Minister of Education Carlos Amarante Baret has announced at a press conference yesterday, Monday 7 March 2016 that 882,000 students are now attending the extended school day, 1,700,000 benefitting from the school meals program and 25,000 textbooks have been handed over to students from low-income families.
The numbers now attending the extended school day are around 50% of all of the students in the country.
Amarante Baret said that the Ministry has distributed 18,000 laptop computers to teachers who now have to attend a course to learn how to use them properly. In addition there are 874 cubicles or technology spaces in the new schools so that children can learn to use new technology from the age of five.
Amarante Baret said that there are now more than 13,000 new classrooms and 7,642 had been repaired, and that in addition, via the Quisqueya Learns with You literacy program, more than 600,000 previously illiterate Dominicans could now read and write.
When it comes to higher education, Minister Ligia Amada Melo said that to date around 90,000 students had enrolled for the English Immersion course and now they would also include French, Portuguese, German and Russian language training.
She said that of the around 9,000 students who had received scholarships, more than 7,000 had registered and that teacher training was becoming more rigorous with a greater emphasis on technology and the requirements of the 21st century.
http://www.listindiario.com/la-republica/2016/03/07/410726/gobierno-presenta-balance-sector-educativo-882-mil-estudiantes-en-tanda-extendida
