Will we ever know how much damage the pandemic caused to the school?
Children who reach first grade without knowing how to write their name, who could not solve problems that require a simple mental calculation. The first cycle of primary school was the most affected by the lack of presence in schools during the pandemic, a moment that is key for children’s education because it is when they become literate. 35% of seventh graders have a basic level in the subject, which means that they can answer simple questions about a text, but have a hard time relating or interpreting its content. This underperformance is a consequence of school closures during the pandemic. Three years of extraordinary measures will be required to improve results until pre-pandemic values are recovered.
End of quote.
The foregoing is just a taste of the extensive report derived from the educational evaluation census for primary and secondary students in public and private schools commissioned by the Government of the city of Buenos Aires. Its preliminary conclusions put those responsible for education in the Argentine capital on alert, following the concept that to address a problem, the first thing to do is to know its causes, magnitude and characteristics that make it up. And at the risk of being reductionist, a first diagnosis indicates that education in the autonomous city has suffered a three-year involution and that to overcome it it will be necessary to invest precisely all that time. This deduction is applied logic that shatters the idea that time lost in education can be recovered.
What are we doing around here on that line? It would be interesting for the agricultural engineer to enlighten the community on the line of analysis and diagnosis of post-pandemic Paraguayan education, especially after the long absence from classes and the minuscule weight of classes via cell phones, zoom, whatsapp and other forms remote ways to communicate students and teachers. Will we ever know what level children and adolescents in primary and secondary school are at in matters such as literacy, reading comprehension and elementary mathematics? How long will it take to recover the pre-pandemic level, if the MEC has it registered and systematized?
For the moment, the political dust clouds the horizon and prevents seeing the general panorama.
Worrying.
