Minister of Education raised the idea of ​​a “great national agreement on educational matters”

In interview with ElSiglo.cl., The head of the portfolio, Nicolás Cataldo, maintained that a transversal agenda is necessary that “projects the challenges of Chilean education for the next ten or fifteen years, at least.” He emphasized that “there is no country in the world that has made educational leaps that has not had transversal political agreements.” He addressed the particularities of the 2024 Budget for the sector and indicated that they are working on “designing a bill that not only talks about canceling the CAE, but also establishes a new student financing system.” Regarding the strikes at the College of Teachers, the minister specified that “that mobilization was quickly overcome, but not the agenda” and that is why working groups are being developed that include the historical debt.

Hugo Guzman. Journalist. “The century”. Santiago. 10/20/2023. He does not stop drinking mate during the interview in a spacious office with good natural light that comes in through large windows. His desk is wide, full of folders and papers, and behind it there is a piece of furniture decorated with colorful Mexican alebrijes, figurines of cartoon heroes and the mascot of the Santiago 2023 Pan American Games, along with family photos. He looks serene and active, he seems far from formalities from his dress to his attitude, and affirms that being the first communist militant to assume the position of Minister of Education “is a source of pride” and adds that “the work that those of us who are active in the Party do Communist and we exercise State roles, that is what speaks for us.” He warns that all this discussion around his militancy in the PC is typical of the Cold War and “looks good.” off side” when “we put at the center the main concern which is to work for the interests of our people.”

Nicolás Eduardo Cataldo Astorga has been the head of Education for two months. A communist militant for 25 years, as a History professor graduated from the University of Valparaíso and linked to battles at the College of Teachers, he knows the terrain where he is treading, recounting his work during a time as Undersecretary of Education. He is married to Danae Prado Carmona, also a member of the Communist Party, current regional councilor, and perhaps the history to which they are linked lies in the names of his children: Salvador Antonio and Matilde Violeta.

The minister acknowledges being concerned about the national political scene, beyond his portfolio. “Today what worries me most is the deterioration of democracy and the risk it runs due to the way the discussions are taking place, the polarization that we are experiencing, and the manifest lack of will for dialogue that part of the opposition has” .

Despite this, he does not give in to proposing “a transversal national agreement” to face the challenges of Chilean education. And he emphasizes that “there is no country in the world that has made educational leaps that has not had transversal political agreements that are sustained as state policies.”

39 thousand students free of charge, more infrastructure and educational reactivation

The 2024 Education Budget increased by 4.2%. I suppose we always expect to have more resources, but what effect does this increase have?

There are 590 billion pesos, there are budget lines that increase, others that decrease, but it is one of the budgets that grows the most. There will be an increase in the free coverage that we have projected for next year, which is an addition of more than 39 thousand new students who would enter higher education free of charge, which is very good news. There is the implementation of new local services that would come into operation during 2024, which generates an increase in important resources. There is everything that has to do with educational reactivation, where a new budget line is created, which in the sum of the different specific initiatives is more than 30 billion pesos. This 2024 Budget combines expenses linked to compliance with laws that are very important, such as free education, or continuing to advance with the new public education, and with main efforts that the Government defined, particularly with the emphasis on educational reactivation as a country purpose and task. , especially with what was the loss of learning, school coexistence and mental health, and lack or low attendance that we have seen in recent years and the educational disengagement that has occurred.

There are statements from rectors of private universities, from experts, who point out that it will be difficult to guarantee free admission as planned.

It is something that we are monitoring, we are working together with the Ministry of Finance, there is a law of the Republic that has financing, and mechanisms that are related to the economic projection that allow us to continue advancing in free coverage. Beyond predicting a dark future, what we have to do is look at how the institutions are operating, how the regulated tariff mechanism is working, which are the technical elements that account for the progress of this policy and how it ultimately impacts in the finances of higher education institutions.

Finally, what will happen to the CAE, how is it coping?

The Minister of Finance raised a criterion that is super important, and that is that the new student financing system linked to educational debt has to be a self-contained mechanism. So, we are working technically with the Ministry of Finance to design a bill that does not only talk about canceling the CAE, but, rather, establishes a new student financing system, complementary to free student financing. We are convinced that the CAE as it stands does not account for reality, it costs a lot to involve the banks, the interests that the State is paying for the purchase of portfolios when they become delinquent are high and, therefore, the expenditure public that is associated with financing, to sustain the current State guarantee model, is inefficient and much more expensive than moving towards a different solution. This change is in our projections, it has been ratified by the President of the Republic, this issue has not ceased to be part of the agenda of the Ministry of Education and we are working hard with the Budget Directorate and the Ministry of Finance in the best possible way. technical design to carry out this policy.

“Get anxious or start doing your homework”

Governments last four years. You will be Minister of Education for two years. And he spoke in an interview that we are going to be in an educational crisis for many years, he spoke of ten years to face the challenge in Education. In reality, when talking about education in the country we talk about structural, fundamental issues that seem not to be able to be resolved in a period of Government.

