Repetition: Politicians Debate, Specialists Give Their Opinions, and Do Children Learn?

The repetition controversy returned to the public eye after it became known that the Education Council of the Province of Buenos Aires could discuss updating the secondary system. Against this, politics did not take long to express its vision on a problem that “must be addressed from many points”according to specialists.

After the information about the project began to circulate, the general director of Culture and Education in Buenos Aires, Alberto Sileoni, explained some points of the initiative and ruled out trying to completely eliminate repetition.

“Everyone agrees that repeating what you have already passed does not give any academic results and does not improve the quality of education”, he said in a dialogue with i am 750but he clarified that “it is not an invitation to ease.”

The project seeks to combat school dropout; For this reason, it aims to ensure that high school students do not repeat a year and take subjects that they have already passed. The idea is that they can promote with some indebted subjects and manage to pass them next year. In addition, he assured that it will not be a change that begins to be implemented this year, since they take the modification “very seriously.”

Perzyck’s support and “populism”, according to Together for Change

The initiative had the support of the Minister of Education of the Nation, Jaime Percykz, who recognized that the problem is school desertion and admitted that “Children don’t learn everything they have to learn”.

In a dialogue with urban playThe head of the educational portfolio assured: “We have to achieve a school that everyone goes to, that is more demanding, but that everyone learns and finds their life project there.”. In addition, he said that it is an initiative that has already been applied in Chile; even the province of Santa Fe already implemented it

The reaction of the opposition was totally different. The provincial deputy for Together for Change and former Buenos Aires Vice Minister of Education, Sergio Siciliano, thought that “repetition is the symptom of a larger problem that has to do with teachingformats, content, meaning and skills”.

“This look at secondary school lowers the value of the demand and teaching with arguments of inclusion and containment,” he said.

In this sense, the Buenos Aires opposition legislators issued a statement in which they they referred to this project as “populism” and considered it “enemy of education”.

Repetition, “a real and deep problem”

PROFILE spoke with Clara Bonfill, director of Innovative Teaching at the University of Belgrano. In this regard, the specialist referred to the issue of repetition as “a real problem, not invented”.

“The fact that the boys repeat is because they did not reach learning, so, it is expected that they will do it the next year, but it does not always happen”, he assured about the current education system and added that “there must be a whole scaffolding from the school so that this repetition achieves its objective”.

Bonfill also referred to repetition as a “Deep problem that needs to be worked on”. Thus, he emphasized that the important thing is to change the evaluation system.

“Good teaching has evaluation as a fundamental part”, he maintained and observed that it is a constant monitoring of the instance in which the student is at each moment of learning.

They would reduce repetition in Buenos Aires secondary schools: they will debate the modification of the educational system

In addition, he added that the problem of repetition has many factors, it is not only linked to the pedagogical, but also to nutrition, emotional aspect, health, family situation. Although he recognized that “it is not bad to rethink the evaluation processes” and that teaching “must be updated”, he said that “a single change in the system is not a guarantee”.

Sileoni said that Education works with secondary teachers to advance on the update, but Bochill also consulted the universities that receive secondary students, while highlighting the need to address the problem from its “multiple causes.”

“Students arrive with attention and learning problems and lack knowledge of minimum essential content; above all, in mathematics and in transversal processes to the subjects such as analysis, synthesis and writing”, evidences the director of Innovative Teaching.

In this way, Bochill contributed that any decision must be accompanied with teacher training and stressed that “It is necessary to see if in the repetition there are no other types of issues besides the pedagogical ones”.

ROC PC