While the country witnesses how the public teachers’ union (ADP) carries out more ploys to better their class, including taking school days off for protests and union meetings, the new Minister of Education Angel Hernandez lets the population know the challenges ahead.
Public education in the Dominican Republic, with scant exceptions of outstanding schools here and there, has hit bottom. President Luis Abinader’s first choice of his campaign manager Roberto Furcal for Minister from 2020-2022 did not help. In August 2022, he appointed a non-political professional to do the job, but Hernandez has to tackle politics in public education to transform the educational system.
Angel Hernandez has been clear about what has to happen. He has insistently said the system needs to be purged of partisan politics. He has called for all to pull in the same direction for quality education. There is much to be done.
The Ministry of Education released the recent National Diagnostics Assessment carried out from May to June 2022 that shows stagnation in basic levels, with mathematics the most critical. Only 0.7% of more than 6,279 students tested in the sample reached a satisfactory mathematics level. This is less than the 4.1% in 2018, the year when the assessment was last carried out.
Education Minister Angel Hernandez said students at all levels are stagnated in low levels of learning in Spanish language, mathematics and social sciences. “Children are not learning even the basics,” he said when participating in the release of findings of a recent assessment that measured students’ learning skills in third, sixth elementary school and the second to last year of high school.
“Surgery at all levels is needed. This is a matter of shared responsibility. There is a break between the central levels and local levels. The decisions that are taken in the central level are not reaching the local level. There is the concern that school directors need to be held responsible and be able to take needed actions at their schools,” said Minister Hernandez.
He stressed that the school directors need to have sufficient authority to control the learning process. He said the enormous amount of resources is not being spent well, given the precarious results.
In presenting the findings, the Deputy Minister for Supervision and Quality Control at the Ministry of Education, Oscar Amargos Perez said that the low levels of learning are a call to all players in the education system to fulfill their responsibilities.
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30 May 2023