#education

Too poor for school in Regalo del Dios

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Anna Tyor recently spent time in Regalo del Dios, Antioquia. Ana`s portrait of this “Forgotten Colombia” is being published on Colombia Politics over four articles here.

The view from the school high in the mountains is impressive. From inside the barbed-wire fences you can see the line of newly developed cable cars drift down the valley’s sides, over thousands of tin roofs gleaming in the midday sun. The shacks that cover the hillsides are a jumble of plastic and plaster and a far cry from the pearly-white school buildings equipped with customized wooden doors.

Fe y Alegría (Faith and Joy) is a recently constructed vocational school located in Regalo del Dios, an impoverished town that lies high above Medellin, Colombia’s second-largest city.

“The facilities here are great and free,” said Lady, one of the teachers from Fe y Alegría, while walking from the engineering building to the cooking school. “The problem is that the people choose not to take advantage of them.”

The people Lady refers to live in the area of El Pinar, of which Regalo del Dios is a part. The population is mostly made up of internally displaced persons from Antioquia and Choco. They were often forced to flee their ancestral homes after repeated violence and threats, perpetrated by Colombia’s main rebel groups, the FARC and the ELN, neo-paramilitary groups, and other illegal armed groups. They came to Medellin hoping for a better life, but ended up high in the hills surrounding the city, in the comunas – the shanty towns.

“They don’t come to the school for many different reasons,” Lady continued. “Maybe a woman can’t come because her husband is gone, she already has three children, and she has to work. Others don’t see the point of studying here when they can make easy money through illegal work.”

Fe y Alegría is located in the municipality of Bello, north of Medellin, and is funded by the National Learning Service (SENA). It offers free technical classes for any person over 16 on weekdays, with daycare services for the children, and organizes a 6-month paid internship for each student after their theory classes are finished. Those who complete the full 2-year program are guaranteed jobs at local factories.

According to Lady, the availability of the schools in Regalo del Dios and the surrounding area is not the main problem. “No, the problem is that there are so many bad options for the people who live here, and they don’t think about their future, just what would make the present better in that moment.”

Many residents in the area, especially young men, turn to illegal forms of work to make quick money, becoming parts of the combos, the small gangs – often employed by larger organizations like the Urabeños and the Rastrojos – who control the drugs trade in the comunas. Medellin has several hundred combos operating throughout the city many of them located in the northeastern sector of the city, close to Regalo de Dios.

When money is readily available for criminal work, and the benefits of education are just intangible rewards far off in the future, it is no wonder that young men – and increasingly young women – are joining the combos before they join a class at Fe y Alegría.

“I had one student in my class who was beautiful young girl. Soon she began dating someone who could seemingly provide her with a lot of money and expensive things because he was involved in illegal activities. She ended up quitting the class,” said one teacher at the school.

Other women do not even have time to begin the classes. Most women in the area have children before they are 18 years old, and many of these women have families of five or more by the time they reach 25. With hungry mouths to feed and the responsibilities of a growing family, there is simply no time for school.

A report released in the last week of October by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) found that one in five girls in Colombia gets pregnant before 18. In Regalo del Dios, where poverty is high and sex education is non-existent, the rate is significantly higher.

Some children who grow up in Regalo del Dios and similar communities are disadvantaged from the start. UNICEF states that each year in Colombia 500,000 children do not register for elementary school and only about 75% of Colombians attend secondary school.

In the hills of Medellin over the last 10 years, schools have been forced to close temporarily due to violence in the area, and some have even been directly targeted. When the schools are reopened, students and teachers alike are afraid to return, leading to lower attendance rates and fewer resources.

The problem is exacerbated by the city’s massive inequality. A recent UN report found that Colombia has the most unequal cities in Latin America, with Medellin being the chief culprit. UN-Habitat representative Eduardo Lopez told newspaper El Espectador in early October that in Medellin there is “an oligarchy that continues to dominate the economy, and so the wealth created since the mid-90’s still hasn’t reached the poor.”

The governments of Medellin and Bello categorize their neighborhoods into different estratos, or socio-economic strata. Regalo del Dios is located in the lowest social stratum, Estrato 1, and the way the education system is structured means that students have little chance to move up to a higher estrato. It is a vicious cycle: lack of funding leads to low-quality teachers and a complete lack of resources. As a result, students learn little and leave school early are then uninterested – or incapable – of demanding the change that would see the community’s situation improve and result in more funding for the schools.

While students in the lower estratos are barely able to pass the standardized test or the basic English exam that would allow them to study in the low-cost public universities; schools located in estrato 6 – in the ritzy, southern end of the city – offer year-long study abroad programs in the United States and England.

