Does Scope Get You Drunk

Students New Students In SalmonChile and Homeland

(Published in Strategy Journal April 25, 2008)

Almost two years of secondary manifestations of the movement opened a debate on the precariousness of basic and secondary education in Chile, it should surprise that the issues raised by them become and remain profit, the General Law of Education, the quality of education, full school day, among others. That is the same from a couple of years, despite the installation of the Presidential Advisory Council on the Quality of Education should have generated the appropriate proposals, but that only served to stop the student movement and do not overcome the great evils educational system: financing, quality and equity.

Each year the gaps in education, the same as reflected in almost all areas-are increased, for example, the results of the 2007 PSU only thing that showed was that the poor condition of exclusion in education have been very poor, which does not occur with high-income students. Hence the college selection system is not only a reflection of social reality in the country.

In the same context, one can consider issues such as indirect tax contribution (AFI) which is now a public policy as regressive, since the assumption of promoting academic excellence awards to institutions of higher education welcome students from higher socioeconomic strata, which are those that scored better on the PSU and come at a time, private schools historically showing the best results in SIMCE. A vicious cycle that has more than 30 years without breaking. Just remember the demands of the side of the second half of the eighties which were neither more nor less than the same day again yesterday when students took to the streets.

Two lost years of expansion, which were not considered important proposals and alternatives that in some European countries, the ones that we like to imitate, deal with a substantial public investment and a regressive tax system does not represent a high percentage of GDP. We wonder the students return to take to the streets claim for something that is presented as fixed, that is the false image that closed the penguin revolution of 2006. A far cry from the precarious reality of Chilean education.

Marcel Claude, an economist.