Challenges facing Cuban Education in times of pandemic

HAVANA, Cuba, Apr 26 (ACN) Following a third outbreak of COVID-19 in Cuba, the Ministry of Education (MINED) is implementing alternatives to preserve the vitality of the current school year despite the interruption of face-to-face classroom activity.

Learning TV channels were opened for students in provinces and cities showing a rise in the number of cases in order to maintain the continuity of an educational program that had not started in unison at national level.

MINED deputy minister Eugenio González remarked that distance learning is based on thorough plans put together by specialists to define objectives and contents—by subject, grade and level—deemed essential to the students’ education. The resulting syllabus is intended to mitigate the effects on Cuban students of the school shutdown due to the pandemic.

According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), before COVID-19, the number of children in the world lacking basic reading skills was decreasing, even if it rose from 483 million at the beginning of 2020 to 584 million today.

UNESCO also warned that learning will be much more affected in Latin America, the Caribbean and Central and South Asia. One year into the pandemic, Latin America and Caribbean students have missed on average 158 days of classes.

Moreover, according to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), because of the extended time away from school, over three million students are likely to drop out of school in Latin America and the Caribbean alone.

Cuba, with a free education system and government willingness to improve it, faces COVID-19 with a certain advantage over the countries in the area, but the situation is not without challenges. MINED stresses that, once our teachers resume their work at school, they will have to make individual diagnoses of their students and organize reviews of their subjects, and insists that no student will repeat a year for failure to master the relevant contents of their courses.

First Deputy Minister of Education Cira Piñeiro Alonso told the press that, if need be and taking into account the COVID-19 situation, the school period will be extended.

Owing to the uncertainty of the epidemiological situation, MINED has not yet designed the way to evaluate each subject, grade and level, but its leaders reiterate that this information will be made known in due time.

For the time being, and until July 2, learning television will continue in Cuba at a time when distance education needs the parents’ contribution so that their children maintain their link with the teaching process.