Since 4% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) began to be delivered, the Ministry of Education it became a bottomless barrel, where resources that should have been allocated to educational quality were wasted due to lack of oversight. Politicians and businessmen found a great niche to do business.
To correct these distortions, the Minister of Education Angel Hernandez Together with a team, he works to put in order the ministry that receives the largest amount of resources from the General State Budget.
And what kind of distortions has the new Minerd administration found? For example, 5 thousand 500 million pesos paid in contracts to suppliers that have not complied with the delivery of what was purchased or the purchase of 967 million pesos in books in 2017 and that are in the institution’s warehouses. This millionaire investment in unusable books was made despite the fact that the ministry had approved a new curriculum to update school textbooks.
Another case that is under investigation is that of supply companies that have not delivered 300,000 electronic devices that were tendered during the pandemic in 2020, for the education from distance.
five bids
One of the most striking cases is that of a businesswoman who won lots in five tenders for the purchase of seats and never delivered any. In fact, the system is going to be reformed so that the businessman who does not comply with a tender does not retain his status as a State supplier.
““We submitted to the Turnitin anti-plagiarism platform, to verify the authenticity of the authorship of the digital books. ” “Minister of Education
high school books
The Ministry of Education conducts its own investigation of the bidding for secondary school textbooks, after the one carried out by the General Directorate of Public Procurement (DGCP), which observed signs of collusion between companies that bid. “The Ministry for its part has done an investigation with the books. We had all those books submitted to the Turnitin platform, to verify the authenticity of the authorship of the books. That is a process that is underway and when there is a report I can say whether or not these books have the proper percentage of authorship to consider them to be author books,” Hernández revealed. The official said that these inquiries are made to be certain that the investment made by the Dominican State is the correct one.
“The investigation originates because Mr. Primitivo Santos participated in one of the companies and also appears as the author of one of those books, which was what caught my curiosity because before reaching the position of minister I had read in the press that he was a car driver. I thought it was a little strange that he was also the author of a textbook. And so we set out to verify the authenticity of the books,” he explained.
In the process, the anti-plagiarism will be passed to all the books of all the publishers that were awarded in that tender, since he affirms, it would not be fair to do it with some and not with others.
““The national tests should have been eliminated a long time ago and we are reviewing the learning evaluation system””Minister of Education
learning deficit
Regarding the learning deficit, Hernández explained that it comes from afar and was exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. He considers that what needs to be honest is that the ministry has to have a learning-oriented policy.
“ The data indicate that in the educational system there is a deficit in learning such that, after six years of schooling, there are three years of deficit. So, what you have to do is solve that with sincerity and get people to focus on what is important, which is children’s learning, ”he stressed.
He understands that the national tests should have been eliminated a long time ago and formed a commission to evaluate the entire learning evaluation system, including them: “And that commission is working very seriously to make a new regulation that is more adequate.”
The minister attributes the adverse learning outcomes to the problem created by automatic promotion. “Children go from first to second and no one cares if they learned because they will pass automatically, they continue to second and third and no one cares and they get to fourth and the child knows nothing.”
“All the effort that is going to be made in the coming years, at least while I am there, all the resources of the ministry are going to be concentrated there, in those first four grades of primary school to reduce the learning deficit that has”.
Hernández reported that the “Literacy in a timely manner” strategy will be launched in the coming days, to bring concern to teachers that children have to read and write well in those first four grades.
308 educational centers are called polytechnics, but do not function as such due to lack of equipment. Hernández said that he found an ongoing tender to equip 38, but there are another 270 that will be equipped according to the nature of each one. “That will not have an impact this year due to the bidding process. I estimate that this will be by May, when the school year is almost over, but for the next school year we are going to have true polytechnics”, he assured. He explained that this is associated with the provinces where the government is making large investments such as Pedernales, Montecristi and others so that the high schools converted into polytechnics can train human resources and benefit the people of those communities.
