Santo Domingo.- Ehe Minister of Education, Ángel Hernández, said that it is necessary to invest more in pedagogy and in the classrooms to change the course of education, and urged the regional directors to work together to achieve better learning results.
Hernández expressed his concern that the 4 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) that is made for Dominican education only 5 percent impacts the quality of learning, so he said that this perspective must be changed and emphasis on how to reverse that culture of “laissez faire” (stop doing) for one of control of learning.
He argued that pedagogy is not only done within a classroom, but the space where teachers and students interact, wherever they are, as long as knowledge is produced to learn.
“We must reverse the order of thought in the sense of seeing that the fundamental work of each one of you and mine is that we go to the center to ensure that the students learn and the teacher can have greater capacity and aptitude,” he said.
The minister during the meeting he held this Thursday with the directors of the educational regions of the Central and Eastern Axis of the country, whom he urged to join forces and work allies with all the actors of the educational system to develop joint actions that strengthen the teaching process -student learning.
The directors of the 05 Regionals of San Pedro de Macorís were present at the meeting; 10 and 15 Santo Domingo; Regional 12 of Higüey, and Regional 17 of Monte Plata, as well as those in charge of the different school districts that comprise them.
Hernández explained that, for a real change to take place in the education of children in the system, educational actors must work in partnership with churches, parents’ associations, neighborhood associations, families, the Dominican Association of Teachers (ADP), clubs and other members of civil society for tasks that are essential for learning.
“As managers of the public education system we must ensure that each school works, we are going to work together with the schools so that this result changes and learning levels increase,” said the head of Education.
He stressed that the role that each director of educational units must play must be aimed at ensuring that each child learns to read and write correctly so that they develop critical thinking from the earliest grades.
Hernández explained that directors must strengthen training in the classroom, especially in those early grades, so that there is a diagnostic evaluation at the end of each cycle so that schools reflect on these results and analyze and strengthen learning weaknesses.
Likewise, Hernández affirmed that the directors must have control of the students’ learning, because in this way it is possible to guarantee that the students learn, “you are responsible for the students, since, if the schools in your districts fail, you too, as managers fail and the money that the government invested was simply lost.
The minister was accompanied by Ligia Pérez, deputy minister of Technical and Pedagogical Services, who argued that regional directors must be ready to provide all the necessary collaboration to achieve student learning.
In that order, the director of the Teodosia Otaño Regional, director of Regional 10, who spoke on behalf of the directors, said that they are committed to the continuity of the initiatives launched in favor of educational quality.