Look, there are two possibilities here: get anxious or start doing your homework. What we have decided is to start doing the task. In the sense of making a preliminary analysis regarding the educational reactivation process, which has to do with asking what the state of education was before the pandemic, and the truth is that educational results were stagnant. This is demonstrated by national and international evaluations, and educational results did not even come close to comparing to the average of OECD countries, which is where we like to observe and compare ourselves. Our students with the best educational performance, from the most expensive schools in Chile, also did not compare with students from the most advanced systems in the world. Attendance was not something that stood out either, we were in the order of 91%, which is still low attendance, there was an educational disengagement that also had alarming figures before the pandemic. If one makes that recognition, a self-critical recognition as a State – this has nothing to do with one Government or another, this has been happening in governments of different types and political signs, therefore the worst thing we can do is draw political accounts -, and Society assumes that education in Chile had serious, very profound difficulties, it assumes that educational reactivation cannot only be about restoring our capabilities prior to the pandemic, because that is a very modest objective, to put it in a subtle way. We intend to recover that capacity, but moreover, we intend to go further. So, our goals of the reactivation plan for the year 2026, which will be the last year that this Government will have to fulfill its functions, are to recover lost capacities, to return us to before the pandemic, but I have raised, and I said it As for ten years, I mean thinking long term. Rather than looking at the challenges of education backwards, we must think about the challenges of education forward, where we want to be in the year 2030, where we want to be in the year 2035. And when one thinks in the long term, one is able to define lines of action that are more structural to, for example, formulate national agreements that allow us to carry out that agenda. There is no country in the world that has made educational leaps that has not had transversal political agreements that are sustained as state policies.

Are you suggesting that it is important that there be a national agreement for education that transcends governments?

That’s right, of course.

How could it materialize?

First, identifying what elements of crisis we have, to address them, such as the existence of disabling conditions for learning. I am referring to issues such as the infrastructure deficit that we have, there are thousands of students who are left without a school every year because, given the migratory phenomena – which are not only those who come from outside the country, they are also internal ones, because in a pandemic Many people moved to the countryside, to coastal areas – which means that the territories do not have the capacity to acquit these license plates. Issues such as financing, we saw the case of Til Til, where there was a mobilization due to non-payment of salaries, and it has to do with the fact that the current financing system was exhausted. This is happening in other municipalities in the country. We have had a conversation with the world of subsidized private supporters, we have talked with parliamentarians, mayors, from the left and the right, pointing to an understanding that the financing system no longer works. If one begins to look at diagnoses like these, without a doubt that in terms of learning we have agreement that there are gender gaps, that we have a stagnation in learning, we must move towards a different understanding of the curricular phenomenon, we have to reformulate the curriculum first. basic to second medium. When one looks at these issues, and sees that there is agreement in the diagnoses, one sees that it is possible to structure common minimums for a great leap forward in educational matters. That is where we have been talking with parliamentary actors, with researchers, people from academia, people linked to the opposition, with our people too, with the idea of ​​structuring this more transversal view and proposing lines of action that become the basis of a great national agreement on educational matters, which projects the challenges of Chilean education for the next ten or fifteen years, at least.

Speaking of these underlying issues, I was reading President Gabriel Boric’s government program on education. For example, is there progress in overcoming the neoliberal educational model, in feminist education…?

Progress is being made on some important issues. It must be considered that contexts often condition the way in which programs are implemented. The programs are a roadmap, they trace a path, a will, but the programs must also be adapted to the contexts, and when we arrived in March 2022, we realized that the Chilean educational reality, especially in the school environment, had such a level of deterioration, that we had to set ourselves the task of advancing our program, on the one hand, and also resolving more complex, immediate situations. We have made progress in terms of the gender agenda, we have managed to develop non-sexist education sessions, we have made progress in strengthening public education through the presentation of a new public education bill that is under parliamentary debate, let’s go To advance some adjustments to that proposal, a few days ago we enacted the law that puts an end to the double evaluation that was a programmatic commitment. That is to say, progress has been made, and I believe that the evaluations of the program’s fulfillment will be made in view of the closure of the Government.

Violence and school coexistence

There is concern about coexistence in schools, attacks on teachers, certain violence, violence in the so-called emblematic schools is still on the table, protests are taking place in the streets, in the schools themselves.

I am left with the second dimension of the question regarding violence in schools, which has acquired the characteristics of crimes. Burning a bus is a crime, intimidating teachers and students, spraying them with benzine as if they were going to burn, is outside any framework of legitimate mobilization. There is a conviction there and that has more to do with work by the Public Ministry. Stripping that away, we see that in the educational framework there is a problem with school coexistence, and one of the pillars of the educational reactivation plan is school coexistence and mental health, where we are working around two main lines. One is the expansion of the coverage of the “Skills for Life” program, which is from the School Aid and Scholarship Board, which has a very good international and national evaluation. When we received the Government, this plan was installed in around 80 municipalities, today it is in 190 municipalities, we expanded it a lot and we want to continue promoting it because it works on mental health and socio-emotional support for educational communities, it works both with parents, with students, and with teachers, educational assistants and management teams. And on the other hand, we created a line of “Living together is learned”, which is a work focused on capacity building within the system, within each school community in terms of coexistence and tools to manage school coexistence. In parallel, we are working in Congress to consolidate a framework law on school coexistence, mental health, socio-emotional support, the problem of alcohol and drug consumption, among other matters, and which are dispersed in different legal initiatives and which we want consolidate them, merge them, into a single initiative. In the coming months we hope to report on this regulatory exercise, which comprehensively addresses the problems associated with school violence, school coexistence, and mental health.

