The PISA tests for the year 2022 revealed that Colombia is among the 30 countries with the worst results. We are ranked 67th in math, 54th in science, and 53rd in reading. Given this, President Petro proposes a single day with artistic and sports education, postgraduate courses for teachers, accreditation of schools and a greater budget for public education. Although his proposals are positive, they still do not solve the problem of education in Colombia.
Education needs a better evaluation system that has incentives. Teachers should be qualified according to the results obtained by their students, and from this obtain better salaries and scholarships. The teaching career must be dignified, and it cannot be a single university in the country that teaches pedagogy. Being a biologist, mathematician or historian does not make a good teacher; Pedagogy as a transversal subject is necessary to have a teacher. The key to a good student is a good teacher.
The subjects must have a territorial approach adapted to the culture. For example, panela municipalities must have classes on industrialization and innovation in panela production or distillation to create artisanal alcohols. New subjects close to the frontier of knowledge must be installed. The country is left teaching its children to use calculators when the future is computer programming programs. Colombia needs programming, robotics and systems classes.
The greatest social segregation that the country experiences is in education. While parents with more resources can choose among the best private schools in their cities for their children, parents with fewer resources have no options but to send them to the only poor-quality public school nearby. A private school child never crosses paths with a public school child in their education. Knowledge and empathy for the realities of others is not created from childhood.
It is for this reason that I have proposed the School Bonus in Colombia for children who are in conditions of extreme poverty, moderate poverty and vulnerability. Parents will be able to choose the school they want, public or private, for their children. The State will pay all their education costs: tuition, board, food, transportation. The schools that can access the School Bonus must have high quality minimums, we are not going to put children in bad schools. The right to education occurs in access to education, not in the building.
A school in Bogotá that has managed to break social segregation is Liceo Campo David. This school is always among the five best in the country’s state tests. It is located in the town of Kennedy in Bogotá and has students from all strata. From the child who lives three blocks from the school, to the one who lives in Los Rosales.
The school graduates more than 30 students each year, and has 14 teachers for each grade level. In proportion, it has one teacher for every two students, and manages to provide scholarships for higher education to 89% of its students. In the last five years, it has managed to get 100% of its students into a university. In addition, students graduate knowing how to program. They affirm that the secret of their educational system is in a high system of teacher evaluation and student evaluation. There is a constant teacher-student feedback methodology.
But having this quality education comes at a cost. The gross annual tuition of an eleventh grade student at Campo David is worth a little more than 1 million pesos, and the pension is 770 thousand per month. However, parents do not pay that. The school has a subsidy for parents regarding the payment of tuition and for the annual pension that reaches 40% of the total cost in pre-kindergarten and 25% for the last grades. This is de facto a partial school bonus.
What parent would not put their child in a school that will ensure in 89% of the cases that their children will get a scholarship to enter university? The School Bonus that I propose wants to put the country’s low-income children in these schools. My bill is already going to second debate in Congress. The country needs to bet on education.
