The Buenos Aires Minister of Education, Soledad Acuña, spoke this afternoon at the Legislature of the City of Buenos Aires on the project to reform the Teaching Statute based on changes to the promotion scheme and an award with salary improvements to teachers who attend training continuously.
The official’s report began at 2:15 p.m. before the deputies that make up the Education Commission and under a restrictive protocol regarding the number of people present in the room where the meeting was taking place.
During his speech. Acuña pointed out that the proposal contains four axes: the creation of the horizontal teaching charter, enhancing the role of the tutor with tutorial responsibilities, articulating training with salary and professional incentives, and the securitization of secondary school teachers.
“Teachers have to continue training throughout their careers and for that they need an incentive,” said Acuña, adding that “it is an open proposal that reaches the Legislature.”
More than 30 legislators from the different blocs participated in the meeting.
Axes of the reform
As can be deduced from the text, the central axes of the reform are linked to the promotion system at the initial and primary levels, the salary incentive for teachers who attend “continuous training”, a new role for the secondary school tutor and an “exceptional” securitization of interim positions in middle, technical, artistic schools and Secondary Education Centers (Cens).
From the Union of Education Workers (UTE) they questioned that the project “omits in an unusual way in the massive securitization of thousands of workers who work in the 32 socio-educational programs.”
“We demand that the legislators include the entire area in the law and thus be able to end years of job instability,” they said in a statement.
Strictly speaking, the project entered the Buenos Aires Legislature on March 3 to “update and rank training and content” of the education workers, according to the words formulated by the head of the Buenos Aires Government, Horacio Rodríguez Larreta, at the beginning of the period of ordinary sessions.
“The idea is to move forward on the possibility of having roles and/or functions that recognize the experience and knowledge accumulated by teachers who do not want to move on to leadership and supervisory positions, but who are in a position to assume other types of responsibilities that complement and support the task of teaching”, they specified from the educational portfolio about the proposal.
And they added that “there is a teaching career that, through continuous training, allows access to these differentiated functions with the aim of improving teaching practice through various incentives that include specific training, the possibility of performing linked to the classroom and specific salary recognition”.
