The General Director of Culture and Education of the province of Buenos Aires, Alberto Siloniassured that the March 2, when classes start throughout the Buenos Aires territory, he hopes it will be “a day of celebration”, he spoke of the “strategic role” of vaccination and said that “we want this to be the year of learning, of teaching, of reading, of writing, of attending classes every day“.
In an interview with Télam, the head of the educational portfolio detailed this Wednesday the conditions in which the new school year begins, the expectation of an imminent joint agreement with the unions and the hope that 2022 will be the year of the consolidation of learning .
Interview
-Telam: A few days before the start of classes throughout the province of Buenos Aires, what are the objectives and challenges in this 2022 school year?
-Alberto Sileoni: First of all, the joy of returning, we hope for a 2022 with extended attendance, all year round, cared for, with a lot of presence, back to school. We expect a March 2 as a day of celebration of the return in the entire province of Buenos Aires and I think it will be throughout the country. For this school in 2022 to be a possible school, some conditions must be met; vaccination is one of them and we are working hard on it.
-T: What role does vaccination play in maintaining attendance?
-ACE: Vaccination plays a decisive role because we are still in the midst of the pandemic, with less serious consequences than before, but it is still with us. We have to work in this direction, we have a very high vaccination rate among teachers, more than 95%; a very good vaccination in young people from 12 to 17, and we have to improve the second dose for children from 3 to 12. Vaccination has a strategic, fundamental, health and pedagogical role, and it is very necessary to encourage families to get vaccinated .
-T: Have vaccination posts already been installed in schools? How will they work?
-ACE: We have 1,400 vaccination posts inside the schools, the post has a meaning, it is not a school where you go to be vaccinated and the team that vaccinates is stationed there, but it is a place where we are the necessary days, two or three days or more, and then he goes to other schools. It rotates, it walks through the territory. Since last year there are 850 clinics, this year we added 450 or more, because there are 1,400 and we continue to vaccinate.
We have to know that vaccination is not a private decision, it is a public decision, that is why we ask families to vaccinate their children, and when they arrive at school we inquire to find out if they are vaccinated and if they were not. We ask that you get vaccinated.
-T: What does careful presence consist of and what differences are there with districts such as the City of Buenos Aires that announced the “elimination of protocols”?
-ACE: Careful attendance is the use of a chinstrap, maintaining ventilation and hygiene. In relation to the City, I think it says more than it does. The guidelines have been agreed upon by all the provinces, including CABA regarding vaccination and the rest of the care. The only difference is with the chinstrap from 4th grade, and (in the province) the use of the chinstrap is from 1st. All 23 jurisdictions say it should be used and the City doesn’t, but hey, that’s a City decision. I understand that if the mask can make reading difficult, there will be a teacher who will say that they take it off, but we believe that a child at 6 years old is in a position to understand sanitary measures, and can understand that it is necessary to use it, that we are in a pandemic, since the chinstrap has been used for two years. I believe that these are more discursive elements in which they seek to differentiate themselves from something in which the 23 jurisdictions are going to follow to the letter.
-T: In the province will the use of the chinstrap be mandatory in primary school? Will there be no more bubbles?
-ACE: At the initial level there will be some children who will wear it, but there is no prescription, if all the other measures are to be maintained, ventilation, hygiene is maintained, we have distributed resources to all the School Councils to distribute to the schools. The bubbles are eliminated, that is already part of the new guidelines. If there are symptoms or if someone has Covid or was a close contact, they are asked not to attend, and the suspicion of the outbreak does not imply the interruption of class. If there is an institutional outbreak with many cases in a school, then the health authority becomes involved, taking advantage of the invitation to the vaccine to apply the mandatory vaccines. We have distributed 33,000 oxygen meters that are part of the care scheme and the Ministry of Health has a quantity to distribute and we will see if we distribute them in schools and we are going to ask parents to wear the mask, but the only prescription is that it be well placed, mouth, chin and not much else.
-T: What balance can you make of the reconnection programs and how many students who had left the school were able to return?
-ACE: The result is satisfactory, the schools and communities ask us to continue, we are working to resize the ATR, which is the Accompaniment to Trajectories and Reconnection program. In September 2020, there was a significant number of disengaged children that exceeded 250,000 and today we are at a lower number. The fact that it has been satisfactory does not mean that we are not worried, today we are in 62 thousand boys and girls in secondary school, and thousands in primary school in which we must continue working. It is a small number compared to the numbers of two years ago, but it continues to worry us because there are a number of children, from more vulnerable sectors, who have difficulties and the ATR continues to work for that, it did so throughout the summer and continues to work on looking for those guys.
The ATR has been going on for a year or more, what happened in the summer was the ATR + summer, fundamentally aimed at the children who participated in the summer activities, there were almost 260,000 children, but we continued with the learning and teaching theme.
-T: In 2021 the focus was on trying to have presence with the Covid, is this year to consolidate learning?
-ACE: We want this year to be the year of learning, of teaching, of reading, of writing, of attending classes every day. We are working to return to that essential task that schools do every day, and that is what the school is prepared for. We want full attendance, attendance, not as an administrative issue, attendance from Monday to Friday, until December, and that is why we also made significant progress in an agreement with the unions.
