Private schools seek to recover from the impact of the pandemic

Alejandra Carmona, advisor to the organization Educación con Rumbo, considered that private schools return to classes with greater stability, after the losses they registered due to the pandemic.

“We have seen that there is an enrollment recovery of between 80 and 95%. In some of our institutions, there is even a projected growth of around 2.8% in this school year compared to the previous one. But we could not say that we are singing victory. Rather, it is the stabilization of the fall of the last two years,” he said in an interview.

He explained that this recovery is due to families making additional efforts to pay for their children’s education and to the support of some foundations that have extended scholarships for students to continue studying.

The biggest challenge is located in preschool schools, he explained, because they were most affected by the pandemic.

“I think it is a resilient sector, but we were affected. And although we are improving, there are some schools that had to close their doors,” he mentioned.

Santiago’s father agrees. Although they have already found a new private kindergarten for his son and this August 29 he resumed his classes, he asserted that the impact on his learning is notorious.

“We hope that my son, already with a new kindergarten, attends his last regularized year, normally, because we see that he was delayed. For example, my oldest son left kindergarten knowing how to read and write. My son the boy, who is now going to start his last year of kindergarten, knows numbers, he knows some letters, but he does not know how to make syllables”, he explained.

Alejandra Carmona, who is also CEO of Grupo Educación, estimated that a percentage of private schools will not return to classes yet, among other reasons, because the educational authorities intend to overregulate private schools.