Santiago – Chilean high school students said Monday that they will keep watch to see if their demands for an improvement in educational standards are met, because if not, they will withdraw from their conversations with the government.
The students, who will resume classes Tuesday after a month of protests, added that they are going to set up a council parallel to the one the government established to reform education and which brings together university students, professors and their representatives.
They added that the idea is to speak with one voice to the Advisory Council on Education created by President Michelle Bachelet with the goal of reforming the educational system.
The Advisory Council on Education is made up of 74 members, and the government now offers six places on it to high schoolers and another six to university students.
“If the debate does not aim at a concrete change in the current educational system, we’ll leave this council,” Juan Carlos Herrera, one of the movement’s spokespersons, told reporters.
German Westhoff, another spokesman, said that they are not trying to sabotage the presidential council, but to have “a space where we can discuss ideas and develop our arguments.”
The decision to create a parallel council was taken Sunday night, after a long assembly of high school students in which they restated their intention of going back to class Tuesday.
The return to the classrooms was agreed last Friday, after a meeting of the Secondary Students Coordinating Assembly (ACES), whose spokespersons did not rule out future demonstrations if their demands are not met.
Three schools were still refusing to resume classes in the central coastal city of Valparaiso, where student leaders announced Monday that they will not vacate the schools they are occupying as a pressure tactic to demand greater representation on the Advisory Council on Education.
“We didn’t go through all these sacrifices just to back off with patchwork solutions,” said Cristian Perez, spokesman for the Higher Institute of Commerce in that city, 120 kilometers (75 miles) northwest of Santiago.
Meanwhile on Monday, a holiday in Chile, students are cleaning up and repairing the educational institutions they have occupied all over the country for several weeks, and where they held massive assemblies, cultural activities and protests.
The demonstrations included two days of national protests that left thousands under arrest, dozens injured and extensive material damages.
The movement, which took President Bachelet by surprise, had the support and sympathy of all sectors of the political spectrum and placed improvement of educational standards squarely on the agenda of the government which took power last March 11.
The council, according to Bachelet, should work out in the space of three months the reforms to the Constitutional Organic Law of Education, or LOCE, that according to high schoolers and numerous experts has given rise to a growing inequality of education between rich and poor.
LOCE was imposed by the dictator Augusto Pinochet on March 10, 1990, the day before he left power, and its principal characteristic is that it gives the market the dominant role in determining educational priorities. EFE