“I learned a few words of English in school, but I’ve had to learn in other ways,” said Jeison, a resident of Regalo del Dios. “Most of my English I’ve learned at the community center close to my house.” Jeison makes the muddy trek to the community center almost every day because he knows that he must learn more English to qualify for university.

“The quality of the schools here is low; they lack educated teachers and resources. Teachers here in the schools don’t know English but they still teach English classes,” he said.

Jeison dreams of becoming an electrician. As his English improves so will his chances of going to university, and with schools like Fe y Alegría to support him there is no reason why he cannot achieve his dream. But the dream must outshine the allure of the quick buck, and it must continue strong even when his friends drive by with the spoils of the drug trade – cars and women. Jeison’s dream is a humble one, but the fact that he dreams of honest work is hope enough – that is half the battle in Regalo del Dios.

How to release Colombia´s potential

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When you visit Colombia it’s not uncommon to be surprised by the kindness of its people, who will charm you with their smiles and good manners. But if you stay in Colombia for a little longer, as an expat perhaps, or as a national as well, you will also be exposed to a less charming side of the Colombian culture: customer service. Whether you deal with a bank or an Internet or a Cellular Phone Service Provider, the experience will be similar: nobody seems to be able to resolve your issue in an efficient way.

In my view, this difficulty stems from 1, a lack of accountability, and 2, a historical fear of being direct about what you want, and why you want it.

These cultural realities not only affect customer service, they impact nearly all aspects of life in Colombia. We are left to think that in a country with so many resources and enormous potential, couldn´t things just work a little bit better; maybe even a lot better?

But how do you change a culture that has been long ingrained in a country’s society? The most logical place to begin is education: education is the surest road to impact the way a group of people do things, think about things, approach things, the best way to shape the beliefs, attitudes and values, that underpinning culture.

Here´s the problem

Being a hierarchical society, structured with a centralized government, Colombians, for the most part, have been taught to accept what the teacher says, what the boss says, without much questioning.

Research has not been a significant part of any syllabus, let alone creating or thinking out of the box.

What has the impact of this been? You become comfortable letting others decide, letting others tell you what to do. Then it is not up to you to resolve an issue, let the big ones do it, let the boss decide, but the boss has a boss, and then the big boss is too busy and it simply isn’t their job to resolve the smaller issues that the lower ranks of the organization weren’t able to resolve. So, no one is able to give you an answer, to resolve.

At a political level, you become too comfortable too, waiting for the government to resolve your issues, you don’t feel empowered to resolve your own; you are simply not prepared to think that as a community you can come up with ideas, actions, and approaches to make your life so much better.

The end result of going through life like this, as I see it, is that you may either develop a certain sense of content or a certain passive aggressiveness. Isn’t it paradoxical that Colombia, having experienced violence at every single level (a result of passive aggressiveness) often times appears in surveys as one of the happiest peoples on earth?

The thing with education as a tool to change culture is that it’s truly expensive in resources and in time; too much to allow it to be in the agenda of politicians; so much that it would require thinking above and beyond our own selfish interests; that it would call on politicians, entrepreneurs and the civil society at large to agree on the most fundamental things:  Who are we now? How do we want to see ourselves in the future? What values and beliefs do we want to define us? What legacy do we want to leave future generations?

The day Colombians come to such an agreement and are able to draw the roadmap to execute such an ambitious action plan, democracy will truly reach maturity and I believe the foreigner and the national will be able to find excelling customer service, and that warmth of heart that still distinguishes Colombians for who they truly are.

Extra year for Colombia’s school children?

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A report published last week by two major international institutions advised the Colombian government to introduce an extra year of compulsory schooling into its education system. The paper compiled by the OECD and the World Bank and reviewed the tertiary education sector, making a number of recommendations that they believe will systematically improve the education system as a whole in Colombia.

It highlighted the lack of college-readiness of many Colombian students leaving school and suggested that twelfth year of schooling or even an optional “bridging year” between school and university would help remedy this issue.

The proposal was greeted with enthusiasm from Colombia Minister of Education Maria Fernanda Campo, who said that they were considering at which stage the extra year should be added. The plan was also backed by a number of teachers in private schools in Colombia that currently use systems found in other countries.

Whether the Colombian government has the financial resources to carry this out remains to be seen though. Speaking in El Espectador, the President of the Association of Educators in Bogota, William Agudelo, urged caution before rushing into implementing the proposal, saying that many schools did not have the physical capacity to accommodate students for the extra year. He said that it would create a risk of schools denying access to new students because of lack of space, adding that many students need to leave school at an earlier age in order to earn money.

