Education Reform in Chile
Chile has been rocked by powerful student protests that call for greater education quality and equity since 2011.
This post is also available in: Español
Unlike other social indicators, measuring education quality is not so obvious. Learning assessment tests in Latin America, which shed light on this subject, show disturbing results. What are the main challenges facing the region to reverse these results? This article argues that investment in two areas is key to improve education in Latin America.
For parents, in general, it is difficult to determine whether their children receive high-quality education. If our children have fever or feel pain we take them to the doctor. If they don't get better, we begin to wonder if the care they are receiving is good enough. At the social level, indicators such as infant mortality, malnutrition, and the incidence of specific diseases serve as a sign that our healthcare system may be having quality problems.
In contrast, children do not show that they are not learning through their body temperature or headaches, and we as a society do not have such obvious indicators as mortality or malnutrition to recognize the failures of our education systems. That is why the results of learning assessment tests are an essential source of information for us these alerts.
Chile has been rocked by powerful student protests that call for greater education quality and equity since 2011.
Education quality if one of the biggest challenges for Latin America – and also one of the main opportunities.
Despite the importance of teachers in the learning process, systems for recruiting, selecting, training, and supporting teachers remain deficient.