Santo Domingo.-The recently sworn-in minister of Education, Angel Hernandezannounced that it will promote a change of style in educational management to restore discipline throughout the chain of command of the public school system, make the school efficient and optimize the results of the teaching process.
“You have to discipline the administration of education so that people do their job and care about the results,” said the 69-year-old official, who holds a doctorate in Educational Sciences from the University of Grenoble, France.
He stated that it is not explained how a child goes from the first to the fourth grade of elementary school without anyone realizing that he has not learned to read and write.
Otherwise, he assured, the state’s millionaire investment in the education system is being lost, because students will finish high school with serious learning deficiencies.
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He said that there is also no explanation for why a high school graduate passed the national tests and writes with serious spelling mistakes and has serious gaps in learning mathematics.
“A supervision plan is needed, a more direct accompaniment to the school, because something is failing in the chain of command of the school, of the school director, of the district and of the region, in the supervision of the center,” he said. Hernandez.
During an interview with El Nacional, he assured that “the concept of discipline has been lost, not only of the student, but also of the teacher.”
an audit
Hernández, who will occupy his office from this Monday, indicated that one of his first measures is to carry out a teaching and administrative audit, to, among other things, determine what 61 technicians assigned to a small school district in Santiago are doing.
“The first thing is to organize the house,” said the renowned educator, member of the Academy of Sciences of the Dominican Republic, who has taught at prestigious national universities such as the Autonomous University of Santo Domingo (UASD) and the Pontifical Catholic University Madre y Teacher (PCMM) and the Technological Institute of Santo Domingo (Intec).
He indicated that another urgent and important measure is to review the induction program for the more than 20,000 teachers who will enter the system next school year.
“We have to put into perspective what to do with those 20,000 teachers who are going to enter the school now to start the school year. It is not prudent to arrive in September to start training. It must start now,” said Hernández, former Undersecretary of Education, in the period 2000-2024.
“These teachers have to be skilled in handling new technology to bring that knowledge to educational platforms, so that it allows them to work better,” he considered.
a good school
Hernández affirmed that a successful school has to comply with five variables, which are the motivation of the teacher, the involvement of parents with the education of their children, educational materials, discipline and the link between the educational center and the community.
In this sense, he affirmed that, during his administration, there will be a great opening towards society.
In the first two weeks of his administration, he plans to hold rapprochement meetings with different sectors of society, including Business Action for Education (Educa), Business Initiative for Technical Education (Initia) and the Educational Pact.
“The idea is to start a dialogue with them to build a platform that responds to the needs of the Ministry and the requirements of society,” he reflected.
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He added that “people think that Education has an unlimited budget and it is not true, that is why we have to work with priorities”.
“We must discuss educational transformations,” said the rector of the Open University for Adults (UAPA) and former president, on two occasions, of the Dominican Association of University Rectors (ADRU).
Parents’ associations will have an important value at this moment in which the educational system is going through. He considered it essential to review the study curriculum, because it is very loaded.
clean finances
Hernández promised to efficiently manage the economic resources of the Ministry of Education.
“Personally, I will try to make the most efficient use of the Ministry’s resources. I will try to save every penny,” she said.
He stated that the investments will be made with a bidding committee made up of officials from the ministry and civil society.
“The companies that participate will be investigated by the lawyers before concluding the tender”, to avoid shell companies that are related to the institution. Tenders must be made on time.
a note
Review resume
The Minister of Education, Ángel Hernández, considered it essential to review the study curriculum because it is very loaded with content that is of no use to him in life. “You have to clean it of useless content.”
