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The interim head of the Ministry of Education (MINED), José Mauricio Pineda, assured this Thursday that the "educational transformation" that the government is preparing will begin this year in 20% of public schools.
During the morning interview with the official Canal 10, the official assured that the educational reform will be implemented "in the area of early childhood, kindergarten, completely renovated, with an adequate curriculum, and we are also going to start this transformation process on the 20th % of our educational centers for first, second and third grade".
However, the official did not specify dates for these changes. At the end of the interview, a group of journalists was waiting for him to consult him on this and other points, but an institutional communicator did not allow questions from the media on the grounds that Pineda had to attend a meeting.
During the interview, the official reiterated the need for an educational reform to respond to the changes that the students themselves have implemented in their ways of learning. "Our students have changed their way of learning many years ago. It is our responsibility, now, to change the way in which we reach them, the way in which we teach them and therein the educational community as a whole - at the central level, parents family and teachers - we are in charge of promoting this transformation in the educational system," he said.
On September 7, 2022, Nayib Bukele announced for the third time a plan to rebuild damaged school infrastructure, which included some 5,000 educational centers, but this time he framed it in an educational reform that he has called "My new school."
One day before the announcement, the MINED summoned teacher unions to open work tables and collect inputs that would allow the construction of said reform, but last week the unions affirmed that since October 25 they stopped meeting.
The suspension of these meetings coincided with the delivery of a salary adjustment proposal by the national teachers, given that this year a revision of the base salary should enter into force, in accordance with the provisions of the Teaching Career Law. They have not received a response on this issue either, the unions assured.
Pineda - who in the interview assured that previous governments excluded teachers from the "transformation process" - did not refer to these issues this morning nor did the government channel consult him about it.
The interim Minister of Education also did not reveal when the 2023 school year begins, but announced that the flexible modalities, including those adopted by the covid-19 pandemic, are here "to stay."
"A curricular adaptation that is here to stay, and will continue to accompany us, is the flexible modality and approximately 34,000 students are being served either with distance education, accelerated education (...), night education, blended learning and virtual, which also came to stay. Schools at risk, whether due to rain, can stay at home and attend education virtually or blended," he said.