Ricardo Braginski
11/02/2020 22:02
Clarín.com
Society
Updated 11/02/2020 22:02
Surprised.
This is how they say they are in the Buenos Aires Government due to the controversy that arose these days with the start date of the 2021 school year. It is that for weeks in the offices of the Buenos Aires Ministry of Education the school calendar for next year has already been set.
The start date is already marked:
mid-February
.
Also the decision that
the beginning of the cycle be
in person
,
to the extent that it follows the epidemiological reality.
What was known this weekend was nothing more than the precise date of the beginning of the school calendar: it will be
Wednesday, February 17
, after the long weekend of Carnival.
But the announcement of the date unleashed a
new counterpoint between City and Nation
.
The national education minister Nicolás Trotta came out to question the Buenos Aires authorities for having installed the issue in the media
two days before the Federal Council of Education meets
to deal precisely with the issue of the school calendar.
“
They think more about titles than about consensus.
What is the will to advance a meaningless discussion?
There is a more communicational than educational will, it
is marketing
”, Trotta told
Clarín
.
From the City they insist that they are surprised by Trotta's statements and affirm that
this issue was discussed last week
between the Buenos Aires minister Soledad Acuña and Trotta himself.
“Our idea is to
recover as much as possible next year from this
particular
year
as 2020 was. Furthermore, we do not know what may happen in April or May, if there may be outbreaks and the need to close.
We want to make the most of the time that classes can be given in person, always with all the protocols, ”said a source from the Buenos Aires government.
For Trotta, on the other hand, the most important thing is that
there is consensus from all the provinces
in the approach to the 2021 school year. He stated that there is still no set date.
"Some provinces want to start on March 1, others on 10. We have to agree on it," he told this newspaper.
“I don't understand what the business of differentiating from the Province is.
Ultimately, they must be articulated because
General Paz separates them.
Furthermore, this creates uncertainty for parents in other provinces, ”says the national education minister.
But the truth is that beyond the fact that ministers from around the country meet on Wednesday to debate the issue of the 2021 school calendar, each jurisdiction has the power to move forward according to what it considers most appropriate.
And the City has already decided that it will start on February 17.
The “plan A” that the Buenos Aires government manages is that all students (of all levels) return from their holidays to
attend in person,
as happens in most European countries.
Only in the event that the epidemiological situation is complicated, will we go to "plan B": a mixed scheme, combining virtual with face-to-face.
In January, in addition, there will be
“summer school” in the City
so that the students who did not achieve the objectives can recover content, who -as of February- will
also have to attend on Saturdays.
Teachers will rate them on the basis of three scales: "Advanced" (A), "Sufficient" (S) and "In process".
And they must recover those who remain "In process."
Those notes will be released in December.
The 2021 school year will
end on Friday, December 17
in the City.
Winter break will be in the last two weeks of July.
The Buenos Aires authorities took the account and say that, if this calendar is met and there are no problems due to the pandemic, it will reach 196 days of classes, well above the 180 that the law establishes as a minimum.
From the City it says that, with the 2021 calendar, they respect the two obligations they have.
The first, that
teachers have 30 working days of vacation
: the last day of work will be on December 18 and they would rejoin on February 8, so as to have a week for planning.
And the second the
180 days of classes
.
"By complying with this, each jurisdiction can start when it deems it most appropriate," they insist.