Nicaragua Faces Education Challenge
Teaching reading and writing to illiterate adults, inserting the 850,000 children so far excluded from the school system and increasing the quality of teaching are the three main challenges to the Nicaraguan Education Ministry.

According to the new minister of the sector, Miguel de Castilla, the tasks will not necessarily follow the order in which they were issued, but they will be carried out simultaneously during the next five years of the Sandinista administration.

Those are three great challenges which need plenty of financial and human resources, the minister said in interview with Prensa Latina.

The pedagogue, appointed minister by the present President Daniel Ortega even before the November 5 elections, said it was lucky to count on the absolute support of the new authorities and on international cooperation.

De Castilla explained that after the January 10 inauguration he received the Education Ministry in a disastrous state, and confirmed there are 850,000 children excluded from the system because their parents cannot afford registration and other illegal payments.

To change that situation, the new official´s first move was to announce the prohibition of any sort of charge in the public schools, although this risks a wave of registrations from this academic year on.

De Castilla said he has made contact with the Cuban authorities to analyze the possibility of receiving support from the Caribbean nation, which development in the field of education has been recognized worldwide.