An influential group of Dominican intellectuals question the Ministry of Education’s capacity to spend the over RD$99 billion of this year’s budget effectively. One quote in Hoy newspaper said: “The Ministry of Education suffers from macrocephaly with 4,000 people defining policy when they only need 300 efficient people.” The questions were raised by Professor Julio Leonardo Valeiron, the director of the Dominican Institute for Evaluation and Research of Educational Quality of the Ministry of Education, APEC University rector Radhames Mejia, and Global Institute of Higher Studies in Social Science (IGlobal) advisor Ramon Flores, about the difficulties that they will face with twice the budgetary funding: “If 2% of GDP is difficult, investing 4% is complex.”
These experts noted that although the Ten-Year Plan got people excited it did not touch any of the basic problems. The Plan produced a great curriculum, but it was never put into practice. They stressed that one of the most fundamental problems is the quality of the teachers. Professor Valeiron said that when teachers were given an exam on the contents of primary school math texts, 65% failed the test. The general feeling was that teacher training and selection must be close to the top of the list of priorities.