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Minister of Education,
Astrid Fischel Volio |
| Courtesy Ministry of Education |
Former Vice-President and current Minister of Education
Astrid Fischel, has ambitious plans for her term.
She bases her plans on a deep and profound knowledge
of Costa Rica. Fischel’s PhD thesis touched
on one of the most interesting aspects of Costa
Rican history –the abolition of its army over
fifty years ago and its impact upon education. This
is one of the most famous aspects of Costa Rica.
Minister Fischel explains that, “Even if the
military never played a major roll in Costa Rica,
it nevertheless had a budget and a significant budget.
To abolish the army was very important for Costa Rica’s
future, because not only were the resources re-allocated
to education, but also to the social sector.”
This important landmark in its history has allowed
Costa Rica to have an average of 17% to 20% of GDP
invested in the social sector, and the share for education
has been a little over 6.5% of GDP each year.
With an illiteracy rate of 4.8%, Costa Rica rates
better than the US. The Minister is aiming to achieve
as low as a three percent rate by the end of her term.
Costa Rica has 64% coverage in formal secondary education
but, if informal education is included, the coverage
is 83%.
Costa Rica has maintained an educational priority
for a long time. Education begins for children between
four to five years of age. However, it is not only
the quantity that the Ministry is attempting to increase,
but also the quality.
To accomplish this it is important for the new government,
and the Ministry, to open up the system to enable
all children to participate in education. Most of
this effort will go towards children who are below
the poverty line or those who have special needs:
people with disabilities, older people, those who
need the support of special programs, and those who
have recently left the educational system for one
reason or another.
Transportation issues have to be addressed. In Costa
Rica 43% of all primary schools have only one teacher,
and often they are in such rural areas –sometimes
hours away. The Ministry is working on this together
with both the World Bank and the Inter-American Development
Bank (IDB). Collectively they are working on technical
missions to develop programs where one-teacher schools
have technological packages, through which they are
connected to Internet and can learn foreign languages,
social studies, math, and science.
Minister Fischel is pleased with the international
interest Costa Rica has received: “This really
excites me because they are looking at Costa Rica
as a country that may be like a lab for other countries
which have the same challenges.”
The second aspect has to do with the program of re-engineering
values in Costa Rica. This refers to: responsibility,
respect and solidarity –the creation and promotion
of a good neighbor spirit—and to transparency,
ethics, efficiency and efficacy. How this is going
to be applied is by promoting the integral training
of students: their mind in terms of learning and knowledge,
and also their heart in terms of values.
The Minister will be personally responsible for this
program, and the overall strategy will be to stress
the practical use of values. This means educating
fifteen-year olds about what it means to have respect
for him or herself. For example, not taking drugs,
being careful not to have an early pregnancy, realizing
their potential, and respecting, not only themselves,
but other people and the natural environment.
Increased opportunities are being presented in music,
art and physical education. During her first five
months, the Minister has made ten tours, visited over
120 schools. “I talked directly to them about
sports, arts, self respect and responsibility,”
said Fischel, “and it is very impressive to see
how they react. It is almost as if they are really
waiting for someone to tell them how much is in their
hands. My job is to tell them that they have the possibility
to decide, and that they have choices.”
The third aspect has to do with closing the gap between
the production sector and the education sector. Meetings
with businessmen and women have been conducted to
analyze the gaps between the education system and
the expectations of the production sector.
Being so closely involved with the US, there is a
great emphasis on English language skills. “We
are going to stress English as a second language,”
promises the Minister. “My idea is to lay the
foundations for a bilingual society in Costa Rica
and we are going strong on that.”
Information technology and mathematics are another
important emphasis. “Math seems like an instrument
to promote logical thinking and this is another issue
in which the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
(MIT) is willing to support us,” reveals the
Minister, saying, “I am going to MIT soon, but
two people from there will be coming to Costa Rica,
too. We in Costa Rica want to understand what developed
countries are doing in math and how we can adopt new
strategies and methodologies.”
There is a clear emphasis on technical careers, and
the Minister believes that the country is in need
of more technical majors. Therefore, it is working
not only on strengthening technical schools but also
on having stronger links between tech schools, colleges
and universities. The aim is to enable a student,
once he finishes technical school, to go directly
to university without passing an exam.
Even if the emphasis is going to focus heavily
on technical schools, more specialized schools will
also be established in the fields of tourism, maritime
studies, nature and ecology studies.
The fourth aspect is the modernization of the Ministry
of Education. At present about 65,000 people work
for the Ministry. This is about 47% of the total government
personnel. Having an executive background, based on
her private sector experience, the Minister has already
started the decentralization of the Ministry. The
number of employees will not go down, as most of the
workers, approximately 60,000 or more, are teachers.
The number is in fact going to increase, in order
to provide better and more efficient services in English
and information systems for almost one million students. |
