Ensuring connectivity in 90 percent of the country’s schools and guaranteeing a school year with 190 days of classes with “full, safe and continuous attendance” were the main announcements that Alberto Fernández made yesterday in terms of education at the start of regular sessions of Congress. “This future is with education at the center of our priorities. Every peso invested in education is a peso invested in the future of Argentina,” said the President.
Before the Legislative Assembly, he announced that In the next 90 days, connectivity will be brought to 2,700 schools that previously did not have. To these establishments another 10,000 will be added during the rest of the year. “This means that 3 million boys and girls who did not have connectivity in their schools will become connected,” he added during his speech. These students will join the 5.2 million who already attended schools with an Internet connection. “We will end the year covering 90 percent of the total enrollment of the Argentine Educational System,” Fernández detailed.
He also anticipated that this year 600,000 computers will be distributed to secondary school students and public primary school teachers, within the framework of the Connect Equality Plan. Therefore, the purchase of one million computers was tendered.
The President also referred to the start of the school year that begins today in most of the country. Thus, he assured that by 2022 the students will be guaranteed a “restorative school cycle, with 190 days of class, with full, safe and continuous attendance.”
In addition, he promised that the Progress Scholarships to help young people finish their primary and secondary education and thus reach two million beneficiaries. In 2021, one million young people had been able to access these scholarships to facilitate their education during the pandemic.
He also pointed out that this year the Comprehensive Sex Education (ESI) so that “children and adolescents know how to take care of their bodies and their reproductive health”. And he emphasized that sex education also seeks to educate young people so that “they are responsible and have respect for their peers and, in particular, for women and people of sexual diversity.”
In another section of the speech, Fernández announced investment in works aimed at improving the quality of education and stated that “one hundred integrated buildings for Vocational Technical Education” will be built, in addition to continuing with the University Infrastructure Program. He also specified that new buildings for kindergartens will continue to be built, which will also have special equipment.
Initial education was one of the points regarding education, since the President announced the construction of “3,000 digital classrooms” for children of this age. During the next year, in addition, the objective of the national Government is to add another 7,000 classrooms of this type.
The President also mentioned the delivery of more than 8 million language and math books to 3.6 million primary school students and teachers in public schools.
“With the collective work to reconnect students to school, we will have very important achievements. Tomorrow, when the school year begins in most of the country, we will begin to recover the study with the return to classes,” said the President.
The school year began on February 21 in the City of Buenos Aires and Mendoza and from Wednesday the rest of the provinces will join. The objective in all districts is to recover full attendance in the classrooms.
Connect equality
Throughout his speech, Fernández ratified the decision of the national government to reintroduce the Connect Equality Program, an initiative implemented in 2010 during the administration of former President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner to distribute netbooks to students and teachers of public schools that was discontinued during the administration of Mauricio Macri and now aims to reverse school dropouts.
The relaunch of the Program, which works within the scope of the Ministry of Education, was announced on January 12 after the publication in the Official Gazette of Decree 11/2022.
The idea is to recover the spirit and the objectives established by the program, implemented in 2010, which reached the delivery of 5,320,000 computers to students and teachers throughout the country and, had it not been deactivated, would have provided more resources to the educational community during isolation by Covid-19.
