WRITE-UP | Truncated Education | How much, how and what it is learn in school
The breakdown of the Venezuelan school system undermined the human right to develop creative potentials and a sense of dignity in a democratic society. Education ceased to be an instrument for building scientific, humanistic and technological capacities at the service of society. Formal education replaced free personality development with ideological indoctrination; freedom of thought and knowledge with a populist vocation; and physical and mental skills and participation in a free society with political patronage.
By Maruja Dagnino | Photos: Daniel Hernández | Infographic: María Alejandra Domínguez
HumVenezuela, December, 2021.- Formal education in Venezuela entered the twenty-first century for the purpose of ideological control and the subjection of conduct to disciplines that excluded the objectives of education and the fundamental freedoms enshrined in the International Covenants on Human Rights.
In opposition to article 13.3 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and 29 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, has also been violated the liberty of parents to choose the kind of education that wish to give to their children and to establish and address educational institutions which, in accordance with the standards of the law, could only be subject to minimum standards established by the States.
The deviation from the normative standards of the right to education in the system itself has been nullifying the value of training and competencies; many teachers are no longer accredited to exercise their positions; students are not required, in the course of basic education, to pass the tests to pass grade. Several pedagogical programs coexist, full of imprecise contents or generalities, in an attempt to erase any past that remembers democratic Venezuela. School calendars are improvised on the fly, and classes have been constantly changed for proselytizing events.
The high levels of deficiency in the quality of Venezuelan education in recent years have an impact on the lives of almost all children and adolescents in the country that 80% of whom attend schools run by public entities where they are deeper, especially in those with fewer resources.
While private schools have other possibilities, which creates huge educational gaps. Nancy Hernandez de Martin of the National Federation of Societies of Parents and Representatives (Fenasopadres), points out that: “The gap between the private sector and the official sector is becoming more and more profound, and the Venezuelan who has no possibilities to pay for a quality education, will find a functional illiteracy, in fact, much more serious than at the beginning of democracy.”
Quality without parameters
In most parts of the world, the quality of education is measured every year, but not in Venezuela. Since the beginning of this century, Venezuela has abandoned all efforts to assess the quality of education. But it had been one of the first countries in Latin America to establish the National System of Evaluation of Learning (SINEA), based on measurements in third and ninth grade, but it was abandoned since year 2000.
Associated to the basic skills such as reading comprehension, logical-mathematics skills and some complementary scientific capabilities, follow-up tests allow to design policies, but “Venezuela has not wanted to participate in any of the international tests, and does not have a method of tracking, which prevents us from knowing if the education and the level of high school graduates follows the national and international standards”, says Alexis Ramirez, of the organization Excubitus DHE.
”If you asked the minister of education on duty how is the level of reading or mathematics in third grade students, he would not be able to answer”, argues Juan Maragall, current head of education projects at the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) in Colombia, former secretary of education of Miranda state between 2008 and 2016, where he led the implementation of the International Evaluation Program (PISA).
“The PISA tests are an initiative of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) for its member States, in order to measure the performance of education systems, and that became an international standard, because there are many countries (including local and regional governments) that are not part of the OECD, but agree to implement the test —explains Maragall. The test is applied to 15-year-olds, and allows a girl from Caracas to be compared with a girl from Montevideo. Or Helsinki and Canberra to compare and establish a ranking.”
El PISA se implementó una vez en el estado Miranda, pero por limitaciones económicas no se repitió. No obstante, dice Maragall que, “desde 2008 hasta el 2017 se hicieron pruebas ERE (Evaluación del Rendimiento Estudiantil) y en 2009 teníamos alrededor de 30% de analfabetismo escolar en el tercer grado, es decir, uno de cada tres niños no sabía leer. Pero a raíz del diseño de políticas que respondieran a esos resultados, este número de niños y niñas que no sabían leer se redujo a menos de 5%”.
Between November 2020 and May 2021, the Educational Diagnosis of Venezuela (DEV 2021), carried out by the consultancy DevTech Systems in partnership with ANOVA, Center for Educational Innovation (CIED) of the Andres Bello Catholic University (UCAB) and the Carvajal Foundation of Colombia, applied a reading comprehension test called EGRA (Early Grade Reading Assessment). Applied to 1,028 third-grade basic education students in 394 schools across the country, the test was adapted to a remote digital version via Whatsapp video calls.
The results of the DEV 2021 report showed that, while listening and reading comprehension are high (82% and 85% respectively), reading aloud and decoding capacity are low (43% and 53%). The first case means that four out of 10 children do not read a text accurately and at an appropriate pace. In the second, it means that more than half have little ability to join graphemes with phonemes when reading simple words. In addition, 68% had a significant reading lag. More than 40% only read 64 words per minute or less, when they should be reading between 85 and 90, and as a result, they have difficulty reading fluently.
School directors interviewed by Efecto Cocuyo observe that in the first grades there are students who do not know the alphabet and, in high school, they do not know how to take the pencil, do a dictation or apply basic mathematical operations.
