This week the expected results of the SIMCE 2022 were released. There has been a lot of analysis of the stagnation of the results in reading and the drop in mathematics, especially among women. In its results report, the Quality Agency highlighted 4 main conclusions from the SIMCE 2022, and I would like to focus on one of them:Students who consider it important for their future to go regularly to classes obtained better academic results in the Simce. The level of valuation is measured together with other indicators of Personal and Social Performance through a questionnaire that parents and students of 4th Basic and 2nd Middle School answer in the days close to the SIMCE test. The students who showed that they value school attendance achieved 4 points more in mathematics and 8 points more in reading than their peers in fourth grade. In the case of high school, the correlation is even stronger, since those who showed greater appreciation for attendance obtained 11 points more in mathematics and 15 points more in reading. Is this finding an absolute novelty and a revelation? Not really. We can find several researches with Chilean and international data that strongly show the relationship between expectations, the valuation of attendance and learning results. At Fundación Educacional Presente we have spent a decade promoting the valuation of attendance, not only in students, but in all the actors of the school system in the different regions of the country. Currently, together with the Metropolitan Regional Government and the foundations that are part of Bien Público, we are implementing a pilot plan for school retention in 20 schools in the Metropolitan Region, whose main focus is precisely to generate appreciation and a culture of high expectations of involvement, to ensure trajectories and strengthen the development of schoolchildren. This plan has an intensive monitoring of the results and is intended to be a first step to generate public policy. It has been carried out thanks to an unprecedented public-private alliance, in which all those involved are convinced that regular school attendance is a basic condition for the well-being, development and learning of students. So, let’s protect school attendance. Let us avoid suspensions at all costs. Let’s get ahead of the problems that we know endanger attendance. And, above all, let’s focus on making our schools meaningful spaces every day, for every student. Because if they are not in school, where are they and what are they learning?
Rebeca Molina
Executive Director
Fundación Educacional Presente
