And now… the Ministry of Education (Minerd) admits it doesn’t know for sure the number of students in the public educational system, reports Diario Libre. With two years on the job, Education Minister Roberto Furcal admitted: “In these less than two years in the Minerd, an anguish has always been there every time we have to make decisions. We have to cross-check the data five times, because the schools, the school managements give an amount of enrollment to receive school meals, but the directors give us another enrollment to determine the lack of support staff, depending on the interest involved.”
The Ministry of Education announced it has contracted with the United Nations to prepare a report to systematize and update all the national educational information. He said the data will be available to the general public – journalists, researchers, writers, among others.
Education Minister Furcal also announced the upcoming national consultations for the transformation of education from 6 to 11 June 2022 nationwide with the participation of several United Nations agencies in the country.
The consultations seek to assess the impact of Covid 19 on the Dominican educational system and to identify the main changes and the strategic levels to reinvent education in the 21st Century to achieve educational objectives.
Commenting on the new consultations, Diario Libre says that regarding improving public education in the country, it is now evident that money has not been the issue. The government has more than doubled the budget for public education and recent student assessments show little progress.
Minister of Education Roberto Furcal was a strong defender of remote learning and strongly opposed the return to classrooms for public or private schools. He is a strong proponent of digital education and immersed the Ministry of Education into billionaire purchases of tablets and notebooks for students.
Diario Libre highlights in an editorial that there are more expectations to know the results of findings of the non-profit education think tank, Educa, than the findings the new United Nations report will turn out. “If it is for studies or reports, Dominican students would be the best in the continent,” writes the editorialist. “Education is a problem that has to be tackled with courage and responsibility.”
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Diario Libre
Diario Libre
Diario Libre
1 June 2022