Jaime Saavedra warns: ‘We are in a learning crisis’

Former Minister of Education Jaime Saavedra presented his new book We are latein which he talks about the difficulties and struggles to reform the education system in favor of quality education in Peru during his tenure as head Minedu between 2013 and 2016.

In this regard, in Focus on Saturdays Saavedra Chanduvi, the current Global Director of Education of the World Bank, spoke about the unresolved challenges in the field of education and the direction in which the policy of basic and higher education in our country should develop.

“We are in a learning crisis”

Jaime Saavedra believe that after mandatory social immobilization during the pandemic, Peru’s “learning crisis” has “drastically escalated”.

“We already had a learning crisis before the pandemic. This crisis has now worsened dramatically, especially in countries where schools have been closed for very long periods, such as Peru, which has meant the disappearance of two years of schooling for most boys. (…) It is more important that we invest in restoring the education of this generation,” he said.

In this regard, he believed that public policy should have “urgently” deal with this learning failure.

“We must have an obsession with education and, on the other hand, a sense of urgency, because what is not done today means the loss of a year of life in a young person, which will be very difficult to recover in the future. Change in education is difficult, education policy is difficult, but there is an urgent need to move forward as quickly as possible so as not to be late in the lives of children,” he said.

Advised on achievements in the education system, Saavedra He believed that the reforms introduced under his administration had been maintained in recent years, “but with problems”.

“The development of education policy is non-linear, the point is not that everything is going smoothly. Everything is moving forward, but with difficulties and challenges. Therefore, the task of the educational authorities and society is to support the reforms,” he said.

In addition, he pointed out that educational reforms They were based on “what had already been worked on in the previous decade”.

“In the past 5 years, there have been no major reforms in curricula (…) Perhaps an important change is a clear focus on competencies, ensuring that children have the necessary competencies to be full citizens and meet the needs of the labor market with. XXI,” he said.

“The Master’s reform was also based on the initial reforms that were carried out in the previous government, the government Garcia Perezwhich began with the first seeds of meritocracy in a public career and which, in Humala’s government, became the general law for all teachers,” he said.

How to improve the education system?

The former Minister of Education indicated that he did not like to say that “there are role models”, but he argued that “there are good models to learn from”. In this sense, he singled out a complex educational policy in the north Brazil where progress has been made in quality education.

“They have applied common sense, which allows you to get a quality education (…) without a policy that determines school principals. (They said) that we would remove politics from education because the solutions would be highly technical. That is why the teachers were chosen. meritocratically,” he said.

“And we are no longer going to give teachers training in terms of their professional development, to put them in the classroom and teach pedagogical theory, but to give them practical training during their career, that is, improving school performance. class,” he said.

Saavedra Chanduvi He also pointed out that learning is “intensively measured across all schools” with performance percentages and yearly targets.

“There are also simple (educational) materials, a curriculum that a teacher can learn effectively throughout the year (…) This is what ensures that all teachers can complete it throughout the year. In addition, they have learned very much that all schoolchildren are learning,” he stressed.

Based on this experience, Saavedra He believed that all educational policy should be developed solely on the basis of whether it is good for students or not.

“The main thing is that society, people who think about education, politicians and officials who make decisions about education, every time they make changes, they ask themselves whether it is good for the student or not. And that all changes are determined only in accordance with it, and not in the interests of the supplier, the owner of the university or the trade union,” he stressed.