LA EDUCACION EN CHILE NO RESPONDE A LAS EXPECTATIVAS
Education in Chile, does not meet the expectations
Evidenciar
las razones de este diagnóstico, es un desafío trascendente para nuestra
sociedad, y por ello, el presente documento intenta entregar un aporte al
debate.
As Hayek has sustained, social phenomena are
extremely complex. This complexity should make us cautious in most public
policy objectives. However, in most cases the contrary occurs, especially in
those areas in which empirical research and, therefore, an understanding of
social phenomena, are severely limited. Ignorance seems at times to create an
attitude of illuminism, instead of prudence. Therefore, certain policies are
followed with exaggerated conviction although they have not been appropriately
tested, or they require an institutional framework that is not in place when
they are implemented.
This approach is quite frequent in education.
Although there is good research in this case1, overall, the research that has
been done lacks enough strength to influence educational policy. Mainly because
some studies contradict each other, or the quality of the data prevents any
strong conclusions from being reached. Hence, there is no consolidation of
widely shared empirical regularities like what occurs in other fields of social
research or, even more frequently, in the field of natural sciences.
Such scenario leaves in my opinion little room
for centralized policies. If they are wrongly designed the costs for the whole
educational system may be enormous. The decisions should be left to elementary
and high schools or, in general, to local communities. Most of the knowledge
required to generate an effective education is local in its origin. The
evaluation of teachers is such a case.2 However, Chile recently took teacher evaluation
outside the school's scope in what constitutes a clear example of the incorrect
approach underlying the Chilean educational policy.
In what follows I will suggest a very basic
approach to Chilean educational policy that is usually forgotten: those
ultimately responsible for improving the learning of students are the schools.
Accordingly, schools must be held accountable for their results. For this to
happen, an institutional framework that generates that accountability is
required. The creation of such a framework is the main challenge for Chilean
educational policy.
In The Present
Levels Of Education
The levels of education in Chile are:
- Pre-school: For children up to 5 years old, optional for 1 grade.
- Primary school: (Enseñanza básica) for children from 5-13 years old,
divided into 8 grades.
- Secondary
school: (Enseñanza media) for teenagers from 13-18 years old, divided into 4
grades.
- Secondary school is also divided into:
Scientific-humanities
approach: From Tercero Medio (11th grade) in high
school, students can choose a major in either science (math, physics,
chemistry, biology), or humanities (literature, history, sociology), which
means they will get more lessons in the area of their choice.
Technical-Professional
education: Students receive 'extra' education in the
so-called 'technical' areas, such as electricity, mechanics, metal assembly,
etc. This second type of education is more typical of public schools (Liceos),
to give students from poorer areas a chance to work right away after completion
of highschool, as a way to fund a possible higher education career later.
- University: a system divided in public or 'state' universities and a
private system.
Primary and Secondary School
According to the constitution, primary and
secondary school are mandatory for all Chileans.
The Chilean state provides an extensive system
of education vouchers, that covers
almost 90% students of primary and secondary education. Such extensive voucher
system is based in a direct payment to the schools based on daily attendance;
in practical terms, if the students moves to a different school, his attendance
payments move too.
Schools are either public (nearly all owned by
the municipality in which the school is located) or private, which may receive
government subsidies.
Basic
The reform of 1965 established Basic Education
as the initial cycle of schooling. Before that, by 1920, the Chilean
legislation had established 4 years of minimum mandatory education. By 1929 the
minimum had been increased to 6 years. Finally, in 1965 a compulsory Basic
Level of 8 years was established, divided in 2 cycles and 8 grades, ideally
designed for ages 6 to 13.
Secondary
The Secondary School is divided between
Scientific-Humanist (regular), Technical-Professional (vocational) and
Artistic, always with a duration of 4 years. The first two years are the same
for the three kinds of schooling, while third and fourth years are
differentiated according to the orientation of the school.
The schools offering Technical-Professional
programs are denominated:
Industrial Schools: electricity, mechanics,
electronics, informatics, among others.
- Commercial Schools: management, accountant,
secretary and similar.
- Technical Schools: fashion, culinary, nursery
and the like.
- Polyvalent Schools: offering careers of more
than one of those listed above.
Compulsory only reached the 8 years of the
Basic Cycle, but since May 7th of 2003, a constitutional reform under the
government of the president Ricardo Lagos, established free and compulsory
Secondary Education for all the inhabitants of Chile up to 18 years old,
placing on the State the responsibility of ensuring access to it. This ensures
thirteen years of compulsory schooling, which was an unprecedented milestone in
Latin America that date. As of 2008, the LGE (Ley General de Educación), which
is currently pending, provides and guarantees 14 years of free compulsory
education.
