Public, secular, free and quality education is an identity value of Argentine society. It distinguishes us before the world and managed to institute upward mobility in our society. We know well which governments have prioritized it, creating financing laws, promoting technical schools, expanding the coverage of national universities, and which have been the rulers who considered that attending a public school was a “fall”. In the City of Buenos Aires years ago we attended an advertising campaign that shows Horacio Rodríguez Larreta and his Minister Soledad Acuña as educational statesmen. We regularly hear big announcements that tell us about a “high school of the future”, the “UniCABA” or the reform of the teaching statute that was sanctioned this week. If we look at the concrete policies deployed by his government and evaluate the results, we see one blatant lie after another, a cynicism of unacceptable proportions.
To take a more concrete dimension, I am going to detail the main falsehoods that the PRO management propagates about its educational policy.
Fewer resources. The relevance that an administration gives to an area is given by the amount of funds assigned to it. Since the PRO governs the City, investment in education has never represented less than the total, 17.18% in 2021, the lowest record in history, while it reached 27% at the beginning of the Macri government. With this data alone, it would suffice as evidence of the educational hollowing out that we are witnessing. But the excuse that the ruling party usually uses is to say that other functions have been incorporated into the Buenos Aires budget, such as the creation of the local police. This alibi falls apart if we discount inflation and observe its evolution in constant values: it decreased by 7%.
In the richest district, the poorest teachers. On the other hand, if, as they say from the Buenos Aires officialdom, they believe that there is nothing more important than teaching, those who take on this task must be the best paid people, especially if it is a city like Buenos Aires, which has great resources , comparable to those administered by European metropolises. However, management pays its teachers less than the national average. Fifteen provinces pay much higher wages. Santa Fe or Córdoba, with much less resources than those enjoyed by the City of Buenos Aires and a much larger area, recognize their teachers with wages 30% higher than the latter. Let’s think that CABA has an annual budget of 9 billion dollars, something unrepeatable in any other jurisdiction.
In the following graph, it can be seen in both nominal and real terms what was the evolution of the Buenos Aires teacher’s salary from the efforts of the PRO, considering the governments of Macri and Larreta. It is made based on data from the Indicative Reports of Teacher Salaries, carried out by the General Coordination for the Study of Costs of the Educational System. It should be said that the purchasing power of a teacher was reduced by 24% between 2007 and 2021. In other words, since the macrismo governs the City, teachers’ salaries have been reduced by a quarter.
Recognizing the task of teaching not only means paying their salaries decently, but also encouraging staff training. While this week a new teaching statute was debated in the Legislature that incorporates “meritocracy” to give additional sums to those who are trained, that worker who graduates with a university degree receives an increase of only $1,000 with respect to the basic salary? Is that why there is a lack of teachers and that the City must hire young people who have not yet completed their studies? The following table shows the corresponding additional fees paid by the City of Buenos Aires.
Where are the new schools? The third deception refers to the state of the school infrastructure. One of the main slogans is the construction “Plan 54 new schools”, which they say will have been completed in 2019. However, on the official website of the Government, there are figures that deny this by indicating that 46 were completed and 18 of that total were buildings that replaced existing ones . This means that 36% of the establishments built did not generate any new vacancies: https://www.buenosaires.gob.ar/educacion/plan-54-nuevas-escuelas
In the current budget, they cut 97% of funds in infrastructure and no new schools are planned to be built during 2022 in the City, a situation that will continue to exacerbate the lack of school vacancies. This year, at the beginning of the school year, there were 118,169 families who sought to enroll their sons and daughters, of which only 61,337 succeeded. In other words, 56,832 boys, girls and adolescents were left out of the educational system, between the three levels (initial, primary and secondary). Open schools for a few and in terrible building conditions.
Education of the future. We constantly see ads showing a district incorporating new content, creating virtual classrooms, teaching robotics or financial inclusion to prepare kids for the future. But again, we find ourselves with empty phrases and distant from reality. The Sarmiento Plan, flagship of the modernization of schools and digital inclusion, is the victim of constant cuts. Without going any further, during the last financial year $371 million were transferred to the Private Management Education Directorate. It is important to know that, according to the Ombudsman’s Office, half of the vulnerable households in the City do not have computers or Internet access and that the only possibility of connection for these families is through the computers that the State, in head of Sol Acuña, refuses to share.
With regard to bilingual education discovered in 2022 by the Head of Government, the novelty of this policy seems more like a confession of failure than a success. Only this modality will be offered by six schools in the north of the City, when the law that created the system dates from 2003 and to reach the entire district territory, the full day would have to be a rule and not an exception. Only 1 in 2 students in the South have access to a double-shift school. There the transformation does not begin.
Education is the greatest bridge that a society can build towards its future. Using the needs of families to carry out an advertising campaign while emptying it of content is an inexcusable failure for the ethics of any ruler. We must commit ourselves to an innovative, quality educational policy that is measured in concrete results that change the lives of our citizens. The other is pure story.
*Juan Manuel Valdés is a Buenos Aires legislator for the Frente de Todos.
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