Source:
Argenpress
Juan Francisco Coloane
Thu Jun 15 2006
The Chilean student movement which shook the country during a month and now seems to be recessing is a local issue that has gained international attention. Among all the political reverberations caused by the student movement - mainly organized by the secondary school sector - the strong gravitation of the World Bank within the education reform process in Chile has been absent from debate.
The Chilean student movement of May and June 2006
The Chilean student movement which shook the country during a month and now seems to be recessing is a local issue that has gained international attention. Few news from Chile can be read in The New York Times other than those related to former General Pinochet. But this time it was the student movement – last week. To face a conflict that was threatening stability, a presidential advisory committee was set up aimed at improving the quality of education. Such committee is made up of 77 members and intends to represent a wide range of social actors.
It also includes students who will be represented in an inferior number to their expectations. For the first time, the presidential executive order incorporates leftist members excluded from the system of representation - something which has come as a blow to the Chilean Neo-Conservatism. However, the attempt to gather a broad group to openly discuss something which for many decades remained restricted to a motley group of ‘experts’ is significant and unique in 17 years of quite a conditioned democracy.
If the student movement was to be indicative of something it would be the fact that two decades of educational reform and structural adjustment in Chile are not working. The reason then to set up an ‘advisory committee’ is split into three possibilities: a) that the quality of education can be improved under the same failed structures; b) that the state power is only trying to reduce pressure on the conflict; and c) that it is simply creating a new atmosphere of expectations which will become then impossible to fulfill.
Among all the political reverberations caused by the student movement - mainly organized by the secondary school sector - the strong gravitation of the World Bank within the education reform process in Chile has been absent from debate. The government has taken full responsibility for the problem and it is still unknown whether this omission is due to diplomatic reasons, or to the fact that World Bank commitments are still in force.
Education has been the ‘Trojan Horse’ of the economic system, upon which the inequalities that are operative to the system are built. Frances Fox Piven of the City University of New York has been monitoring this issue with a group of researches since the 1970s, when the cutting edge ideologies that have consolidated the vulnerability of certain population sectors indeed sprang up. See ‘The education establishment’ series.
Global localizations
The Chilean educational model is the product of sectoral reform programs implemented on a global scale by the World Bank, which had to be undertaken by national economies. They are all part of the structural adjustment of the 1980s, which served to pull the economy out of the financial crisis of the 1970s. As it is well-known, the privatization of public services – being education a key aspect among them – forms part of the three-pillar adjustment, together with state deregulation and market opening.
The process of creation of the educational reform as a crucial aspect of the adjustment, starts during the military government and is implemented by means of a moderate key force: the privatization of education. The focal point is for the educational sector to operate in line with a profitability and gradual self-financing system, where in the case of education, the families, agents, students and teachers would be forming part of a business conglomerate which is education. The school then is the physical location and people are those engaged in production. Among them, students, who have to show the necessary skills to go on with their education.
The reform was launched in 1980 and continued during the 1990s. Both the technical and financial support of the Chilean educational reform which failed to solve bottom-line problems as it has been shown by the student movement and its political derivations, stemmed from a close technical and political association between the World Bank and concertation governments in Chile.
The gap between student protests and a report
The World Bank has invested considerably in improving the quality of education in Chile. From 1992, it has engaged in a 15-year US$170 million loan, for a program to improve the quality of education (MECE) (Government of Chile 1996). Recently, it has approved another US$60 million credit, for the improvement of tertiary education, universities and scientific research. It should be highlighted that of those US$170 million, an inferior amount was allocated to secondary education.
The World Bank has praised the global result of the Chilean educational reform and the performance of its main components, descentralization, financing, the full-time school day policy (JEC), the Organic Constitutional Law on Education (LOCE) and evaluation systems. “The result is one of the most innovative, cost-effective and comparatively equitable education systems in the developing world”. Such is the statement made by World Bank officer Francoise Delannoy in the conclusions of the report entitled “Education Reforms in Chile: A lesson in pragmatism”. (World Bank 2000).
