A new school year begins these days. A year that we hope will be “normal” after 4 complex years. 2019 went down in history for being a year marked by consecutive class interruptions: about 8 weeks were suspended as a result of the teachers’ strike and about 8 more because of the social outbreak. 2020 and 2021 to say the least, the pandemic (and other forces) forced schools to close their doors, being the first to close and the last to open. Slowly, equipment was adapted to make distance classes, but in the case of many establishments, this process was slow and left thousands of students without access to education for many months. According to a study by Horizontal, Chile is one of the countries whose schools were closed for the longest period of time. From March 2020 to November 2021, 77 weeks were totaled: 14 weeks of total closure and 63 weeks of partial closure. And the losses did not end in 2022. Slowly last year we tried to return to “normality”, but the fears of families about the contagion of Covid-19, added to the lack of habits, generated that at least 60% of the students presented chronic absenteeism, that is, they were absent at least one month of classes throughout the year. If you follow me with the sum, you will see that we reach a total of 97 weeks of missed classes, we are talking about 24 months. Two and a half school years in the last 4 years. Although the academic, social, emotional and psychological damage has not yet been fully gauged, we know that more than 90% of children in first grade do not know the letters of the alphabet. The increase of 21.7% of complaints for school coexistence in the Superintendence of Education in 2022 is another sign of the profound damage to the socioemotional skills of the country’s students. Schools have been preparing for the recovery of lost time in the learning of children and young people: investments in infrastructure, training of school teams, rethinking of plans. However, none of this will bear fruit if schoolchildren are not in class every day. The Minister of Education has declared that one of the goals for this year will be to improve school attendance, aiming to reach 95%. Without attendance there is no learning, so we are glad that the government has an ambitious goal. Worryingly, however, it is perhaps not realizing that it is a challenging enough target in itself, which has led it to add new priorities in recent weeks. In the last decade, 30% of our country’s schoolchildren were chronically absent. Today, after the pandemic, this figure has doubled, which means that around 1,600,000 students missed at least one month of school last year. Getting schoolchildren to attend classes regularly cannot be a simple declaration, and it will not be enough to communicate it at the first parents’ meeting. Nor is it enough to establish incentives. To significantly reduce chronic absenteeism, it is necessary to mobilize teachers, assistants, administrators, students and parents. This implies that it should be a priority for school management and not an administrative goal.
The management team will need to apply their leadership skills to compromise, prioritize, rebuild trust and face resistance. Evidence and experience show that attendance is higher when the school community values the school and believes that it has a positive impact on their children. It improves when parents trust that being at school will benefit the development and well-being of their children. To this end, schools must take planned and systematic actions to raise awareness and effectively inform students and parents, always with an eye on the welfare of the student and not on the percentages set by regulation. At the same time, and as stated by the U.S. school attendance expert Hedy Chang, absenteeism should be tackled from a step-by-step approach, in which actions are not limited to recovering students who have left school, but pay special attention to prevention. We must anticipate and prevent students from falling into absenteeism. This requires planned and systematic work that anticipates difficulties and invests resources in developing a sense of transcendent purpose and re-establishing habits. Another relevant element in promoting school attendance is monitoring. School teams should constantly and rigorously monitor each of them, at all levels, every day. To do so, they could use the quarterly reports provided by MINEDUC, but if they are looking for monthly or biweekly information, they should create or hire specific systems for this purpose. Let us put ourselves in the shoes of the schools and their teams. Attendance and reengagement, as described above, is a huge challenge in itself. But let us not forget the very important objectives related to school coexistence, mental health and strengthening learning. Nor should we leave out their own specific difficulties and needs. Schools are already sufficiently challenged. Rather than adding new priorities, let us add real support! More hands, more accompaniment, more training, less administrative obstacles. Perhaps this urgency is a good time to discuss how to make it easier for schools to turn to civil society organizations that really achieve results. Children and youth need to go back to school now. We need to act now. Later we can sit down and calmly analyze changes to the educational model.
Rebeca Molina
Executive Director
Fundación Educacional Presente