The coverage of the Chilean Educational System
is practically universal, like in most highly developed countries, showing
enrollment rates that represent that reality.
Enrollment in Basic Education
reaches 99.7% of children between 6 and 14 years, while the coverage of
secondary education enrollment is 87.7% of adolescents between 15 and 18 years.
Educations Costs
Public schools and subsidized private schools
with voluntary tuition may charge a fee for the admittance process, which is
fixed by law. The fee's cost was CLP$3.500 in 2008 (less than US$7). The annual
price of enrollment is zero for primary school and cannot be higher than
CLP$3.500 for secondary school. A tuition fee may be charged only in secondary
school, but it is completely voluntary for the parent.
Subsidized private schools with mandatory
tuition have the same admittance and annual enrollment costs as in public
schools, but they are allowed to charge a mandatory monthly tuition which
cannot be higher than 4 USE (Education Subsidy Unit). This was equal to
CLP$60,748.86 in 2008 (about US$116).
Private schools are free to set what they will
charge, which may include, admittance, enrollment, tuition costs, as well as a
fee for being selected into the school (paid once, and can be quite high in
some exclusive schools) and a payment to the so-called Parent Center (Centro de
Padres).
There is a third type of public school, the
so-called Delegated Administration schools, which are owned by the State but
managed and financed by private corporations. These cannot charge for
admittance and the annual enrollment cost is the same as in public schools.
They are allowed to charge for tuition, but this is wholly voluntary for the parent.
The cost is 1.5 UTM (Monthly Tax Unit) annually, which was CLP$451,824 (less
than US$865) in 2008.
There is a fourth type of public school,
administered by the Ministry of Education and completely financed by the State.
Currently, there is only one such school: Escuela Villa Las Estrellas in
Antártica.
Admission To University
Students can choose between 25 state
universities and over 50 private ones, which are increasingly growing in
number.
There is one single and very transparent admission system to all state
universities and to several of the oldest private universities, which integrate
the so called Council of Rectors (Consejo de Rectores). The system, called PSU,
an acronym for Universitary Selection Test (Prueba de Selección Universitaria),
is very similar to the U.S. SAT Reasoning Test.
The design and the correction
of the test is performed by the University of Chile, while the system itself is
managed by the Ministry of Education (Ministerio de Educación).
The test consists in two mandatory exams,
mathematics and language, plus several other specific exams, like chemistry,
physics, biology, history, etc., depending on what career the student wishes to
apply. The cumulative grade point average achieved during secondary school is
also taken into account in the final admission score. Every university assigns
different weightings to the results of the various exams.
There is a big gap in PSU scores between poorer
students, mostly coming from public schools, and more wealthy students,
specially those coming from private schools, therefore, poorer students have
much smaller chances to enter the most prestigious universities, which hold
high entry scores. The most talented poor students, those who achieve high PSU
scores, can obtain up to 100% of scholarship from the Government, plus, several
universities have their own scholarship programmes to assist poorer students,
though funds are insufficient. For students who obtained high enough scores to
enter a public university or to an accredited private university, there is a
system of government backed loans which is offered through several commercial
banks, but the amount and terms of the credits not necessarily fit the needs of
the students.
According to media and official statistics, in
2006 a total 241,390 students took the PSU test. The year 2012, 231,115 students took the PSU, which means a drop of 7.8% from the total number of students that occurred in 2011.
In this process, 19,628 young people from the promotion did not undergo the test despite being registered. Of these, 73.8% owned by municipal schools, which corresponds to 14,504 people.
Compared to last year, there was a fall of 16.5%. This means that by 2011 there were fewer enrollees who did not perform the test in contrast to the assessment of this year.
Absenteeism can be explained by the shots and strikes of 2011, explained the Director of Demre, Ivan Silva. "There was a sharp increase from enrolling and give no evidence of municipal schools. Attributable One factor is due to the demonstrations."
The universe of young people who took the PSU and that today can begin to apply to colleges, 31.7% belong to public places, 52.4% to subsidized private establishments and 10.6% in private schools.
Program Overview
In
the Chile: Education and Social Change study abroad
program, students examine the powerful relationship between education and
social change and the ways in which educational politics, strategy, and
pedagogy influence society in Chile and Argentina. Students engage in rigorous
academic coursework and research on the educational systems in urban and rural
areas in Chile, and observe first-hand the application of popular education as
a tool for social change.
The program offers students the opportunity to
interact with prominent academics, policy makers, activists, and
nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to gain a panoramic understanding of the
forces affecting Chile educational policies. Students also observe the
intercultural dynamics between the Chilean government and the Mapuche, the
country's largest indigenous group, and participate in homestays with families
in Santiago, the Mapuche region. Intensive Spanish language study and
educational excursions throughout the semester improve students' communication
and field study skills while also immersing them in the rich cultures of Chile.
