How is the education we dream of for Chile? was the first question of the Emblematic Meeting “Let’s talk about Technical Professional Education (TP) for Chile” that took place on Tuesday, December 1. This is the third meeting convened by Acción Colectiva por la Educación, within the framework of the process “Tenemos que Hablar de Educación” which, based on the objective of “Tenemos que hablar de Chile”, aims to promote the common construction of a roadmap for the country.
In this meeting, moderated by the executive director of ONG Canales, Eduardo Carmona, participated María Paola Sevilla, academician of the faculty of education of the Universidad Alberto Hurtado; Lorena Angulo, director of the Liceo People Help People of Panguipulli; Carlos Sepúlveda, coordinator of the electronics specialty at the Liceo Pablo Neruda of Arica; Carolina García, director of the Agenda de Capital Humano of the Confederation of Production and Commerce (CPC); and José Gutiérrez, director of education at the Luksic Foundation, an organization that, in line with its Formation area and its special focus on TP Education, collaborates with the process of “Tenemos que Hablar de Educación” (We Need to Talk about Education).
José Gutiérrez stated that one of the challenges that TP education faces in the future is to be liberating. “In technical-professional education there is a concentration of students who have less freedom, and for that we need to trust the school teams because they are the ones who know best what their needs and opportunities for improvement are,” he said. In this sense, he recalled that the Luksic Foundation has open until December 29 the Fund for Educational Initiatives FIE 2021, which seeks to finance projects that aim to strengthen the access of students to higher education and that are born from the school communities themselves, thus valuing their own diagnoses.
For her part, the principal of the Liceo People Help People de Panguipulli -who also represents a network of 12 professional technical high schools in Chile coordinated by the Luksic Foundation- said that “professional technical education should be a space for social mobility, a space for collective creation that is capable of generating real opportunities for young people and families”.
Paola Sevilla agreed with Lorena Angulo regarding the importance of mobility and argued that the evidence shows that TP students see their options reduced compared to students with scientific humanistic training with respect to entry into higher education. “Therefore, it is very important to strengthen it to reduce inequalities,” he said. Carlos Sepúlveda, a teacher from Arica, also highlighted this characteristic and commented on the need to “strengthen relations with the productive sector, mobilize communities and learn in real contexts”.
Carolina García of the CPC stated that education “must be part of a well-articulated, integral system that incorporates the most relevant actors in the improvement processes. It is key that it has a permanent innovation focus, so that those of us who are pushing for different actions keep us mobilized for a common objective”.
Check here the dialogue on technical-professional education.