This week is testing week! At NCA, we only do standardized tests every other year. They aren't a big deal like they are in the United States. My job or the school does not depend on it in any way. They are simply a way to compare our school to others in Nicaragua and in the U.S. That takes away all the stress that I know the teachers in the U.S. feel. However, testing week means a lot of sitting very still and being very quiet. In my class of extra hyper students, I am having some unpleasant thoughts of what this week might looks like for me! Thankfully, God knows and will be my strength this week.
Below is an article I ran across on teachers in Nicaragua.
In Nicaragua, teachers make only half
as much as market vendors
Nicaragua's Sandinista
government vowed a 'battle for sixth grade' to combat one of the world's
highest dropout rates. But their goals are not reflected in the budget.
MANAGUA, NICARAGUA
Since returning to power in 2007, Nicaragua's President
Daniel Ortega has
championed education as a priority for his administration, and a hallmark of
his government’s socialist work.
Mr. Ortega decreed education free
for all, deployed a nationwide literacy campaign, and valiantly declared a
“battle for sixth grade” – an important goal in a country that has one of the
highest dropout rates and lowest high-school enrollments in the world.
But when it comes to paying the bill for education, the
government hasn’t followed through, analysts say, and as a result education is
not improving. Not only are textbooks and classrooms outdated, but standards
for college admissions are falling and educators are amongst the most underpaid
professionals in the country. And the low wages promised to teachers, some say,
is telling of the government's true commitment to improving education.
“The glass ceiling for the quality of education is the
quality of teachers. And there is no way to attract better and more qualified
teachers to the profession if people can earn twice as much doing just about
any other job,” says Adolfo Acevedo, an economist with the Civil Coordinator
public policy and activist group.
National
salaries 'biased against teachers'
“The national salary structure’s bias against teachers is
overwhelming,” Mr. Acevedo says.
Not only are Nicaraguan teachers the
worst paid in Central
America, but they’re also among the worst paid professionals in Nicaragua. In
real wage terms, an average public school teacher in Nicaragua earns less than 60
percent of the average wages for other jobs, and only half of what it costs to
provide the canasta basica,
a list of 56 basic food and household items needed to support an average
family.
Teachers in Nicaragua earn
less than miners, factory workers, construction workers, and government
functionaries who stand in traffic rotundas waving Sandinista flags
at passing cars, according to a comparative study on real purchasing power,
Acevedo says. Most teachers earn only half as much as a market vendor.
“The average teacher is either living in poverty or right on
the verge,” Sandinista analyst Oscar Rene Vargas says.
Teachers in Nicaragua
earn around $185 to $226 a month, according to estimates by Acevedo and José
Antonio Zepeda, president of the National Confederation of Nicaraguan Education
Workers (ANDEN).
“Despite the continuous salary
increases over the past six years – representing a total of 140 percent in wage
increases – teachers still don’t earn enough to meet the costs of the canasta basica,” Zepeda said.
This is because any salary increase on paper has been
virtually cancelled out by inflation and the increases to costs of living, says
Acevedo.
“The salary increase projected for teachers in 2012 is 9
percent, but inflation is projected to be 7.95 percent,” he says. If
projections are correct, the real increase in teacher salaries will be 1.05
percent. “At that rate of growth, teachers will need to wait 65 years for their
salaries to catch up with the average national salary,” Acevedo says.
Actions speaking louder than words
“The deficit in education spending is not a problem that
started with this government, but this government has not changed the tendency
of underfunding,” says Mr. Vargas. “The situation is stagnant.”
Though the Ortega administration has
lobbied the World Bank and EU for
outside financing to support its education strategy – a plan Sandinista officials have
quietly presented to international donors but kept guarded from any public
scrutiny – the government is hesitant when it comes to opening its own purse
strings to pay teachers’ salaries, says Mr. Acevedo.
Ortega, who receives nearly $500 million a year in
Venezuelan aid, recently thanked teachers for their “vocation for service.” But
despite his thanks, critics say the Ortega government once again did not do
enough to address low salaries for educators in the 2012 budget, which was
hurried through National Assembly earlier this month by the Sandinista
supermajority.
The Ministry of Education’s (MINED) department of public
relations said they weren’t authorized to give out information about teachers’
salaries, and also ignored written requests for information.
But some say the problem isn’t lack of funding, but how government
money is spent.
For example, in the 2012 budget the government earmarked
$111 million – double what it spent last year – on paying down the internal
debt. At the same time, this year’s budget will increase education spending by
$20 million, which means in terms of gross domestic product (GDP), education
spending will be the same as it was last year: 3.7 percent.
That’s only half of what the country should be spending on
education, Acevedo says. “The country needs to establish its priorities.”
Poor quality of education
Nicaragua’s cash-strapped school system is
amongst the world’s lowest in terms of secondary-school enrollment: Only
45 percent of students who enter primary school go on to high school.
Many of those who do make it to high school may not be
learning much more than those who drop out, though. The country’s high schools
only have enough books to cover 55 percent of the students, something the
Ministry of Education blames on a lack of the estimated $6 million needed to
print new texts. The ministry hopes the funding will become available by the
end of the year.
Those who do attend high school are not held to education
standards or international benchmarks. The country performed so poorly in
worldwide standardized testing that it stopped participating in global testing
several years ago.
And according to recent university entrance exams, only 10
percent of students pass the basic math requirements, and 20 percent pass the
Spanish-language requirement. Scores were so low that the National Autonomous
University of Nicaragua in León last year lowered the passing grade on its
entrance exam to 54 out of 100. But even then, only 68 percent of the high
school graduates passed.
“There is a
lot of government propaganda about education, but the quality of education in
Nicaragua still leaves a lot to be desired,” says Carlos Tünnermann, the first
Sandinista government’s minister of education and a former member of the UNESCO Director-General’s
Advisory Group for Higher Education in Latin America.
- The
Christian Science Monitor
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