-
5. The Fight for Equality
- University Press of Florida
- Chapter
- Additional Information
At the outset of the Toledo administration, there was widespread agreement in Peru on the need for the state to strengthen its capacity to offer wider social services. The agenda included pressing issues related to education, health care, housing, indigenous rights, and citizen security. In the course of the campaign, President Toledo promised to address these issues as integral parts of broader strategies to support socioeconomic development and poverty reduction. Once in office, the socioeconomic and political consequences of market economics, reflected in the president’s diminishing popularity, made it difficult for him to fulfill these commitments. Education The Toledo administration inherited an educational system that had been in crisis for decades. Significant gaps existed in school completion rates and learning outcomes, with major challenges in upgrading the quality of education at all levels and in extending the coverage of preschool, secondary, and higher education . Complex in design and political in nature, policy issues in education were multidimensional, involving questions of quality, quantity, equity, relevance, focus, and resources.1 Throughout the 1990s, the Fujimori administration had increased public spending on education despite constraints imposed by disciplined fiscal policies ; nevertheless, levels of expenditure still remained below the Latin American average. Even with relatively low levels of public spending, several factors combined to enable Peru to achieve high levels of enrollment, especially at the primary level where the completion rate reached 98 percent in 2000. First, Peru Chapter Five The Fight for Equality 110 Toledo’s Peru put near-universal primary education ahead of any qualitative improvement. Second, the country contained the growth of personnel expenditure, using the savings to build infrastructure and capacity. Finally, it mobilized comparatively high levels of household expenditure on education. President Fujimori also implemented a reform package that included the rationalization of the public sector, administrative regionalization, encouragement of private education, and the extension of free, compulsory education.2 Despite some success in these areas, the disparity between rich and poor, urban and rural, boys and girls, in terms of overall access to education as well as in school completion rates, remained pronounced. Disparity was also manifested in achievement levels between nonindigenous and indigenous populations and between public and private schools. Compared to those of other countries in the region, the results obtained by Peruvian schoolchildren in standardized tests were low. In an evaluation of academic performance in twelve Latin American countries, Peru placed second from last, and in a sample of twenty regional states, Peru ranked thirteenth in quality of education and fifteenth in qualified teaching staff. At the same time, earnings differentials between workers with different levels of education continued to grow.3 During the Paniagua administration, the minister of education, Marcial Rubio Correa, promoted several initiatives that impacted later on the policies of the Toledo administration. Teachers were granted a modest pay bonus, and in April 2001, the National Unit for Bilingual Intercultural Education (Unidad Nacional de Educación Bilingüe Intercultural, UNEBI) was renamed the National Division of Intercultural Bilingual Education (Dirección Nacional de Educación Bilingüe Intercultural, DINEBI). One of DINEBI’s first acts was to establish the fifteen-member National Consulting Committee on Intercultural Bilingual Education . After consulting with bilingual teachers, NGOs, and other experts in the field, DINEBI then drafted a report on the politics of languages and cultures in education that formed the basis for a multiyear strategic plan for bilingual, intercultural education in Peru.4 In the course of the presidential campaign, Toledo’s promises to overhaul the Peruvian educational system generated enthusiasm and high expectations. Building on his rise from Andean shoeshine boy to Stanford Ph.D., he emphasized the central role of education in his development chain for Peru and in related efforts to reduce poverty throughout the country. Once Toledo was elected, Project Huascarán (Proyecto Huascarán), charged with improving the quality of education in primary and secondary schools through the implementation of a nationwide network of computer-based, Internet-connected learning systems, was an early initiative of the Toledo administration. The project experienced [54.210.126.232] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 18:14 GMT) The Fight for Equality 111 teething problems initially, including a requirement that local schools match government inputs and the occasional failure to coordinate the delivery of computer hardware and software with the establishment of Internet connectivity; nevertheless, some three thousand schools eventually enrolled. In promoting exploration and improved reasoning and problem-solving skills, Project Huascar án also encouraged Peruvian educators and students to move away from...