217, 224, 231 Assmann, H 220 Avilés, G 142, 143 Aziz Nassif, A 51 Bacharach, S 42 Ball, P 188 Bangou, H 326 n.19 Banon, I 189 Barba, B 34, 35, 36, 37, 39, 40, 74, 112 Barragán Duarte, J 266 Barro, R 192, 194 Bas, J 265 Bashir, S 194, 195 Bauman, Z 137 Benhabib, J 139 Belalcazar, C. Beltrán del Río, P 52 Berger, S 188 Bernal, J. B 238, 240 Bernstein, B 1, 23, 135 Bisin, A 139 Blum, D. F 265, 270, 272, 273, 277, 279 Bonnaud, L 315, 326 n.32 Boudon, R 139 Bourdieu, P 121, 126, 135, 245 Bracho, T 116 Brenner, P 265, 268 Brière, J.-F 308, 313, 314, 326 n.30, 326 n.31 Brignoli, H. P 139

Bruns, B 198, 199, 210 Brutus, E 327 Burgos, A 189 Burke, W. W 308, 324 Carneiro, P 196 Carney, S 41 Carnoy, M 43, 265, 266 Carrera Guerra, M 188 Castilla García, C 266 Carter, J 189 Castro, F 265, 268, 269, 270, 276, 279 Castro, V 224 Catino, J 189 Chase, A 139 Ching, E 143 Chivvis, C. S 325 n.2 Chuayffet, E 48, 51, 77 Clark, B. R 42 Clark, G 139 Cole, K 265 Cook, M 51 Cotter, J. V 139 Crane, K 325 n.2 Crawford, S. E. S 43 Cruz, B. M. T 142, 143, 144, 145 Cruz, J. M 162 Cuban, L 42 Cuéllar-Marchelli, H 154, 156, 160, 162 Cullather, N 189 DeGraff, M 307, 317, 326 n.34, 326 n.41 Dejean, Y 307, 317, De la Guardia, R 13, 14, 238 Delgadillo, M 216 Delisle, P 315 Delli Santé, A 189 Deranty, J.-P 139 Díaz-Briquets, S 280 Di Gropello, E 180 Di Tella, T 240, 241 Dobbins, J 327

348

People Index

Domínguez García, M 266, 273 Durkheim, E 22, 187 Eckstein, S 273, 275 Echavárri Arbizú, F. M 303 Edwards, D. B 6, 141, 144, 153, 157, 158, 162, 165 n.2 Edwards, J 8 Elvir, A. P 215, 217 Fagen, R 266, 270 Fass, S 321, 322 Fernández, D. J 272, 273 Figueres, J 127 Figueroa, O. A 265, 266 Fitzgibbon, R. H 267 Flores Andrade, A 69, 70 Flores, I. R 6, 141, 150, 157 Flores, R 166 Foley, M. W 144 Font, M. A 266 François, R 18, 20, 306 Frederick, L 274 Fremin, M 327 Fuentes Molinar, O 97 Fuentes Rodríguez, L 24 Fukuyama, F. Fuller, B 11 Garns, W 157 Gasperini, L 265, 266, 275 Gauthier, F 326 n.18 Gavin, M 196 Gershberg, A 224 Ghosh, R 323 Gilles, R 328 Gillette, A 266, 267 Gindling, H 194, 196 Ginsburg, M. Girón, A 188 Gisler, A 310, 326 n.21 González, J 142, 162 González de Turner, M. G 34, 35, 36, 38, 40, 59, 111 González Orellana, C 189 Gómez Arévalo, A. P 143, 145 Gómez Cabezas, E. J 278 Gove, A. Gramsci, A 43 Grindle M 107

Guerra, L 275 Guevara, E. C 271, 276 Gutiérrez, G. M 123 Guzmán, E 97, 112 Haims, M. C 325 n.2 Hall, C 139 Hallman, K 189 Hamm, M 283 Hammond, J 158 Hanson, M 157 Hebblethwaite, B 307, 326 n.42 Heckman, J 198 Heredia, B 50 Hernández, J. M 149, 154, 155, 162 Hernández, S 56 n.5 Hernández-Zavala, M 189 Henríquez, A 142, 143, 144, 145 Heuman, G 269 Heymans, C 157 Hout, M 120, 121 Hueman, G. Hurbon, L 307, 310, 317, 326 n.22 Huron, L. K. Hurtado, M 231 Husen, T 45, 53 Janvier, L.-J 326 n.24 Jean-François, L 313, 321 Jiménez Padilla, T 279 Johnston, L 268 Joint, L.-A 308, 316, 317, 325 nn.13–15 Jolly, R 268 Jonas, S 179 Jordan, M 43 Judson, F 281 Jungner, G 71 Kapcia, A 271 Kinzer, S. Kirk, E. J 274 Klees, S 42 Korten, A 119 Kobrak, P 188 Kupcia, A. La Feber, W 142, 143 Langston, J 51 Lanny, A 14 Latapí, P.