In Venezuela, tests have been made more flexible, approving students, even if they have not reached the competencies to pass grade. In the 2016-2017 school year, the Battle against Repetition Plan was established, which simply is “not to disapprove any student”, as Alexis Ramírez of Excubitus DHE states. The school lag, understood as “the lack of continuity in the school itineraries associated with problems of late admission, repetition or dropout” has increased in the last three years, according to the Quality of Life Survey (ENCOVI).
In ENCOVI’s measurements, the school lag (mild and severe) in boys and girls from seven to 17 years old was 33.5% in 2020, falling to 29% in 2021, “probably favored by the flexibility of evaluations and the promotion of grade in the population from 7 to 11 years old”, as explained in the presentation of results. In contrast, the lag (mild and severe) in boys and girls aged 12 to 17 increased from 38.5% to 45.5% between 2020 and 2021.
According to a survey published by Code for Venezuela, conducted in 2021, about 42% of boys and girls were promoted without having achieved the competencies of the degree. This means that many teens may drop out as training becomes more demanding. According to Tulio Ramirez, director of the PhD and Post-PhD Degree in Education at the UCAB, on average almost 80% of students retire from university in the first years.
Most public and private universities in the country had to create, extend or strengthen their leveling programmes, but it is difficult to remedy what was missed in basic education.
Ideology versus knowledge
The education policies of the Venezuelan State have violated the obligation to guarantee respect for all currents of thought, imposing the ideologization of official education. Nancy Hernandez, of Fenasopadres, explains that “the Venezuelan State has had the systematic and persistent intention of imposing a single type of thought”. Since the first proposal of the National Education Project, 1999 (PEN), passing by the Decree 1011 in the year 2000 and the different approaches of the curriculum bolivariano, including the creation of the Republic of School Bolivariana, the State has advanced in its plans to impose a single thought to the so-called socialism of the XXI century, as documented reports on the right to education of Fenasopadres, Assembly of Education and Organized Parents of Venezuela.
This set of decisions was joined by the adoption in 2012 of Resolution 058 (repealing Resolution 751 from 1986). The new one violates the right to association and participation of students, teachers, parents and representatives in the school. Hernández clarifies that, “the long arm of the State somehow achieved its objective of enthroning its political project through the Bolivarian Organization of Students and the creation of PSUV cells within high schools and technical schools, which are violations of the Constitution. Thus, they turned educational institutions into centers for political proselytism”.
Ideological control is observed, according to several specialists, in curricular reforms such as the Bicentennial Edition, a collection of school textbooks in which the curricula were transformed without due validation and consultation, “to favor the ideological basis of the revolution”. In the book Patria y Ciudadanía, from the Bicentennial Collection, for example, there are 16 out of 175 pages dedicated solely to the administration of Hugo Chavez. Other presidents are not mentioned, but images of Nicolas Maduro, PDVAL and people in red shirts allude to the ruling party are shown.
Alexis Ramirez, of the organization Excubitus DHE, indicates that the use of school textbooks to ideologize is incompatible with the standards of acceptability and adaptability of the right to education, according to Observation No. 13 of the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
These standards refers to the form and substance of the content of education, both in the study programs as well as in the methods of teaching, must be relevant, flexible, appropriate, culturally and of good quality, aimed to develop the sense of the dignity of the human personality, train for participation in a free society, and understanding among all ethnic groups, and among nations and racial and religious groups, in the framework of the objectives of the law.
The schools, in addition, are used for proselytizing activities and this is one of the reasons why pedagogical projects are not developed in a 100%. Teachers also accuse the excessive suspension of activities to transfer students to party activities of the PSUV or to proselytizing activities in other institutions. Studies of cases reported in a bulletin of the Democratic Unit of the Education sector (UDSE), of 2018, shows schools in Monagas state that developed only 40% of pedagogical projects, in Amazonas with a scope of only 70%, in the Capital District with 68% of pedagogical projects developed, and in Lara state with 69%.
Educators without credentials
The change in the game rules in the selection of teachers has been one of the factors that has contributed most to the deterioration of educational quality. Juan Maragall recalls that, since 2001, merit competitions have been abandoned in Venezuela. From that moment on, “political or quota mechanisms prevailed, and what was established in the 1991 regulations on the teaching profession, according to which certain requirements had to be met and there was competition, is not being applied”. This means, according to Maragall, that Venezuela cannot guarantee that its teachers meet basic conditions of suitability for the position “and that is one of the origins of the poor quality of education in Venezuela”.
Since February 2011 —points out Nancy Hernandez from Fenasopadres— there was an executive order from the office of the minister of education to not accept, for the credential competitions, graduates of national universities or the Universidad Pedagogica Experimental Libertador (UPEL). Graduated professionals, sometimes even with fourth-level training, were discriminated against with the intention of incorporating only those who come from educational missions. “This policy has continued to be carried out until now and, by official order of Nicolas Maduro, those who are being trained as teachers, in quotation marks, are from the Chamba Juvenil mission”.
