After announcing the project in November and leaving the pandemic behind, the Central Board of Directors (Codicen) of the National Administration of Public Education (ANEP) approved the first draft of the Comprehensive Curriculum Transformationreported El País and sources from the Council confirmed to The Observer.
Their Approval by three votes to two –teacher advisors voted against– represents the confirmation of the scheme with which the authorities intend carry out its educational reform plan.
The draft will now be discussed with several protagonists of educationamong the first teaching technical assemblies (ATD), to outline their policies. The president of the Codicen, Robert Silvaexpects the project to be completed in November, to start with the implementation of changes in 2023stated to The Observer.
Competencies
Among the main changes is an approach of graduates by competencies, indicated the counselor elected by the National Federation of Secondary School Teachers (Fenapes), Julián Mazzoni, to The Observer.
There will be ten competitions: competences in communication, metacognitive, intrapersonal, in initiative, in relationships with others and in local, global and digital citizenship; creative, critical, computational and scientific thinking.
According to Mazzoni, this approach leaves behind critical thinking and the idea of ”generating citizenship”. “It is not planned from the competition”criticized the counselor, who believes that following this path a population divided between public education and “elite” private education is going to be reached.
For her part, the counselor for teachers from the Coordination of Teaching Unions of Uruguay (CSEU), Daysi Iglesias, explained to The Observer that even “defining competencies is already a big problem”and maintained that he ran against it because he understands that the approach in this area has proven in practice to be “very flexible, unregulated, open to generalities” and leaves behind knowledge and disciplines.
Iglesias explained that in the 1990s in Uruguay An attempt was made to implement a system of competencies in initial education, but it was rejected because it was open to “generalities”.
For the counselor it is important that in each year “an objective is marked, what must be taught at each level”because, if not, the competences marked they can be useful “both for the first year of school and for the third year of high school”.
The keys
The project defines four keys that every person who graduates from Uruguayan education should have: “Express and communicate with knowledge, autonomy, respect and empathy with others” in different environments and with “mutual understanding”; “know, think and act with knowledge and responsibility, taking care of oneself and caring for others”; “having initiative and concretizing projects, through personal development, in a collaborative and participatory manner”, and “developing one’s own well-being and that of others, incorporating oneself into the different spheres of action”.
This point was also criticized by Mazzoni, who understands that it is “reductionist” to centralize the egress objectives in keysand that in Fenapes they intend to delve into a “deep formation” of the individual.
Iglesias assured that these keys are about a “common discourse for all education”, which can be applied “on either side” of the educational spectrum. “It’s not just the enunciation of sentences, it’s the articulation of goals”criticized the counselor.
