Cuba began the 2024-2025 school year this Monday (2) once again plunged into a serious educational crisis, which has highlighted the difficulties faced by the communist country.
According to information from the independent portal Cubanetthe return to classes, which should involve around 1.6 million students, is being marked, once again, by a shortage of teachers and insufficient school uniforms, in addition to other structural challenges.
At the beginning of the previous school year, the deficit of teachers in Cuba was 17,278; this year, according to information from the Minister of Education of the communist island, Naima Ariatne Trujillo Barreto, the deficit will be 24,000 professionals. In Havana, according to the Cubanetthe shortage of teachers could affect more than 269,000 students in 1,213 educational centers. In the capital, there is a shortage of around 426 teachers to try to deal with the high number of students.
“The greatest complexity [de falta de professores] is in basic secondary schools and in Vocational Pre-university Institutes of Exact Sciences (IPVCE)”, said Trujillo Barreto to the state portal September 5th, adding that, “the most affected territories are Havana, Artemisa, Mayabeque, Matanzas, Sancti Spíritus, Ciego de Ávila and Camagüey”, which, according to her, “have their challenges for this school year”.
Among the factors for the shortage of teachers are low pay, the lack of attractiveness of the teaching career for young people and the strong emigration that the country faces.
According to information from the portal Cuban Diarythe lack of teachers has forced the regime to adopt “palliative” measures, such as hiring students who are still in pedagogical training. There is also an overload of professionals who still work in the education system, as they often have to take on extra classes. These strategies, however, have created knowledge gaps that negatively affect students’ performance in higher education entrance exams.
Um Cuban state vehicle reported that the Cuban Ministry of Education is still discussing alternatives that involve reinserting a thousand teachers who were “retired” into the job market in an attempt to make up for the deficit and minimize the impact of the lack of teachers upon the return to classes. The strategy, however, would not solve the problem in the long term.
Last year, Trujillo Barreto blamed US sanctions against the Cuban regime, which persecutes and tortures opponents, for the shortage of teachers the island is facing.
Missing uniforms and materials
The start of the Cuban school year will also be hampered by a shortage of uniforms and school supplies. While demand for uniforms has reached more than 2 million units, the Education Minister acknowledged that “tensions” in distribution due to “organizational failures” and the “purchase of imported fabrics” may prevent the regime from meeting the total demand. School supplies, which are provided “free of charge,” will also be subject to strict distribution controls and will probably not reach all students.
The education crisis in Cuba reflects a broader picture of the difficulties the island is currently experiencing. The communist regime under Miguel Díaz-Canel is facing its worst crisis since the collapse of the Soviet Union, with food and energy shortages and growing popular discontent that culminated in mass protests in March of this year.
Education, which for decades was promoted by the Cuban regime as one of its great “successes”, has shown increasingly clear signs of deterioration, highlighting the structural problems of a system that can no longer sustain its own promises.
According to the Cuban Diaryin addition to internal challenges, Cuba will also face an international assessment with the arrival of the Regional Comparative and Explanatory Study (ERCE), promoted by UNESCO, which will evaluate the teaching models of 16 countries. The portal states that, in the last edition of the study, carried out in 2019, the results showed that Cuban students had difficulties with spelling and needed to improve aspects related to reading texts.
#Cuba #school #marked #teacher #shortage