Mobilization And Innovation
The program's base in Santiago, Chile, provides
students with a dynamic social and political environment in which to study
education and social change. Chile's capital, Santiago was the focal point of
protests involving high school students seeking education reform in 2006. These
protests, which mobilized nearly a million people, underscore the importance of
education for the Chilean populace as well as the controversies surrounding
education funding, content, and distribution. Chile has a long history of
sustained governmental engagement in educational policymaking and
implementation as well as innovation in educational approach and delivery, and
these protests reflected the difficult transition from the educational mandates
of a dictatorship to the progressive ideas available in a democracy.
Within this socially active atmosphere,
students interact with local schools, community organizations, and their
homestay families to gain multiple perspectives on education and its impact on
society. As part of their field study, students participate in observation
activities in a selection of schools around Santiago, thereby gaining
first-hand insight on the workings of public, private, voucher,
underprivileged, coed, and single sex schools.
Students will also explore
Chile's complex political history by conducting educational excursions to
places such as the Parque por la Paz, which served as a secret detention center
during the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, which began in 1974 and
lasted for almost 17 years. Students travel outside of Santiago and conduct
field studies in Valparaiso and Temuco, Chile to compare regional and national
differences in educational systems and community involvement with, and
influence on, educational reform.
A Debate On The Quality Of Education
Chile has increased significantly its spending
on education, going from 2.5% of GDP in 1990 to an estimated 4.4% this year. A possible relationship between
spending and the quality of education. It suggests that the relationship
between spending per student and academic performance is not unique.
The
adoption of an "educational technology". Investment in "educational technology" in the classroom, is an important consideration for assessing the academic results from SIMCE and PSU exams. It has failed to show that establishments that have made improvements in the technological tools for students, achieve results far superior to those who have not advanced in this line.
Of course, it is unreasonable to expect
immediate change. Changes are rather the fruit of perseverance and educational
efforts. But even so, there is no information to predict that such perseverance
will result in significant progress over the coming years. There is a
relatively high inertia in the performance of the country's schools. In general, schools that
earned goods results on the Simce 6 years ago did so again in 2002, while those
that did poorly at that time did poorly again. Only a few schools managed to
revert their "initial situation."
Moreover, international comparisons suggest
that Chile's performance is lower than what its per capita income or
educational spending would allow (cumulative or contemporary), by magnitudes
that run from 0.18 to 0.36 standard deviations in academic performance.
Reveals that weak academic performance is quite generalized in Chile. It is
comparable to the performance in mathematics for countries with a lower per
capita income, where there is less spending on education as well as high
inequality (although certainly not as high as in Chile) for each percentile in
the distribution of performance. This means that educational standards are low
across the entire educational system. This must not lead us, however, to error.
Lower income youths are more harmed by an education where there is less
learning. Of the fourth grade students who are in the highest decile of
academic performance, 27.3% come from paid private schools although they
account for only 10% of enrollment. That proportion rises to 33.1% in 8th grade
and to 44.3% by the junior year in high school. The "initial
advantage" of students that go to private schools is clearly strengthened.
Said crudely, the government-financed educational system destroys talents in
children of lower socioeconomic levels, and efforts must be redoubled to avoid
that situation.
What Is The Challenge?
Since we have said that the main deficit of the
Chilean educational system is its lack of quality, it is indispensable to
advance in the development of an institutional framework that unequivocally
ensures that such an objective gains force in the allocation of resources.
What
makes an educational system move to a higher curve? The
truth is that there is no simple answer. As we said earlier, comparative
research does not provide very conclusive answers. We know, however, that an
educational system would be lame if the players (students, teachers and
authorities, among others), felt no pressure to achieve a good academic
performance. In order to achieve this, those schools must be held accountable to
the community for the academic results of their students. Few structures are
capable of meeting these requirements. State intervention in education must not
limit the autonomy of educational establishments, nor alter their incentives to
provide quality education. If this is accepted, educational programs directed
by the Ministry of Education have no place. Schools must choose the combination
of educational inputs most appropriate to their objectives and be accountable
for their results. In this scheme of things, the job of the Ministry is to
facilitate inputs and ensure that there is no rigidity preventing schools from
choosing the combination of inputs they deem most suitable. This is far from
what has occurred in Chile. The educational environment is not designed to make
schools feel pressure to do well, and the educational authorities play an
undeniable role of pedagogical managers where the focus is, moreover, basically
on processes and very little on results.
Progress in decentralizing the educational
system, handing over government schools to municipalities and deregulating the
supply of schools; and the change in the way that education is financed to a
per-student subsidy were all, at the time, changes in the right direction.
