Within the framework of the general elections, Together for Education invites citizens to join the Votá Educación campaign, whose objective is to raise awareness and promote an informed debate on the urgent challenges in education that the next Government must face.
“This year, Paraguayan society elects new national and departmental authorities that will be in charge of managing a State that must be the guarantor of the right to education for the next five years,” he said. Oscar Charotti, Executive Director of Together for Education.
As Charotti explained, the most urgent issues to be addressed are: children out of school, low levels of learning, infrastructure conditions and school equipment, professional development of educators, quality care for early childhood and the development of a law for public financing of education.
“Education as a social right and as a public good is constituted as one of the main demands of society. The debts and lags of the Paraguayan educational system that we carried over from the previous century require urgent responses,” Charotti asserted.
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To put in context, Yan Speranza, president of the organization, sHe pointed out that Paraguay is one of the countries in the region with the least public investment in education. According to data from the Ministry of Education and Science, one in two children does not have access to initial education and five out of ten do not finish twelve years of compulsory schooling. According to SNEPE 2018 standardized tests, only two out of ten students achieve the basic level of learning in mathematics. There are 279,000 people in Paraguay who cannot read and write. Likewise, according to the Citizen Educational Observatory, based on data from the MEC (2022), of every ten educational institutions in the country, six need repairs or construction of new classrooms.
“We urge citizens to exercise their right at the polls to choose and in turn demand from the authorities a great commitment and consensus building around public education, which is a right that in Paraguay is not yet universalized and that suffers of serious deficiencies”, said Yan Speranza.
Vote Education
To make school problems visible, with the campaign Vote Educationthe organization disseminates graphic and audiovisual materials on its social networks Facebook, instagram, Twitter.
One of the videos, “The Power of Ramon”, tells the story of a teacher from La Chacarita who is passionate about his profession but faces the problem of lack of funding every year. Likewise, other material exposes the speeches of former presidents on education, making a contrast with reality.
The campaign is carried out within the framework of the Tetãyguára Jesareko projectpromoted by Together for Education, with support from the European Union, whose purpose is the awareness, participation and oversight of civil society in the educational agenda and policies at the national and territorial level, with emphasis on social audit experiences.
