14ymedio, Havana, August 21,2024 — It would take 1,161 teachers for the school year in Ciego de Ávila to get off on the right foot. The local authorities say that they have enough budget to hire the necessary staff, but prefer to return it to the state coffers at the end of the year rather than “relieve the pockets a little” of the teachers. The reason for this attitude is a mystery that the Minister of Education, Naima Trujillo, failed to clear up this Tuesday.
Meeting with teachers and leaders from Avila, Trujillo attributed the non-use of the budget surplus to the lack of originality of the local cadres. She alluded to the “mechanical thinking” when organizing the course, the lack of “flexibility and intelligence,” and stressed that everything seems to indicate that it will be a year “full of tensions.”
Trujillo asked the managers to be “honest” with the families in the face of the shortages that she foresees for the sector. “This year we will only be able to deliver two uniforms in preschool, one in each initial grade and one in the fifth grade. And we don’t want it to be like that, because the school uniform is a symbol of equity, which we can’t lose. But in the current economic situation we lack the raw materials to make more,” she said.
“This year we will only be able to deliver two uniforms in preschool, one in each initial grade and one in fifth grade”
In fact, the official press has been filled in the weeks prior to the school year with official “apologies” because the textile factories have not lived up to the demand for uniforms. Escambray reported on Tuesday, in a sarcastic tone, that the industry has a number of uniforms that are “unstitched,” in the neighboring province of Sancti Spíritus. One of the explanations for the lack of uniforms bordered on the hilarious: garments are missing because they are manufactured according to a “historic” record – if a child needs a preschool uniform in 2023, the following year he will have to buy a first grade one – and this year the calculation was not made correctly.
“There are no recipes” to make the school year successful, summarized Trujillo, who suggested a kind of personal formula: “in everything we implement, we must go from diagnosis to transformation and innovate incessantly,” because there will be multiple “limitations.”
But Cuban teaching does not depend only on uniforms: computers, indispensable for children to do their work according to the requirements of the Ministry, are missing in at least 65 schools in Avila, most of them rural primary schools. The data, provided by a local official, was answered with another slogan from Trujillo: “It is important to overcome the difficulties.”
The minister admitted a situation that has dozens of families complaining: the student meals, which are nothing more than rice and bread”
Another disturbing issue is the food for scholarship students, which is going through a critical moment. The minister admitted the situation that dozens of families have denounced: the kids “find at the time of the meal a tray with rice and bread, nothing else.”
Given these problems, Trujillo said, few want to dedicate themselves to careers linked to teaching. Only 67% of the planned students entered the Teaching program, and the managers are preparing for the classrooms to be decimated in the first months of the course. The center for higher studies is characterized, she said, by its “low retention” of students during the first year.
“Among the most affected specialties are Early Childhood, Special, Primary, Mathematics and Chemistry. Ciego de Ávila, Florencia and Ciro Redondo are the municipalities where fewer high school students opt for teaching,” she said.
In the midst of the shortcomings, Trujillo celebrated that they at least have textbooks. An “important” shipment of 29 titles – she did not say how many copies of each – are about to arrive in Cuba; she did not reveal which country had printed them. It was the only “good news” of the meeting, commented Invasor.
“There can’t be a single Avileño teacher who hasn’t received a knock on the door trying to convince him to return”
During the opening of the discussion, several leaders indicated to Trujillo their ideas and complaints about the beginning of the course. Alfredo Menéndez, governor of the province, said that the schools had to go out to “motivate” those who had abandoned teaching. “There can’t be a single Avila teacher who hasn’t received a knock on the door trying to convince them to return,” he said, without referring to the “unexecuted budget” that the minister attributed to her office.
On September 2, another school year begins, marked by shortages, the lack of materials and with few teachers, and the situation is expected to be even worse the following year. According to a report by the National Bureau of Statistics and Information, in the first half of 2024, the Island devoted 21% less of its budget to education, while it invested 112% more in the construction of hotels and restaurants. Despite the seriousness of the situation, the Ministry of Education has had no qualms about declaring on X that everything is “assured” for a return to the classrooms.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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