However, among other design problems, no system was created that informed
parents of how schools were performing. Only in 1995 was a reporting system
implemented for the results of the Simce test. However, the information must be
more precise, clear and hopefully provided directly to parents. The reports
that many American schools are sending to families are a model to imitate.
The financing system also has serious design
problems, including the fact that the subsidy assumes that the cost of
providing education is unrelated to the socioeconomic situation of students. In
turn, the "municipalization" of education has not yielded the
expected fruits. In part because of the lack of information about schooling
performance, but also because in many municipalities, the levels of centralization
existing when the schools were run by the government were replicated and even
exacerbated. Many of the municipal schools therefore lacked a minimum of
autonomy to implement educational projects. Also important is the fact that the
quality of education is not necessarily one of the priorities of mayors.
Moreover, students often change from one municipal school to another, so there
is no impact on municipal finances. This dilutes the incentives to improve the
management of municipal schools.Lastly, nearly 20% of the boroughs in the
country have no private schools. Another 40% face a very limited competition
from the private sector.
The design problems affecting the educational
system have been aggravated in recent years, instead of being corrected.10 Also
of influence is a deeply rooted belief that teachers will be incapable of
dealing with the current educational challenges. The Ministry acts as if they
believe they would be a bottleneck impossible to overcome, which is why the
Ministry has wanted to guide the educational process. But there is no evidence
that this is truly so. A significant dispersion in the results of subsidized
private schools and municipal schools in each of the vulnerability groups
established by the Ministry of Education. It follows that there is no material
justification for those ministerial apprehensions. It could be argued that the
schools with good results keep only good students (which is what teachers
usually argue), but there are no differences in the dispersion of results
within good and bad performing schools, so there is no evidence in favor of
such claim.
It is the schools themselves that must deal
with the challenges imposed by greater accountability for results. One of the
greatest challenges in developing institutions that pressure schools to do
well, is dealing with the teachers labor statute and the rigidities due to the
municipalization of education. One possible road is to allow parents to
"intervene" municipal schools where performance is weak. This
intervention could occur, for example, whenever a municipal school obtains
results below the national average or in the lower third of performance.
The majority (or two-thirds of parents) must
back that decision in order to make it a reality. Operationally, the management
of the school would be left to parents. They can appoint a new principal. The
administrative staff and teachers would lose some of the privileges conferred
by the teachers labor statute, in particular tenure. In this scheme of things,
the labor statute is a "benefit" that continues only if the results
of the schools are good.
Otherwise, the benefits are forfeited to the parents
of the children attending those schools.
Conclusions
I have discussed a central issue in the
development of Chilean education, but it is far from being the only one.
Educational issues do not stop here. Yet I believe that if we do not take this
fundamental step, dealing with many of those other issues will not yield the
expected fruits. Schools more accountable for the academic results of their
students are indispensable if one wants to create a virtuous educational
dynamic. Of course, it also involves risks. Schools may displace students with
low results in order to show quick progress, but there are ways to minimize
these risks. Lastly, the potential benefits of a more accountable and
transparent educational system are so significant that it is worth taking that risk
no matter what. There are, of course, alternatives to explore and imagine, but
the important thing is to start trying out alternatives right away that will
help us effectively rise to a trajectory in which spending on education is more
fruitful than what it has been thus far.
References
Aedo,
C. y C. Sapelli (2001), "El sistema de vouchers en educación: una revisión
de la teoría y la evidencia empírica para Chile" Estudios Públicos, Otoño
N° 82, pp. 35-82.
Beyer,
H. (2000), "Entre la autonomía y la intervención: las reformas de la
educación en Chile" en Felipe Larraín y Rodrigo Vergara, eds., La
Transformación Económica en Chile, Santiago: Centro de Estudios Públicos.
Beyer,
H. (2003), "La búsqueda de una educación de calidad", Estudios Públicos,
por aparecer.
Beyer,
H., Eyzaguirre, B. y L. Fontaine (2001), "Reseña al libro La Reforma
Educacional Chilena", Perspectivas en política, economía y gestión, Vol. 4
N° 2, pp. 289-314.
Eyzaguirre,
B. y C. Le Foulon (2001), "La calidad de la educación chilena en
cifras", Estudios Públicos, Primavera N° 84, pp. 85-204.
Heckman, J. y P. Carneiro (2003), "Human
Capital Policy" National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper Series
N&° 9495, febrero.
*
Centro de Estudios Públicos, Chile. Email: hbeyer@cepchile.cl
See,
for example, the papers included in "La Economia de la Educación y el
Sistema Educativo Chileno," Cuadernos de Economía, December 2002, Volume
39, No.118, edited by Claudio Sapelli.
See, for example, Heckman and Carneiro (2003).
Claudia Valdés Muñoz
@MonitaClaudia
