Saturday 30 August
2008, San José, Costa Rica
CUBA:
Shoring Up the
Educational System
By Patricia Grogg
LA HABANA (IPS) -
In the new school year,
which begins next
Monday, Cuba’s
educational system will
be trying out several
changes aimed at
overcoming the decline
in the quality of
teaching, blamed on a
shortage of teachers and
other problems.
"I am waiting to see
what happens. My
daughter begins
secondary school now,
and if she doesn't get
good teachers and her
grades drop, I’ll have
to find another school
or pay for private
tutoring. These are the
most difficult years," a
Cuban journalist who
asked to remain
anonymous told IPS.
This week, Education
Minister Ena Elsa
Velázquez said there
would be more teachers
on the payroll this
year. A shortage of more
than 8,000 teachers,
identified as one of the
most pressing challenges
facing the educational
system, has begun to be
reduced as a result of
the return to the
classroom of retired
teachers.
Velásquez said that
4,948 retired teachers
were returning to work,
under a decree issued in
mid-July by President
Raúl Castro. The
emergency measure offers
retired educators the
opportunity to continue
drawing their pensions
while teaching and
earning a full-time
salary.
"There will be 235,943
teachers working this
year, 32,070 of whom are
teachers-in-training.
The exodus is 30 percent
lower than last year,
with nearly 2,000 fewer
teachers filing for
retirement," said the
minister, as reported by
the local press.
There are 2,549,845
preschool, primary and
secondary school
students enrolled for
the 2008-2009 school
year in Cuba.
Velázquez also announced
that teachers would be
given more time to
prepare their classes.
"That was sorely needed.
Now we can also dedicate
more time to studying,"
Kruskalia Masa, a
45-year-old primary
school teacher,
commented to IPS.
In her view, the quality
of teaching in Cuba has
gone down because
teachers are given very
little time to prepare
their classes, a problem
that only worsened as
the number of educators
shrank. "In addition, we
will now have more
assistants, who
obviously don’t replace
teachers, but do provide
support for their work,"
Masa added.
A report by the
education minister on
performance in the
2007-2008 school year
states that among the
main challenges that
students in the first
few years of secondary
school must overcome are
difficulties in spelling
and writing, and poor
reading habits.
Veláquez was named
education minister in
April after the sudden
removal of Luis Ignacio
Gómez, who headed the
ministry for 18 years.
"He had lost energy and
revolutionary
consciousness," wrote
ailing former president
Fidel Castro in a column
in which he backed
Gómez’s replacement.
The deterioration of
education, especially
due to the shortcomings
of the
teachers-in-training
system, courses taught
by video, and distance
learning courses offered
on television, was a
frequent complaint
voiced in the popular
debates called by Raúl
Castro in a key Jul. 26,
2007 speech, when he was
still acting president.
Such criticism was also
voiced at the 7th
Congress of the Union of
Writers and Artists of
Cuba (UNEAC) in April,
by intellectuals like
Alfredo Guevara, one of
the veteran cultural
leaders of the Cuban
revolution.
"Can our primary,
secondary and prep
schools properly educate
children and adolescents
and thus lay the
foundation for the
future as they are at
present, governed by
misconceived criteria
and practices that
ignore elementary
pedagogical and
psychological principles
and violate family
rights?" he asked.
During the congress,
which was held behind
closed doors, Guevara
also reportedly warned
that the
teacher-in-training
programme has produced
"young student teachers
whose training is
lacking and incomplete
and whose maturity level
is far short of what it
should be."
Teachers-in-training are
used to complete the
teaching staff of
schools, which have also
been equipped with TV
sets, VCRs and computers
as learning aids. The
changes introduced
include a reduction of
video classes to half an
hour, with 15 minutes
left for the teacher to
provide explanations.
"Television is a support
for teachers, it should
not replace us," said
Masa, who stressed that
"a sense of vocation and
dedication" are
indispensable in her
profession.
"Unfortunately, the mass
training of young people
as teachers does not
ensure that they all
have these two
qualities," she added.
In the plans for the new
school year, the main
task of retired teachers
who return to the
classroom will be to
supervise and advise the
young
teachers-in-training.
In Masa’s view, that is
an "essential" step
towards strengthening
education in Cuba.
Education, which has
been universal and free
in Cuba since the 1960s,
is considered one of the
main accomplishments of
the 1959 revolution. But
like other sectors in
Cuba, it was unable to
escape the impact of the
severe economic crisis
that hit Cuba in the
wake of the collapse of
the Soviet Union and
East European socialist
bloc.
Nevertheless, in the
latest study on
scholastic performance
carried out by the Latin
American Laboratory for
Assessment of the
Quality of Education (LLECE),
which is coordinated by
the United Nations
Educational, Scientific
and Cultural
Organisation (UNESCO)
regional bureau, Cuba
was found to have the
highest performance
levels among the 17
nations studied in Latin
America and the
Caribbean.
In the study released in
June, "Student
achievement in Latin
America and the
Caribbean; Results of
the Second Regional
Comparative and
Explanatory Study (SERCE)",
Cuba was the only
country whose
third-grade pupils
attained math and
reading scores more than
one standard deviation
higher than the regional
average, that is, over
100 points above the 500
points representing the
average of all the
countries studied. |
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