School year began with 4.7 million children outside the system

Eric Ondarroa, general secretary of the social and political movement Alianza del Lápiz, revealed the harsh reality of Venezuelan school enrollment. With figures in hand, he specified that the great achievement of the recently dismissed Minister of Education, Yelitze Santaella, was to leave 6.2 million children and adolescents without learning.

“Minister (Yelitze) Santaella became the minister of the thousands: Of the thousands of teachers whom she humiliated and offended by calling them materialists; of the thousands of Venezuelan children who did not learn. The thousands of educational units that do not have a school feeding plan,” said the opposition spokesperson when taking stock of the year of the aforementioned ministerial management, according to a press release.

Who follows the national educational issue stated that between both heads of the red portfolio: Santaella and Héctor Rodríguez, current minister; There are discordant figures regarding school enrollment.

He cited that while Santaella referred, in September 2023, eight million children starting classes; in 2024, Rodríguez first spoke of five million and -15 days later- of five and a half million. “Santaella, in the last school year, expelled 1.7 million Venezuelan children from the educational system (…) Was the outgoing minister making up the figure or is the incoming minister telling the truth?” he questioned.

Ondarroa, being even more detailed, broke down what national figures show 11 million children and young people of school age. Due to the aforementioned figures, it revealed that between 4.2 to 4.7 million children are outside the Venezuelan educational system.

The Alianza del Lápiz spokesperson also criticized Héctor Rodríguez for attributing the educational crisis to the consequences of covid, the blockade and the sanctions. In Ondarroa’s opinion, what threatens education in Venezuela is that the management of the PSUV: » Teachers with poverty and hunger salaries; Non-existent school feeding plan; Mosaic schedule.

Proposal for the Pencil Alliance to evaluate the real abilities of students

Recalling that in October 2005, Venezuela was declared a territory free of illiteracy, Ondarroa refuted that the situation of Venezuelan education, today collapsed, is far from that scenario.

To stop the crisis, in the name of Lápiz, Ondarroa proposed a basic national test in which the real abilities of students in language and mathematics are evaluated.

“Let’s find out if our boys today, who are starting the school year, have the ability to read, to write, to develop critical thinking, to develop basic mathematics and calculation operations,” he emphasized.