They are not done from Montevideo but by visiting the territories, said Primary Director.
In the midst of the study, analysis and approval of the new Government’s Five-Year Budget, much has been said about the budget allocations that will be assigned to education in the period 2020-20-30.
In that sense, and within the framework of a national tour, the General Director of Initial and Primary Education visited Cerro Largo. Among other things, he said that educational policies are not built from a desk in Montevideo but by visiting the territories.
“I have 5 departments left to complete the entire country in these 6 months of management” expressed the Magister Gabriela Salsamendi.
“The objective is to dialogue with those who are in the territory because we are convinced that educational policy is not made behind a desk and in Montevideo, but rather that we must be measuring the temperature in the different localities, seeing what the challenges, the problems and also the beautiful things that happen in schools” He said about the purpose of this national tour.
In Cerro Largo, as in the rest of the country, among the problems that arose were those linked to the maintenance of buildings and infrastructure, something that was already known to the Primary authorities. “In the last period there was no maintenance for all the buildings because obviously there are many that we have in Primary. What we did now was a prioritization according to the needs of the different territories to determine which schools are urgent to attend to now and which can wait for the other years of the five-year period” said.
Another problem that was raised has to do with providing more human resources to the Enjoyable Schools Program – Social and Technical Assistants – that can address not only the reality of Melo, but also of Río Branco where the border brings with it typical problems of a border area that, without a doubt, require other types of interventions.
RURALITY AND ITS NEW REALITY
The closure of rural schools in recent decades has been a constant product of a different reality, even in terms of the productive matrix and new forms of production.
“We know that rural schools are being depopulated due to a social reality that escapes what we can do through education” Salsamendi specified. “We have schools where there are no children and we necessarily have to close them, which is a tremendous pain, but we have no way of keeping a school open without children.” he added.
The General Director of Primary School announced that they are working on a new way of “look” these rural schools, offering the same rights that children have in urban schools. “In that sense, our colleagues told us that very little is missing for the universalization of physical education in rural areas. We are going to ask the Inspectors to make the effort to cover this little bit and be able to do it as soon as possible, generating those rights there, which are what we believe should be pushed in education.” he stated.
COMMON CLAIMS TO THE WHOLE COUNTRY
Claims related to infrastructure, rurality, how to generate substitutes for service assistants, how inclusion issues are addressed and the need for specific teacher training, are common to all departments. “Some we have already started to attend to, others we have on the agenda for next year or the following year. We are very attentive to listening to what happens” held.
“Many of the things that colleagues request are requested in the ANEP budget message” stated Gabriela Salsamendi. “We know that there are restrictions and that the budget presented by ANEP is probably not fully contemplated by whatever is defined” he pointed out. “There we will have to be creative in finding other alternatives to be able to address the problems” he stated.
Later he believed that educational systems should have almost permanent changes, especially regarding curricular issues. “The big question is what a society offers to future generations in terms of strengthening skills, knowledge and knowledge that we know are valuable or valid. In that sense there are things that we must place in that Agenda, in that curriculum when they appear. For example, topics related to Artificial Intelligence have to be in the curriculum of these years, from an ethical perspective, from a critical point of view without a doubt and it was not in the 2008 curricular documents because “No one was talking about AI at that time.” hill.
