Karla Mary couldn’t wait for Monday the 7th to arrive and since she got up on Sunday she was going around: checking the ironed uniform, fixing her hair and calling over and over again the friends with whom she would meet again the next morning at the Secondary.
Like her, many Cuban students of general education -except those of the Primary level- were dealing with similar questions.
And it is that since Monday, when the 2021-2022 school year began, many Cuban homes have resumed that expected and necessary routine: preparing uniforms, backpacks, snacks and getting the boy up early to go to school.
The first education, students from preschool to 6th grade, will return to their classrooms next Monday the 14th because they were the last to be vaccinated last year and they joined their schools on November 15th.
Photo: taken from the Facebook profile of Radio Mayarí
Despite this gap, the teaching calendar will end for everyone on November 19.
This was reported by the Minister of Education, Ena Elsa Velázquez Cobiella, who explained that this beginning of the course also included special education and the training institutions of organizations such as Culture and Sports.
How does the Cuban school start the course?
The pandemic and the intensified imperial blockade have been a combination that has hit the educational sector as well as the entire Cuban reality.
Hence, it has been difficult to obtain resources to make school uniforms, for the material base of study and life, as well as to repair schools.
However, about 25% of the current expenses of the country’s budgeted activity has been allocated to education.
Last year, 1,373 educational centers received constructive improvements and for this year, another 1,181 will also be repaired. In addition, the Minister assured, they are in the process of importing refrigeration and water pumping equipment, as well as sports equipment, reagents for laboratories, pens, pencils and supplies for repairing the centers, among other resources.
Despite so much headwind, the delivery of pencils and notebooks with adjusted standards is guaranteed, which will be completed once the raw material arrives in the country and the same will happen with school uniforms, whose fabric is already financed and contracted, said Velázquez Cobiella .
Photo: Roberto Garaicoa
As a result of this situation, different uniform models may coexist because in the first stage of this course the same ones will be prioritized for preschool, fifth, seventh, tenth grades, and for the first year of Technical and Professional Education and Pedagogical Training. .
Corresponding with the production of these garments, it will continue with the rest of the grades and the purpose is that by the end of April the distribution in Primary Education will be completed. 76% of the Primary, 66% of Secondary, 54% of Pre-university and 44% of Polytechnic uniforms have already been delivered.
As the distribution of uniforms for all classes will be a gradual process, it is estimated that the different models of these garments will coexist for at least two courses and students will even be able to attend classes even without wearing these garments but properly dressed.
Strengths in front of the blackboard
Among the strengths that accompany this takeoff of the school year is the guarantee that the completed vaccination process means as well as responsibly complying with the sanitary measures in each educational institution.
To this is added that, according to the head of the sector, there is a favorable situation in terms of teachers.
Last February, 6,294 teachers graduated from the pedagogical schools for Primary, Special, Early Childhood and Technical and Professional Education.
Teachers have also been trained in the most deficient specialties of Basic Secondary, 593 higher technical and 1,676 graduates in Education.
These recently graduated teachers and professors help to complete the cloisters. In Havana, the Minister noted, although the number of teachers in previous courses is exceeded, special attention is required.
Photo: Internet
The methodological adjustments now in force are maintained, without removing content or affecting the objectives that must be achieved in each grade. At the same time, personalized attention to students is encouraged from an academic, psychological and emotional perspective, indicated the head, who specified that the curricular adaptations prepared by researchers, methodologists and selected teachers will be maintained until the 2022-2023 academic year.
For those who complete secondary education, the Minister ensures that this course, for 100% of graduates of 9th. They are guaranteed to continue studies, divided between Professional Technical Education, Pre-university and Pedagogical Training.
Photo: taken from PL
These and other data ratify the satisfaction of Karla Mary -the adolescent with whom this text begins- and of so many students and families, and confirm that “the return to the classroom is an example of creative resistance in the face of adversity, after the control of the Covid-19 pandemic and the progress of the immunization process against that disease”, as Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez pointed out on the first day of classes.
