An ambitious attempt to get incentives right
in the classroom
Dec 9th 2010 | SANTIAGO
THE battle to achieve economic development will “be won or lost in the classroom,” declares Chile’s president, Sebastián Piñera. To try to secure victory he has begun what he called Chile’s “most ambitious educational reform since the 1960s”. The first part of the reform, launched last month, deals with schooling; next year the education minister, Joaquín Lavín, hopes to start unveiling other measures for preschool, technical and higher education.
Mr Piñera took office in March after two decades of centre-left rule. His centre-right alliance claims that despite a big rise since the mid-1990s in the proportion of young people at secondary school and university, standards have not improved. That is not borne out by the PISA results (see article): Chile’s average scores have risen steadily since 2000.
But as elsewhere in Latin America, Chilean schools tend to lock in socioeconomic inequalities rather than help poor pupils overcome their disadvantages. In the latest national tests the maths scores of 4th-year primary pupils from the richest fifth of the population were already about 35% better than those of the poorest fifth.
Money is one problem. Chile has a voucher system, in which the government pays money to the school of the parents’ choice. But funding per pupil received by state schools is about $100 a month—a tenth or less of the fees charged by private schools catering to the rich.
Under the reform, the government plans to increase the value of the voucher on a sliding scale tied to family income, doubling its total cost of $5 billion by 2018. It also plans new incentives to ensure the money is well spent. There will be scholarships for trainee teachers who have scored highly in the national university-entrance exam, better starting salaries for good graduates and a scheme to persuade older teachers to retire. In addition, there will be 60 “schools of excellence” aimed at bright children from poorer families.
The boldest part of the reform would puncture the almost watertight job security enjoyed by state-school teachers under a law passed in the mid-1990s as a remedy for their loss of status and earning power under the previous dictatorship. Under Mr Piñera’s plan, head teachers, now to be chosen by independent boards, would be able to sack up to 5% of teachers. That would be enough to change attitudes in the profession, says José Joaquín Brunner, an education specialist at Diego Portales University.
Perhaps optimistically, the government hopes the reform bill will be approved by Congress before the start of the school year in March. If so, the next PISA test in three years’ time may show a bigger improvement in Chile.
Mr Piñera took office in March after two decades of centre-left rule. His centre-right alliance claims that despite a big rise since the mid-1990s in the proportion of young people at secondary school and university, standards have not improved. That is not borne out by the PISA results (see article): Chile’s average scores have risen steadily since 2000.
But as elsewhere in Latin America, Chilean schools tend to lock in socioeconomic inequalities rather than help poor pupils overcome their disadvantages. In the latest national tests the maths scores of 4th-year primary pupils from the richest fifth of the population were already about 35% better than those of the poorest fifth.
Money is one problem. Chile has a voucher system, in which the government pays money to the school of the parents’ choice. But funding per pupil received by state schools is about $100 a month—a tenth or less of the fees charged by private schools catering to the rich.
Under the reform, the government plans to increase the value of the voucher on a sliding scale tied to family income, doubling its total cost of $5 billion by 2018. It also plans new incentives to ensure the money is well spent. There will be scholarships for trainee teachers who have scored highly in the national university-entrance exam, better starting salaries for good graduates and a scheme to persuade older teachers to retire. In addition, there will be 60 “schools of excellence” aimed at bright children from poorer families.
The boldest part of the reform would puncture the almost watertight job security enjoyed by state-school teachers under a law passed in the mid-1990s as a remedy for their loss of status and earning power under the previous dictatorship. Under Mr Piñera’s plan, head teachers, now to be chosen by independent boards, would be able to sack up to 5% of teachers. That would be enough to change attitudes in the profession, says José Joaquín Brunner, an education specialist at Diego Portales University.
Perhaps optimistically, the government hopes the reform bill will be approved by Congress before the start of the school year in March. If so, the next PISA test in three years’ time may show a bigger improvement in Chile.
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