Schooling for Success: Preventing Repetition and Dropout in Latin American Primary Schools: Preventing Repetition and Dropout in Latin American Primary Schools by Laura Randall & Michael R. Anderson

Author:Laura Randall & Michael R. Anderson [Randall, Laura & Anderson, Michael R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: International Relations, Political Science, General
ISBN: 9781315292878
Google: 8J4YDQAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 32206331
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 1998-09-30T00:00:00+00:00

Programa de Atención al Rezago Educativo (PARE)

Mexico received a loan from the World Bank in 1991 in order to combat school failure in the four poorest states of the country, establishing the Program for Remedying Educational Deficits (PARE). The program was to spend $352 million over a period of five years. It was designed to benefit all primary schools—except middle-class urban schools—in the states of Chiapas, Oaxaca, Guerrero, and Hidalgo (a poor state, but not the poorest; for political reasons, Michoacán, which should have been the fourth state, was not included).

PARE was aimed at improving the supply side of the educational equation. Several different components were gradually put into effect over a period of four years of operation. These were:

Educational materials. The program defined packages of educational materials aimed at aiding the teaching process (dictionaries, maps, globes, balls, typewriters, duplicators, overhead projectors, and such). The schools located in the extreme poverty areas should receive three times as much material as other schools.

Educational supplies for the children. Children received notebooks, pencils, rulers, also according to the degree of poverty of the community; the program gave more to the poorest.

Texts for education in indigenous languages. The bank financed the writing of books for learning to read and write in eight indigenous languages: the two most important in each state. Due to the time it took for the in-site supervised authoring of these books by indigenous teachers, the books were not made available until 1994.

School libraries. The program extended a previously existing project for school libraries and distributed 159 books (90 for children and the rest for parents and teachers) to multigrade schools and 295 to complete schools which offer six grades of primary education.

Distribution infrastructure. Forty-three storage rooms were built in strategic places in order to make the distribution of education supplies and textbooks more efficient.

Teacher training. Courses were designed for regular primary school teachers and for indigenous primary school teachers. Using the cascade method, the courses offered had a total of 198,000 attendees. The program included a small stipend for transportation costs.

School infrastructure and equipment. An amount was designated to build new classrooms and to equip them, as well as to rehabilitate schools and to fortify those in dangerous sites (against earthquakes, mainly).

Strengthening of school supervision. Supervisors were given a stipend to cover traveling costs to schools, conditional on proof of the signature of the school principal and the community authority, that the school had been visited three times a year. The sector supervisors (one level up) were given two vehicles that were meant to facilitate supervisor visits to schools. Supervision offices were built and equipped. And courses were given for supervisors and school principals.

Incentives for teachers. Teachers working in very remote communities with no services were given an incentive consisting of a 100 percent increase in their salaries. This incentive, however, belongs to the school, not to the teacher. When the teacher leaves the school, for whatever reason, the extra salary incentive stays with the school. Teachers had to demonstrate

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