VENEZUELA: Shortcomings in Secondary Education Need Solutions

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

José Zambrano

CARACAS, Aug 27 2002 (IPS) - Venezuela’s education authorities should ease the difficult transition from primary to secondary school, and increase the number of spots available in high school, in order to curb the drop-out and failure rates, and to keep up with the progress made in boosting literacy and grade school enrollment, say experts.

Venezuela’s illiteracy rate has dropped from 12 percent in 1990 to seven percent today, and most people who are unable to read and write are over 56, according to government statistics. In addition, primary school coverage is now universal.

But one of the weakpoints of public education in this oil- producing South American nation of 23 million is the transition from primary school to the baccalaureate or high school, said Josefina Bruni Celli, a researcher at the Institute of Higher Administration Studies (IESA) and the coordinator of the “Report on Educational Progress in Venezuela 2002”.

In Venezuela, nine years of schooling, divided into six years of primary and three years of secondary education, are compulsory. Those who continue their studies can complete two more years of high school.

But the IESA study reported that one out of five youngsters who enrolls in the first year of high school drops out.

Some of the students drop out of the educational system because they are actually unable to enroll, due to a shortage of spots available. Others flunk out.

The overall drop-out rate in primary school is 7.1 percent, compared to 10.56 percent in secondary school.

“An average of 15 percent of the students who register in high school flunk out in the first year, and quit school, so they won’t have to repeat the year,” states the report.

Bruni Celli said the empirical evidence has torn down the old myth that “our youngsters do not complete the nine years of compulsory schooling because their families prefer to send them out to work.

“After they complete sixth grade, the students’ families make an effort for their children to continue on to the baccalaureate,” she said.

“In fact, families are so anxious for their kids to continue studying that they fight over the insufficient number of spots available in the first year of secondary school. They also make large contributions to the parents’ associations, even though what we’re mainly talking about is poor families,” she pointed out.

The IESA study concluded that one of the main causes of failure in the first year of high school is the trauma suffered by students due to the drastic change of system. “Students go from a single classroom teacher to a number of high school teachers, and to more impersonal treatment. The students also lose their old classmates,” says the report.

Moreover, today’s adolescents reach high school “with serious shortcomings in reading, writing and math skills due to the poor quality of primary education,” it adds.

The other big problem is that a large proportion of potential students are excluded from the system due to a shortage of classroom space.

Although there is no countrywide information available, 3,017 students were unable to enroll in high school this year in the metropolitan district of Caracas alone, according to statistics of the city council’s education commission.

City councillor Carlos Ciorda said that 80 to 100 new classrooms designed for 35 students each would be needed in Caracas to meet the current level of demand.

Meanwhile, Venezuela’s ongoing economic crisis drove eight percent of students who completed the sixth grade at a private school this year to register in a public, rather than a private, high school, driving the number of applicants up even further.

The migration from private to public schools has given rise to suggestions that the state rent out empty classrooms in private schools, due to the difficulty in building new educational centres.

Education Minister Aristóbulo Istúriz said discussions were underway on the possibility of holding night school for public education system students in private technical-vocational institutes that have lost students due to the crisis.

“The debate on the quality of education has focused on students’ scholastic achievement, the need to reduce the failure and drop-out rates, the shortage of classroom space, the need to improve the quality of teachers and repair and refurbish schools, and the question of making universal preschool coverage available,” said Istúriz.

At the start of the administration of President Hugo Chávez, special schools were designed that are to provide more extensive schedules and programmes than the rest of the educational system, as well as free meals for students, and sports, computer and other facilities.

Some 2,250 such schools have been created in the three years since the programme was launched, accounting for 10 percent of all public schools. But only 70 percent are fully functioning.

Istúriz also cited teacher training as one of the chronic problems plaguing the Venezuelan educational system. The IESA study underlines that the teaching profession “lacks status and prestige, and is one of the worst paid in the country.”

The minimum monthly salary of teachers is currently equivalent to just 270 dollars a month, and teachers are not always paid on time.

To solve the problem of paycheck delays, the main grievance of teachers when they go on strike, the Education Ministry presented a proposal to alter the school-year calendar, making it coincide with the fiscal year. Under the new system, children would go to school year-round, from January to December, with two vacation periods.

However, the proposal has been shelved in parliament, which will not debate it until next year.