With the back to classtuition fees, school supplies and consultancies are added to the expenses that Colombians must assume at the beginning of the year, this represents a additional investment by families.
(Inflation continues to skyrocket and reached 8.01% annually in February).
On this, the National Administrative Department of Statistics pointed out that this item was that of greatest increase during this month, being 4.48%. According to the director of the Dane, Juan Daniel Oviedo, it has to do with the fact that “February is the month in which the Dane collected information on education from Calendar A for what has to do with preschool, basic primary and secondary education and the first semester of the year for technical, technological and university training”.
Despite being the component with the highest rise, its contribution to monthly inflation in February, which was 1.63%, was 0.18 percentage points.
Given this, Fernando Vita, president of the National Board of Private Education, pointed out that the increase in enrollment has limits regulated by the Ministry of Education, therefore, its increase does not exceed what is established in these guidelines.
Increment Parameters
(‘With education limiting prejudices are overcome’).
In that sense, the education portfolio erected some pparameters so that these costs are not exorbitant. With resolution 19770 of 2021, the Ministry indicated that “the increase for educational establishments located in this regime may not exceed the annual CPI with a cutoff as of August 2021 of 4.44%, compared to the rate authorized in the previous year” .
However, this regulation also contemplates other increases if private establishments meet requirements such as: support 80% of the payment of teachers and managers of the value that the Ministry sets as remuneration annually, have quality accreditation, implement inclusive education strategies.
This indicates that the maximum increase allowed by the Government is 7.7%, if said institution complies with all the requirements.
In that order of ideas, Edgardo Peña Arenas, president of the Board of Directors of the Beth Shalom Foundation educational institution, stated: “there was no increase greater than what should increase prices annually. In addition to that, we stick to the parameters of the government authorities.”
WHY DID IT INCREASE?
Although schools have this cap, the increase in enrollmentaccording to Álvaro José Cifuentes, Vice President of the Private Education Association of Antioquia (Adecopria), would have its cause in the cost savings that families had during the pandemic and that have now been reactivated with the return to face-to-face attendance.
(Online learning, a trend in Latin America).
“Colleges have historically made increases adjusted to the increase in the cost of living. What could have happened is that many people who saved on education in the pandemic, perhaps reactivated returning to private education, so they were enrollments that were not caused the previous year but this year, “he argued.
In addition to this, Cifuentes indicated that this is also due to the return to class of preschool children and lower grades, who were withdrawn from the system due to the remote education modality.
“Another path was that, given the difficulties of the public sector, parents decided to go to the private sector, and this generated additional expense for these families,” added the expert.
These causes pointed out by the vice president of Adecopria coincide with the increases within the categories that make up the inflation of education, since Dane highlighted that the one that had the largest increase in February was preschool and basic primary education (4.72%)
Luz Karime Abadía, Co-director of the Education Economics Laboratory, agrees on this, pointing out that the return to attendance increased costs. “The increase in education costs, specifically in materials or school supplies, is mainly due to the pandemic, which affected the production of raw materials (due to the closures) and therefore their imports in Colombia,” she said.
