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The Minister of Education, Carla Hananía de Varela, affirmed today that currently 20,000 students of the public educational system have stopped attending virtual classes, although she refrained from describing the fact as school dropout.
Hananía de Varela, in the framework of a Club radio interview, said “I don't know whether to call that desertion; It would be necessary to see, because it could be that at a certain moment they return, we do not know, we are in different circumstances from the normal ones ”.
Last May he had advanced that the number of schoolchildren who moved to public schools exceeded 20,000; This was after 903 transfers had been reported in mid-January.
However, the teachers' unions had already reported at the end of last year that teachers in some schools were facing problems because they had lost communication with children and their parents.
In the interview space, the official pointed out that they have also identified that 22,000 students who were cared for in private schools migrated this year to the public educational service.
"There are parents who have transferred their children to the public sector first for the economic part and second because they have seen that in the public sector we are offering various possibilities for their children to continue studying," said Minister Hananía.
The official explained that it is not a competition of those who stay with more students, since no one imagined the challenges that the pandemic would impose.
However, he stressed that in the new context they are trying to raise the level of quality of care in the public education system, closing the digital divide, improving the skills of teachers in this field; in addition, promoting a curricular reform.
The movement of students had already been warned, for months, by the president of the Association of Private Schools (ACPES), Javier Hernández Amaya.
However, Hernández Amaya is concerned about the fact that there are also cases of students from the private sector who have not enrolled in private or public institutions.