The progressive return to the classroom is one of the measures that are applied to supply and continue with the educational processes.
Only four out of ten households with children under the age of 5 receive child development services in Ecuador, according to a survey by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).
Inequality also occurs in access to the means to receive virtual education, which will increase the learning gaps that already existed before the pandemic, says the agency.
The two main needs to continue distance education is have a computer, internet or improve the connection.
The UNICEF report, published last December and titled Let’s avoid a lost decade: We must act now to reverse the effects of COVID-19 about childhood and youth, points out the negative consequences in the world due to the closure of schools and colleges due to confinement measures in countries to reduce infections. In addition, it makes a diagnosis of the setback and increase in the learning gaps generated.
The Deputy Minister of Education, Cinthya Game, affirms that with face-to-face classes this existing lag will be partly replaced and talks about the roadmap outlined by the current regime to face the effects of forced virtuality within educational processes, especially in public education.
How to reverse the most pronounced learning gaps left by the pandemic?
We design some actions that allow us to accompany these deficiencies that come from the economic poverty mentioned in the report to that of learning. In these almost eight months of management we analyze options in which presence is a relevant element to give continuity to education in an emotional state or balance according to the needs of the comprehensive training of children and young people inserted in the educational system . As of September (last) we have continued education through institutional educational continuity plans (PICE), which have an alternate modality of progressive return, initially it was voluntary, and continued to the classrooms of the establishments, This will depend on the capacity, on the indications of the cantonal COE (Emergency Operations Centers) and on the application of the biosafety protocols.
What diagnosis have you made about what the students have learned in the virtual modality?
In our diagnostic stage of the beginning of the school year in the Sierra regime and prior to our management in the Costa regime, the need to identify learning gaps is incorporated and that led to the Aprender a Tiempo program, which has five axes, of which three are focused on communication skills, that is, reading comprehension that the report (from Unicef) indicates, mathematical knowledge and socio-emotional skills. We apply this program in 2,000 fiscal educational institutions that we identify in our records with learning deficiencies. From the Undersecretariat in charge of this program we monitor the territory to observe its progress. In addition, we issued the curricular flexibility agreement, which allows teachers not only to worry about the curricular progress to reach the goal, but also about a slightly more personalized education according to the learning deficiencies that the students have. This responds to one of the points that the report proposes about the importance of verifying student learning.
So these programs that you mention are designed to fill the knowledge gaps that students of fiscal educational institutions have deepened during the virtual modality forced due to the pandemic.
Yes effectively. The learning gaps in relation to quality standards respond to this need to seek other strategies and other resources. We are preparing to complement this Learning on Time program in 2022 with resources that allow us to strengthen those basic skills necessary so that students can acquire the skills according to their level and their individual need in the educational process.
Analysts say that the crisis in education has been going back decades. They point out, for example, the need to impart skills that involve the development of entrepreneurial skills.
In 2021 we started the Technical Baccalaureate (BT) program, in which it is strengthened in an alliance with the Ministry of Tourism, Productivity and the Presidency of the Republic in relation to the skills that students must acquire to think not only about reintegration labor, but in the productive reactivation of the country. We developed it in the last three months of 2021 and we are seeing self-management models, reviewing the BT profiles. We just started the presence on November 22 (last) with the students of the BT and the rural sector, who are the ones who most needed to reactivate in the continuity of education because they need the practical part. There are 402,000 who are in BT who already started with the presence in 34 professional figures. We started the technical tables to review the profiles and the relevance to the new reality, which implies incorporating and updating certain content. Our focus at the beginning, accompanied with the vaccination plan, one of the great pillars of the Government of the Meeting of the President (of the Republic), Guillermo Lasso, is to reach this reactivation. That is why young people aged 16 and over were the first to be vaccinated with the two doses, which gave the security of being able to start.
There is not 100% coverage of initial education programs that serve children between 1 and 5 years of age. This is a challenge that has been going on since before the pandemic. What does it take to have greater coverage?
As the (Unicef) report says, public-private partnerships and with decentralized autonomous governments are important, so we have launched the “Sponsor a school” strategy, which has the slogan “From a draft to an idea”. At the level of public policies for initial education, the Ministry of Education is responsible for 3 and 4-year-old children. Those from 1 to 3 years are from the Ministry of Economic and Social Inclusion. In our case, we have so far served 20,528 children in this sublevel, which are children aged 3 and 4, in early childhood family care services, which is an itinerant program that is given directly at home within the a community. When we began our management we analyzed this program and through an investment project we have worked and reactivated it in these last three months to give continuity to the educational service of initial education. I know there is still a long way to go, but we’ve already started.
Do you plan to expand coverage during 2022?
We are working on that, to be able to institutionalize (the project).
There are private schools located in marginal urban areas such as Mount Sinaí, in the northwest of Guayaquil, which made up for the lack of fiscal establishments but have closed during the pandemic. How will it be remedied so that these minors do not remain without studying?
When an educational institution closes, within this process is the transfer of students to the district and within the Ministry of Education we will relocate them again to public establishments. The individuals that close do so by their own decision, but we are open and attentive to relocate those students. We have a deficit in infrastructure at the national level of $ 650 million. We need to cover it and look for strategies such as “Sponsor a school” and provide continuity in infrastructure. At Mount Sinai we prepared an intervention plan to close the school year and reopen the institutions located in that area and continue with this plan for education.
What would they do with the $ 650 million they need?
To recondition, maintain, and in some places, decaying institutions have to be overthrown and rebuilt.
Don’t they have this amount by 2022?
It is not budgeted, that is why we have the strategy “Sponsor a school”, we hope that during the four years (of Guillermo Lasso’s regime) we can count. But we have raised a very interesting point in relation to what the Ministry of Finance has assigned us for this issue in 2022, in addition to investment projects such as the World Bank, which supports us with seven educational institutions nationwide to be able to reopen them and give them maintenance, and some as I indicate that they are very deteriorated, to be able to rebuild them.
Until the end of the Costa regime, will this mixed model of presence, alternating with the virtual, which is applied in some schools, continue?
We work in coordination with the national COE and the Ministry of Public Health, we participate weekly in meetings to make decisions about the continuity of presence in education. The continuity of education is guaranteed through the approval of the PICE, which are reactivated in the second week of January, that is, as of January 10, 2022. The establishments that had them approved will continue with this presence and Obviously, adjustments will have to be made because in each canton there is a different behavior with respect to what happens with the COVID-19 virus.
Will attendance be mandatory for the new school year?
The Minister of Education, María Brown, has already announced it, on May 3 we will return to the presence in the Costa regime. We hope that this right to vaccination can cover the population that will have access and thus guarantee the continuity of education.
Access to quality education means reducing child poverty in the future, so what you do to help these vulnerable families is important.
The relevance of education guarantees learning and, therefore, reduces poverty in learning. This is very clear to us, to be able to support and continue with the quality of education. We know that we must work hard on it, that is why we are making education more flexible, contextualizing, reviewing the national curriculum to make adjustments with emphasis on competencies that are relevant to the current reality, such as communicational, critical thinking, digital and socio-emotional. We are aware, we work on that, we are in that construction and apart from in accordance with the new Law (Organic of Intercultural Education) we think about the new modalities. One of them that we are building is the distance one. For this, we are preparing two tax colleges that will open on February 7 and May 3, respectively, for the Sierra / Amazon and Costa / Galapagos regime. This makes it possible to reactivate society economically and reduce the poverty rates that frame an entire system. The current government works in an articulated way. (I)
Paul is a talented author and journalist with a passion for entertainment and general news. He currently works as a writer at the 247 News Agency, where he has established herself as a respected voice in the industry.
