Guatemala: Only 3 Out of 10 Primary School Children Can Read
Ministry of Education of Guatemala, Anabella Giracca, June 2024 Photo: X/ @Radio_TGW
June 10, 2024 Hour: 3:45 pm
Guatemala is also accelerating the process of improving more than four thousand of the 35,922 schools in the system, due to the state of neglect in which it found them.
On Monday, official sources stated that Guatemala’s Ministry of Education is facing mixed emergencies with the transition of government last January, such as the fact that only three out of 10 primary school children can read and write.
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The Covid-19 pandemic exacerbated this situation, said the head of the sector, Anabella Giracca, in an interview with the official Diario de Centro América.
In response to this, she said that on 3 June we launched the Learning Leveling Programme, which aims to ensure that all schoolchildren can read 50 words per minute, the minimum allowed.
It is an action that will lead to failure if we continue to promote children who do not know or have the minimum content in reading and writing.
The programme involves the professionalization of teachers and technical training, materials and follow-up.
The Ministry of Education of Guatemala faces emergencies encountered with the transition of Government last January, such as that only three out of every 10 children in primary school know how to read and write.
Giracca remarked that the idea is to recover students in 16 weeks in an intensive way, with scientific evidence, in a systematic and convincing manner.
She also explained that another issue that has been identified, which needs to be dealt with urgently, is institutionalization, which is why he considered it important to talk about the recovery of the Ministry’s leadership.
When asked about possible solutions, she said that they are taking immediate action, the first being the new departmental directors selected, she said.
She said that 19 have already been selected, “who are taking up their posts, and they are not going to be alone because we are going to monitor them closely and they are going to be evaluated on their results”.
We have seven departmental directorates that were declared deserted because the candidates did not meet the requirements, he warned.
A new step, she emphasised, is the provisional database for the recruitment of teachers 021, something she called key “because we saw that many times teachers were chosen using techniques that did not respond to transparency and meritocracy”.
Guatemala is also accelerating the process of improving more than four thousand of the 35,922 schools in the system, due to the state of neglect in which it found them.
Shortly after taking office, the country’s president, Bernardo Arévalo, emphasised the need to improve student education for the future and to focus on decent educational centres with a quality process.
Autor: OSG
Fuente: The Independent, Diario de Centro América
