Schoolchildren in Ecuador will require one to two years of leveling due to pandemic

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – With 18% of the centers approved to provide blended learning in the classrooms and more than 70% of the institutions under distance modalities, it will take Ecuadorian schoolchildren from one to two years to recover the lost educational level, warned the Minister of Education, Maria Brown.

“We know that we will have to spend at least one or two years of leveling, where we can first assess what has been the lag because we certainly care about knowledge,” said the head of the Ministry of Education in an interview with Efe.

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Ecuador is among the five countries in the region that have had most of their schools closed since the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020 or that have promoted pilot programs or authorized semi-presential classes in still limited percentages.

Unicef estimates that 3 out of every 5 school children who have lost a school year in the world live in Latin America and the Caribbean and has asked the most reluctant countries to open their classrooms because they bring many more benefits than harm to society.

Although she emphasizes that education in Ecuador has never been interrupted, Brown recognizes that “not having had these opportunities for face-to-face contact has also taken its toll on our students”, among which he attaches special importance to the socio-emotional aspects.

Since Brown took office at the end of May, she has proposed to recover the space taken away by the pandemic. She is also aware that fear still prevails among many parents, precisely because they have not had the experience of returning to the classroom during the pandemic.

“Ecuador did not have experiences of sustained progressive return throughout the pandemic. This generated a culture of fear around the use of educational facilities, but it is a fear that we see is being broken,” she adds.

THREE THOUSAND CENTERS RETURN TO THE CLASSROOM

The ministry has authorized 3,003 institutions nationwide to gradually return to the classroom in this new school year that begins on Wednesday (1) in the Sierra and Amazon (September-June).

According to the latest official data issued last Thursday by the portfolio, they represent around 18% of the total of 16,000 educational centers throughout the country,

In total, about 200,000 students, more than half of the Sierra, will return to classes starting this week and will be able to meet their classmates after 18 months. They will do so either every day or alternately, hence the semi-presential nature, depending on the educational centers’ capacity to adapt to the protocols dictated by the authorities.

In the Costa-Galapagos region, which extends its school year from May to the beginning of March, there is a certain controlled presence in about 1,200 schools.

Brown specified that, for the time being, school attendance, which starts in September at around 7%, will continue under “a voluntary approach”, even though about 9 million people are vaccinated against covid-19 in Ecuador, which represents 75% of the vaccine-eligible population, i.e., over 16 years of age.

“A little more than 70% of the educational institutions will continue in distance modalities for another period, while we continue advancing in the approval process”, clarified the minister, warning that the virtual modalities to which the educational institutions are obliged to provide “are provisional”, and that the vaccination of minors from 12 to 15 years of age will begin soon.

Nevertheless, the Education Ministry will continue to maintain distance options, such as “homeschooling” or the occasional visit of tutors to remote communities, for those cases in which, for various reasons, this type of learning is preferable.

LAGGING WITH CONSEQUENCES

The exceptional situation of the health crisis has affected the most vulnerable, such as indigenous people, rural and low-income sectors, and families in a situation of mobility, for whom virtual education has become a chimera in most cases.

But the policy has been not to leave any child behind, and no schoolchild has repeated a grade even though 100,000 did not hand in their school portfolios, a requirement for their educational accreditation.

For this reason, the Ministry in the next two years will be focused “on the essentials: the acquisition of comprehensive reading as a fundamental element in the leveling, and logical-mathematical thinking,” said its head.

These two areas, in addition to the acquisition of digital skills, will be the backbone of the equalization process that will begin with the “Learning on Time” program, which will be applied nationwide, with special emphasis on 2,000 institutions classified as “poor learning” and those in which there has been a delay of more than two years and a population of greater vulnerability.