People Index Lee, J.-W 192, 194 LeoGrande, W 144 Levenson-Estrada, D 189 Lindo-Fuentes, H 143 Loaeza, S 55, 74 Locher, U 307 Loenin, J 189 Loera, A 55 Logan, R 311, 318 Loucel, C 165 n.2 Lovell, G 171, 173 Lubin, P 18, 20, 306 Lucio Gil, R. Luo, M 139 Luque, J 191, 198, 199, 201, 202, 210 Lutjens, S 268, 269, 271, 272, 273, 275 MacCameron, R 9 MacDonald, T. H 269, 270, 271, 274 McEwan, P. J 183 Machiavelli, N 44, 47, 50 Madhere, S 307 Magloire-Danton, G 325 n.11 Mancera, C 78, 85 n.4, 98 Manz, B 189 March, J 43 Marques, J 189 Marshall, J. H 213 Martin, C 97, 100, 106, 112 Martin, P 141, 144, 153, 157, 162 Martínez, A 48, 112 Martínez Bordon, A 112 Martínez, R 283 Martínez Valle, C 112 Martinic, S 169 Matijevic, D 269 Marx, K 124, 270 Medina Sánchez, D 17, 285 Menéndez, L 189 Meneses, E 75 Meyer, J 42 Meyer, L 74 Mikkelsen, C 191 Miller, L. E 325 n.2 Miller, N 239 Miller, V 217, 218 Miranda, M 24 Molina, J. I 123 Monkman, K 42 Montoto, L.

349

Morales, L. C 6, 119, 178 Muñoz, M 122 Neelsen, J 140 Nelson, D. M 173 Nicholls, D 325 n.12, 326 n.23 Núñez, J. Olsen, J 43 Ornelas, C 34, 35, 39, 40, 41, 79, 82, 101, 110 Ortiz Jiménez, M 63 Ostrom, E 43 Overhouse, J. Overhaus, M 325 n.2 Oviedo, A. M 194, 196 Pacheco, R.B 142, 143, 144, 154, 155 Padilla, S 198, 279 Painter, J 190 Pamphille, L 318, 326 nn.36-37 Pardo, M 47 Parsons, T 124, 125 Passeron, J.-C 121, 135 Pastor, R 217, 218 Patrinos, H. A 189 Peñate, S 150 Peña Nieto, E 34, 41, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 66, 67, 76, 82, 85, 88, 95 Peracca, S 189 Pérez Jr., L 269, 268 Picardo Joao, O 142, 143 Popa, S. Poppema, M 173 Posner, C. M 1, 4, 29, 32, 106, 169, 259 n.1 Pressoir, C 325 n.10 Price-Mars, J 307, 317, 325 n.11 Prou, M 317, 320, 321, 322, 326 n.35, 326 n.40, 326 n.43 Quán, A 144 Quintanilla de González, A

162

Ramírez, F 79 Ramírez, R 34, 36, 37, 39, 40, 79, 88, 97, 99, 101 Rápalo, R 201 Raphael, R 48, 51 Rappleye, J 41, 42

350 Reid-Henry, S. M 274 Ries, C 325 n.2 Ritzer, G 125 Rivarola, M 11 Rivas, F 148, 150, 160 Robinson, W 143 Rockwell, E 97, 98 Rodríguez-Gómez, R 73 Rodríguez, J. C 160 Rodríguez, M 140 Rojas, C 190 Roman, P 310 Rosa, H 144 Rovira Mas, J 123 Ruano, C 190 Rushton, M 270 Ruiz, M 189 Ruiz, R 235 Rust, V 42 Sala-Molins, L 326 n.20 Salazar Carillo, J 268 Samoff, J 42, 43 Schirmer, J 190 Schleicher, A 20 Schlesinger, S. Schmelkes, S 20, 98 Schoultz, L 267 Schulz, Deborah S 10 Schulz, Donald E 10 Schwartz, H 325 n.2 Scott, D 39, 109, 113, 115 n.2 Scott, J 38 Sequeira, V 224 Shapiro, J. Sieder, R 190 Sierra, J 3 Silova I 41 Smith, C. Smith, R 265, 271, 272, 274, 276 Sobe, N 276 Solórzano Contreras, S 162 Sosa, R 193 Spence, J 190 Spirer, H 188 Steiner-Khamsi, G 42 Stepnisky, J 140 Streeter, S. M 190 Stromquist, N. P 42

People Index Sullivan, M.P 276 Szok, P. A 261 Tardieu, C 307, 311 Thomas, A. Thomas, M. Timberlake, R 276 Torres, C. A 218 Touraine, A 123 Trouillot, M.-R 312 Trowbridge, M 183 Tufis, P.A 125 Tünnermann Bernheim, C 219 Turner, D. A 34, 38, 40, 59, 111 Tyack, D 42 Umaña, C 162 Valerio, A 190 Van der Borgh, C 144 Vargas, Y 134 Vasconcelos, J 4 Vázquez, J 75 Vegas, A 204 Veláquez López, M 272 Veltmeyer, H 270 Verdier, D 326 n.22 Verna, C.-F 319, 320, 326 nn.38–9 Vickers, G 190 Victoria Libreros, J xii Viélot, K 315 Wacquant, L 126 Walter, K 23 Weiler, H 45 Webster Hare, P. Wickham Crowley, T 273 Wilke, E 325 n.2 Wilkinson, S 265 Williams, R. G 25, 190 Wilson, J. M. G 71 Woodson, C. G 313, 326 n.16 Wylie, L 266 Yaffe, H

276

Zadja, J 42 Zéphir, F 309, 326 n.17