Among a number of other proposals put forward by the report includes need to increase the transparency and improve the trust in the higher education admissions system; to tackle the disparity between regions in the levels of student enrolment in tertiary education; to simplify the number of different degree types on offer in higher education institutions; and to increase the range of repayment options for students for student loans.

Improving the standard of and access to education, particularly at the secondary and tertiary stages,  so as to improve the skills and knowledge of young people entering the economy is imperative to Colombia’s economic interests at this time as it looks to take advantage of the settling security situation in the country and the opportunities this brings.

Fraud challenge for Colombia’s Education Minister

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Colombia’s Education Minister Maria Fernanda Campo pledged this week that action will be taken to combat the corrupt use of funds in the country’s education system.

This comes after it was revealed last year in the Pacific port city of Buenaventura that of the 110,000 children registered in the city and receiving funding from the state in 2011, over 40,000 we so-called “ghost” students fabricated by schools to artificially boost the amount of state money they receive.

In an interview with Cali-based newspaper El Pais, who had originally uncovered the scandal, Campo promised that the Ministry of Education will intervene to ensure the legitimate use of funds by the 94 local authorities delivering state-funded education in Colombia.

She said:

“If we observe any irregularities then we will deduct resources to the entity, whether it is a municipality, department or special district. This year we will deduct 54,503 million pesos (US$30m ) from Buenaventura’s funding.

“We will reach the figure of 94 audits in 2013, so that we reach every corner of every class. Given the serious results of 2011, at the beginning of last year we met all mayors and secretaries of education of Colombia and warned them what we were doing.

“We explained that we seek to ensure that we can trust the system of public enrolment, and that each school that children are actually registered and that the figures are not inflated.”

Minister Campo added that as a result of these measures, in the second half of 2012, enrolment figures in schools had dropped, suggesting that the fraud was being addressed.

However, according to UNESCO, Colombia’s overall primary school enrolment rate of 88% is slightly below the average for Latin America which currently sits at 94%, and improving this remains a key priority for the government. A significant barrier for children from poorer families in accessing education is that some state-funded schools are still charging parents for their child’s attendance.

Minister Campo said in February last year that though free access to education was being implemented well at a national level, it was true that charging was still taking place in some schools. She called for parents to help the government identify these schools, and emphasised that state schools are not able to charge a single peso for registration or educational expenses.

Colombia´s unemployment – education reform required

Colombia and Latin America’s steady economic growth seen in the past year has been put in a new, less favourable, light by November´s The Hays Global Skills Index.

This index produced by a leading global recruiter, Hays and Oxford Economics, showed that despite Latin America’s expansion, the limited amount of professionals in the region poses a challenge for the future development of certain markets, offering a reason for the high unemployment rate.

Though the Hays Global Index does not fully explain the factors behind Colombia’s official 9.9% unemployment rate,  it does shed light on areas that could improve the country´s economic development.

The study claims the most sought after professions are those in the areas of natural resources, engineering, life sciences, retail trade, and finance, with the academics indicating a need for Colombia to refocus its education system to promote learning in these areas.

President Santos professes to have placed education at the heart of his government´s programme, citing it as a key driver of upward mobility, helping to combating inequality, and secure the Prosperity for All mantra of his administration.

The resources for financing the growing demand for tertiary education are still in question, and the disparity between the rhetoric and the reality is perhaps best represented by the current lobbying of the Federación Nacional de Representantes Estudiantiles de Educación Superior (Fenares), the National Federation of Higher Education Student Representative, in order to negotiate a bigger dispensable budget for public higher education.

The challenge for the government is not only to reassess the educational system to better prepare students for these areas of study, but also how it can ensure tertiary education is available to students of all socioeconomic levels.

Help has come in the form of a $46 million USD Inter-American Development Bank loan which Colombia’s Education Ministry is using to reduce territorial inequities, and to provide the necessary tools for educational institutions to create learning environments that strengthen socio-emotional qualities.

The 2008 World Economic Forum on Latin America identified the “need to construct values and skills-driven education systems as the top priority for Latin America to achieve sustainable development”; this remains very much a work in progress.

A decade long study of Colombian education by the World Bank found that a potential solution to the limited availability of the educational system would be to increase loan availability to students through a system similar to that of Sallie Mae in the United States.

For Colombia, the road to continual economic growth, means creating the proper incentives for both businesses and students to fill the skills gap. The country must also work to prevent pull the brake on the brain drain caused by reduced employment opportunities, and low remuneration.

The underlying reasons for Colombia´s high unemployment level requires exploration and long-term solutions: the country´s hiring process is often characterized by discriminatory practices, linked directly to the inequality inherent in both the educational system and the geographically differing rates of economic development.