As a conclusion she also states that: “most of the instruments of a modern education system -transparency, student assessment, a flexible curriculum, targeting, investment in quality inputs, attention to classroom processes, continuous professional development and school autonomy - are present in Chile’s system and have been present longer than in most other countries, including some OECD countries. And the system is still evolving”. Delannoy’s remarks are part of a detailed report resulting from an 18-month research carried out in Chile, where the author thanks Chilean professionals who played a key role in the education reform process for their collaboration. Some of them are also taking part in the ‘advisory committee’ that has been set up, including the committee’s chairman.
If the above-mentioned report - which is more than favorable to the situation of education in Chile spanning the period 1980 – 1998 - was taken to the letter, it would imply that from 1999 to date there has been a huge and accelerated deterioration.
Judging by the dimension and unanimous character of the collective demands of the Chilean society resulting from the student protests, there seems to be a serious gap between the report of the World Bank expert and reality. It is worth paying special attention to the wide gap between Delannoy’s “positive evaluation with recommendations for improvement” and the diagnostic of “educational disaster in Chile”, resulting from the political drive thus generated by the student movement. It is difficult to reach a half-way point and maybe student demands are just the tip of the iceberg of a deeper crisis, precisely there where the education system is inserted into.
By taking into account the positive aspects of Francoise Delannoy’s report, it seems impossible to forecast such a sharp setback in 5 or 6 years. And, in case of being so, steps should be taken not only by setting up an advisory committee but also by carrying out an audit of the program. To know ‘what happened’ sometimes indicates that which is needed in order to move forward.(1)
Ways-out of a blind alley
All this which is much more complex than the above-stated, was carried out under the sectoral reform programs of the World Bank, as part of the structural adjustment. So, when this student mobilization is referred to as a demand for radical changes to the education system, direct reference is being made to the foundations and significance of the structural adjustment, which has as focal point that which failed to work out for Chile: the privatization of education.
Several of the members appointed to the advisory committee have acted as a bridge to allow for the implementation of sectoral policies by the Bank in line with the above-mentioned structural adjustment. Independently of professionalism but depending on personalities, there has always been a kind of ‘promiscuity’ between local and international officers. A program works out when there is ‘chemistry between counterparts’. It is difficult to draw the line. At a time when Chile had to be cohesive with regards to its public policies, the privatization wave in the mid-1990s was hardly resisted and the Bank operated in an expeditious way.
Local officers have been, for all practical purposes, ‘co-authors’ with World Bank staff, of the core documents upon which the reform was gradually implemented during the period in which the full school day and the reform as a ‘rolling plan’ were launched. Its undebatable focal point is the privatization of education.
It is even less understandable then that upon the extreme deterioration evidenced by the student movement, neither the experts of the Education Ministry nor the Bank’s missions managed to forecast the extent of the phenomenon .
At this stage, after more than 20 years of structural adjustment, the Chilean state cannot change the way things have been done in order to make a descentralized education geared towards increased privatization to be financed and run again by the state. In this sense, the expressions of Chilean neo-conservatives are more realistic. It is highly likely that student’s demands aimed at improved quality and less privatization will not manage to change the course of history: i.e. to derogate the organic constitutional law on education that maintains the status quo on education as part of an economic link rather than as a social function.
Taking into account that the system of political representation prevailing in Chile is not ready to undergo structural changes, and according to Francoise Delannoy’s report, the privatization of the Chilean educational system seems to be irreversible and furthermore, it should reach total forms of privatization and descentralization.
Note:
(1) I emphasize the fact that I have referred to an strict professional worker, from opinions formed when I was working as UNICEF planning officer, during the period when the report was being drawn up. I would like to point out that I am not part of any anti-World Bank group. On the contrary, its reports are an example of professionalism and meticulousness. I very much appreciate the innovative contributions in terms of poverty reduction programs in some parts of India, which anticipated the public policies of many developing countries. All this before the World Bank went into a privatization frenzy in the 1980s, as the ‘armed’ wing of structural adjustment. Such structural adjustment and its impact on social policies has been thoroughly analyzed by Andrea Cornia, Richard Jolly, and others in UNICEF papers. In Argentina, Eduardo Bustelo has made an important contribution.
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