“The work agenda that we defined with the College of Teachers is in development”

There were mobilizations and strikes by the College of Teachers based on various demands. Is there an impasse with that, today, how is your relationship with the union and the conversation to look for solutions to the demands?

It has always been fraternal, since I was Undersecretary of Education to date we have had a good institutional dialogue with the College of Teachers. They had been working on an agenda with former minister Marco Antonio Ávila, and it led to a mobilization of the College a few days after I arrived as minister. That mobilization was quickly overcome, but not the agenda. The work agenda that we defined with the College of Teachers is in development, the tables that were established are functioning, we have times associated with the fulfillment of each of the work tables. Today, the College of Teachers is in an internal situation that is particular, because they are in elections, and the fact that they are stressed by the internal elections means that the relationship flow is not the most intense, because the concerns of the leadership are rather in facing the electoral process, which is just a few days away.

That can change the interlocutors.

It is possible, it is part of democracy.

Specifically, how is the historical debt with the teachers going?

The Government has the will to address this problem, it was a commitment of the Government program, President Gabriel Boric has supported it in his two public accounts, always acknowledging the economic situation of the country, which is not the best. Let us agree that paying the historical debt in full, that is, with all that that implies, is something that is outside the financial reach of this or any Government, there are many resources. But let us also agree that there is a historical discussion of this issue, that is what begins a reparation process, and in that direction are the presidential commitments, the programs, that is what we are working on. The work table is resumed with the College of Teachers just after the National Strike they had ends and has been operating on a couple of occasions in order to advance a technical proposal and approach a minimum agreement framework. This is accompanied by a conversation with the Budget Directorate because it has to do with resources and ways of delivering those resources. There is still an important, very thick part of the proposal, which is pending both in the conversation with the College of Teachers and with the Budget Directorate. We are working on that, in December we should present a bill to Parliament.

“The work that those of us who are active in the PC and who exercise State roles do, is what speaks for us”

Is it an additional backpack to repeat that a communist is the Minister of Education?

The wallet is, in itself, a great weight. I perceive that it was a debate after the appointment of President Boric, and that it had to do with what happened when the President asked me to be Undersecretary of the Interior and then Undersecretary of Regional Development. But I would say that the work that those of us who are active in the Communist Party and exercise State roles do is what speaks for us. I get the impression that there is a political and technical assessment of our work, not only from the President, but from the political spectrum with which we have to work. In the Undersecretary of Regional Development I worked with mayors, with parliamentarians, who highly valued our management in a transversal way and today that is being expressed in education. I’ve only been there for two months, and I would say that only in the first stage was being a PC activist an issue, today we no longer talk about that and that is positive. The backpack of being a member of the Communist Party and exercising the role of being Minister of Education, such an important and complex portfolio, is something that makes me proud. First, because he is the first communist militant to assume this role and, secondly, because doing it well, facing such complicated issues and solving them or leaving solutions on track, shows that communists can play any role in the State. And that all that Cold War discussion looks good off side when we put at the center the main concern which is to work for the interests of our people, reverse social differences and have a happier life for everyone.

You told me a while ago that when faced with certain problems you shouldn’t get anxious. Along these lines, how do you see the moment that the Government is experiencing? The pension reform and its timing are still under discussion, the fiscal pact does not pass, there is pressure for the 2024 Budget, the opposition is on the offensive, how can we stop at this moment?

Obviously I am concerned, but not only about the implications for the Government, my concern is more general and basic, and has to do with how Chilean politics and society face discussions and process differences. I would say that beyond the Government of the day, and the possibility of it being successful in all its objectives, there are factors that also depend on the will of the opposition and our ability to generate majorities. Today I am more concerned about the deterioration of democracy and the risk it runs due to the way discussions are taking place, the polarization we are experiencing, and the manifest lack of will for dialogue that part of the opposition has. I believe that President Gabriel Boric has shown many signs of willingness to dialogue, to generate agreements; he is someone who has always been inclined to do that and today more than ever has put it into practice. The fact that Minister (Mario) Marcel is looking for a fiscal pact as a response to what happened with the tax reform, that Minister (Jeannette) Jara is looking for an agreement on pensions, which is a pain in our society, shows that This is a Government prone to agreements. The same thing that she told you during the interview, to seek a transversal agreement to face the problem of education beyond our political differences. I hope the opposition rises to the occasion and puts Chile ahead. Being a patriot necessarily means putting at the center what gives meaning to the Homeland, which is the people, which is our people, if we stop assuming that, everything is empty words.

Photos: The Century.