Common Core: Venezuelan-style

7/17/2014

Venezuelan Government Plays Sick Game with Education

From the Editors of VenEconomy

Education has been one of the main targets in the government of the late Hugo Chávez, and still is in that of Nicolás Maduro.

This focus of the revolutionary governments in education would be praiseworthy if goals included:

1. Providing a better quality of teaching that, as said by Cardinal Jorge Urosa Savino, “empowers a person to adopt a critical attitude so he/she can decide for his/her own freedom”; a quality of teaching that provides “the young people of Venezuela with instruments to succeed in life as human and helpful persons willing to serve their homeland by not excluding but including everyone and that can really develop all their capabilities.”



2. Improve the quality of public education provided by the State and regional governments in order to level education of all Venezuelans upward without distinction of social class, race or religion.



3. Ensure excellence in the preparation of teachers that will have in their hands the education of future generations of Venezuelans, and provide them with fair wages consistent with that vital responsibility.



4. Provide all public schools of the State and regional governments with infrastructure, equipment and supplies so they match the best local private schools.

But these haven’t been the priorities of the “revolutionaries of the 21st century” by the time they had to formulate educational policies. Priorities have been, on the one hand, promoting education with a particular ideology in order to create a new man with a single mindset. And on the other, centralizing teaching with an ultimate goal: the abolishment of independent private education, one plural and autonomous to political projects that has served as a cornerstone of the development of generations of Venezuelans, to be put it into the hands of the Government, today a self-elected State.

This way, this centralizing goal of the Government has been putting restrictions on private schools through a prohibition to increase fees, which has heavily affected the income of these schools with administrative, operational, curricular and extracurricular, and infrastructure costs. A situation that is economically affecting many private schools and threatens to put them out of business.

Now, the Government has taken a step that seems constructive in principle after issuing a decision establishing that the amounts of school fees and monthly fees of every educational institution registered in the Basic Education subsystem shall be fixed by school assemblies, which are comprised by parents and legal guardians of the students.

The resolution published in the Official Gazette on Monday establishes:

1. That the costs of tuition or registration fees shall not exceed the amount of a monthly payment.



2. That these costs shall be fixed “once school boards submit the structure of costs and expenses, as an integral part of the school budget of the following year, under two parameters: costs and fees associated with the official school curriculum (operating and staff-related) and investment projects for the new school year (infrastructure, staffing resources, additional staff required and complementary activities.)



3. That the established amount shall not be modified.



4. That “the establishment of fees, contributions, bonds, contributions, or any other denomination, in money or kind, as well as the use of figures or modes, such as foundations, civil associations, corporations or any other mechanism that may mean an increase in the payment” is prohibited. These figures were being used as a way to continue subsisting and to ensure quality services by private education institutions.



5. That if a school assembly is not set up, it will be up to the Ministry of Education to establish the amounts of monthly payments and registration fees.

But, if we take a closer look, the change might not be as constructive. The right thing to do would be restoring school owners the right to set their own fees, and let parents decide whether or not to send their children to private schools.

It seems that this resolution maliciously seeks to set tuition fees at insufficient levels to cover the costs, thus making it harder for parents and legal guardians whose incomes have been eaten away by inflation to make a right decision between public and private schools.

VenEconomy has been a leading provider of consultancy on financial, political and economic data in Venezuela since 1982.
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