Raquel Figueroa explains that, “since 2004, with the implementation of the Project of Bolivarian Education was left to run the Regulation of the Exercise of the Teaching Profession by virtue of having teachers submissive and apply political proselytizing, obtaining as a result a political-partisan control of 99% of the charges to principals and assistant principals as managers, and the total disappearance of supervisors”. That, according to Figueroa, is confirmed in the last Report and Account of the Ministry of People’s Power for Education (MPPE) of 2014-2015, presented in 2016, where the number of career supervisors is zero. Figueroa reiterates that “Venezuelan education is not under specialists or professionals and today’s supervisors have become simple commissioners of supervision of training and control in the academic freedom of professionals in the classroom”.
Teachers abandon the classrooms
In the DEV 2021, it was found that 25% of primary and middle school teachers dropped out of the classroom between 2018 and 2021. Venezuelan education has a very high deficit of teachers in the specialties of history, biology, chemistry and mathematics, as pointed out by Raquel Figueroa, of the Federation of Teachers of Venezuela.
According to data from education unions, 40% of teachers have emigrated from the country, to which are added the resignations of those who stay in Venezuela because they do not even have how to pay transportation to get to schools and return home. The teaching career has gone back 30 years, as warned by the Democratic Unity of the Education Sector (UDSE) in its report 2019-2020, Destruction of education as a human right. Bolivarian Education: a gigantic historical scam.
However, the Educational Observatory of Venezuela reveals that “…many educators have abandoned their job to devote themselves to more lucrative tasks, such as home delivery services, cooking, massage, aesthetics, sales, private lessons, masonry, cleaning and other activities that produce more income than a hyper-devalued teacher’s salary”.
A write-up carried out by the Diario.com ishows the poverty of educators in Venezuela, based on the MPPE tabulator. The salary of basic education teachers who are fortunate to have the highest level of education is between $24 and $45 monthly. And the majority, who do not have high-level education, earn salaries ranging from $5 to $7 a month. Those in secondary education who have completed fifth-level studies and receive all the bonuses, have a salary cap of $40 and their salary ranges from $18 to $34, but those who do not have any specialization earn between $7 and $10.
The difference between the salary teachers earns and the cost of the food basket is abysmal. A primary and high school teacher earns almost a minimum wage, while a teacher who reaches the top, charges less than double the minimum wage to pay the cost of a food basket estimated at $306 until August 2021, according to the Venezuelan Observatory of Finance (OVF). As a result, basic education teachers have access to only 12 plates of food per month, which would translate into four days of food if they ate three times a day.
The president of the civil association for the Formation of the Trade Union Leadership (FORDIS) told El diario.com in September 2021, according to a survey of 167 teachers in six regions of the country, 88.6% said that the salary they earn is not enough for their food; 79% cannot pay for transport; and 98% cannot cover health-related expenses. In the 2021 report of FundaRedes Education Observatory, 100% of the educators surveyed rated their salaries as unacceptable and insufficient.
Alexis Ramirez, of Excubitus DHE, explains that “the real salary of teachers was $10 in 2020 and, with the devaluation, it reached $4 in May 2021. If we go to the international standard of $1.9 a day as a poverty line, the percentage of teachers above the poverty line in Venezuela is zero. Only once, in 2017, educators earned $278 on average, went to $126 in 2018; that same year the salary was reduced to $10 and in 2020 it reached $4. The profession of teacher becomes unsustainable, and the education system is nothing without sufficient number of teachers and well paid”.
Ravages of the pandemic
If before Covid-19 it was very hard to guarantee the quality of teaching-learning processes, during the pandemic it has become an almost impossible mission. With the Covid-19 pandemic, improvisation in educational planning and class scheduling increased due to the temporary suspension of activities in schools, with a state that does not have the technological tools, the study programs, or a staff of teachers trained to respond to such a complex circumstance.
According to the DEV 2021 report, the pandemic caused greater havoc in learning processes. Almost half of the students (47.54%) said they learned less, and only 17.1% said they learned more. When comparing the origin of the answers, it is revealing that, in subsidized private schools, 35.91% of students say they have learned less, compared to 45.33% of students in urban public schools and 47.29% of rural public schools.
With the Plan Each Family One School teachers had to become media figures who, according to experts, “instead of educating, promote confusion and falsify academic content, incurring serious errors on historical, geographical, mathematical and scientific knowledge” according to the aforementioned report of the Democratic Unity of the Education Sector (UDSE) 2019-2020.
Of the teachers who participated in a consultation carried out by the FundaRedes Education Observatory for the 2020-2021 school period, 49.2% said they had received supervision from managers in the development of activities, while 48.8% considered that only sometimes or never had it. In the absence of teachers or activities, families in impoverished households and without adequate infrastructure had to support children and teenagers, without study programs designed by objectives and competencies.
Given this educational landscape, there are few opportunities for children and teenagers to aspire to a competitive education that will allow them to overcome poverty, achieve equity and make their way in their country and anywhere in the world.