Daniela Estrada

SANTIAGO, Dec 7 2005 (IPS) — Education alone will not solve the huge inequalities that afflict Latin America and the Caibbean, authorities and researchers warned at the first meeting convened by UNESCO to evaluate the progress of an educational project agreed by the countries of the region in 2002.

“Education isn’t the only necessary element for promoting equality. It has to be complemented by other strategies,” said Ana Luiza Machado, regional director of UNESCO (United Nations’ Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation), at the intergovernmental meeting on the Regional Education Project for Latin America and the Caribbean (PRELAC).

Machado said the development model applied in the region generates inequality, since it creates growth without jobs and fails to distribute wealth in an equitable manner. Latin America has the most unequal distribution of wealth of any region in the world.

Around 30 ministers and deputy ministers of education gathered with UNESCO experts and educational researchers Tuesday and Wednesday in Santiago to assess the progress made by the project in participating countries.

PRELAC was approved in 2002 by representatives of the nations of the region meeting in Havana, as a framework for achieving the goals adopted at the World Forum on Education for All, held two years previously in Dakar.

At the global conference, the governments committed themselves, among other things, to “ensuring that by 2015 all children…have access to and complete free and compulsory primary education of good quality.”

As for PRELAC, it establishes that the countries of the region should concentrate their efforts on five strategic focuses: the contents and practices of education – to construct meanings; strengthening the participation of teachers in educational change; the culture of schools; managemet of educational systems; and social responsibility for education.

“The five strategic focuses of the regional project are present in every country, to a greater or lesser extent. At whatever level, countries are making an effort in these areas,” Machado told IPS.

“Work is mainly being done on strengthening teachers’ roles in educational reforms,” by means of better teacher training programmes and professional evaluation systems, she added.

Emphasis has also been placed on curriculum reform and the participation of other social sectors in education, such as private businesses and citizens’ groups.

However, socioeconomic, geographic, demographic, ethnic and gender factors continue to generate inequality.

The participants in this week’s meeting in the Chilean capital were in agreement that the key is to focus resources on the poorest and most vulnerable sectors of society.

“At this rate, some countries will fulfil the goals set at the Dakar forum, and others will not. The latter may include the nations of Central America,” stated the director of the UNESCO regional office.

Machado also highlighted the problem of education system management which affects many countries, given that the limited resources are not spent efficiently or effectively.

Chilean Education Minister Sergio Bitar said that the main battle over education is a political one, since additional funding is always needed to implement the reforms. He appealed for a national consensus within each country, to put a higher priority on education.

Bitar told IPS that the central goal of this week’s gathering was to discuss how to “turn education into the main lever on the fulcrum of economic development and equality.”

In this regard, Fernando Filgueira, an academic at the Catholic University of Uruguay, remarked to IPS that Latin American countries are in a position to devote more resources to education.

“Most Latin American countries could significantly expand their tax base, but this isn’t done for both political and technical reasons. I would say that there can be no quality education without a quality State,” Filgueira affirmed.

Privatisation of educational institutions, a growing trend in the region, was also discussed at the regional meeting.

According to the latest statistics from the Chilean government, for the first time in history enrolment in public schools reached only 49.34 percent of the total. Such a decrease sharply contrasts with enrolment in private schools that receive state subsidies, where the number of pupils rose from 1,302,010 in 2001 to 1,510,134 in 2004.

“It’s true that there’s a risk that privatising education may turn it into a business. That’s why the State must have a national programme and proper supervision, which we do have in Chile,” Bitar assured IPS.

“The existence of high quality public education is very important, and we have to reinforce this so that parents will choose to keep their children in public schools,” the minister added.

“But it’s just as important,” he argued, “to guarantee that State resources ensure full coverage and quality of education for the poor, by whatever means applicable.”

For his part, Filgueira spoke of the changes that the social fabric, and especially the family, has undergone in the last few decades, and stressed that education systems must take these new scenarios into account if they are to carry out effective reforms.

“A school’s principal ally is the family, and if the family changes, schools ought to change also,” the Uruguayan academic told IPS.

“The family has changed in two or three main ways. The biggest factor is that the proportion of single parent families has increased enormously, with 90 percent of them headed by a woman. Cohabiting couples with children have also become more widespread, and more women have entered the labour force,” he pointed out.

According to Filgueira, “this implies that socialisation within the family has suffered to a certain extent, because parents have less time to devote to it. Formal education must recognise this, and work to persuade parents not to abandon the educational process.”

Some countries have taken into account the new reality by expanding pre-school education and lengthening the school day, although these measures alone do not suffice, the expert admitted.

Machado hopes that the results of the fruitful discussions that took place this week in the Chilean capital will be divulged in their countries of origin by the participating government representatives, thus accelerating the process of improving equality in education and putting PRELAC’s focuses on the national agendas.

The gathering formed part of the preparations for the meeting of education ministers to take place in Buenos Aires in 2007, as part of the follow-up that the countries asked UNESCO to carry out in order to ensure that the aims of the project are met.