On Wednesday, September 25, the Minister of Education, Daniel Rojas, made an announcement at the opening conference of the XI Leaders for Education Summit (CLE), which is taking place at the EAN University in Bogotá.
Earlier, the senior government official referred to the challenges of education in the country and the deep inequality that continues to be recorded in the country. For this reason, he said that it is important to know history in order to change the realities that the current government seeks to adjust.
“To change history, we must first recognize what the reality of Colombia is and what reality we would like to change,” said the Minister of Education.
Rojas spoke of the inequality of education in the country, which reflects the inequality of citizens themselves. For example, he mentioned that, in Colombia, for every 100 dollars of wealth that is created, 45% of that money ends up in the hands of 1% of the country.
The Minister of Education spoke of transforming the reality of the country through a “social pact through social revolutions.” “Education in this sense begins to play a fundamental role, in colloquial, monarchical schemes. Social mobilization was null in terms of rights or social possibilities, it was determined by the tyranny of the cradle,” he said.
He also said that in developed countries public universities are not for “poor people.” And that “in Colombia, an educational apartheid scheme is maintained. The children of the rich study and attend schools for the rich,” said the Minister of Education.
“We have decided to make a budgetary leap in the education sector. The average of OECD countries invests 5.1% of GDP in education, Colombia reaches 3.9% in 2022 and we have reached 4.5 in 2024. We wanted to get closer to the average of OECD countries, this implies a budgetary leap from 47 billion in 2022 to 71 billion in 2024. We still have a lot to do.”
Rojas acknowledged that, in terms of higher education, Colombia is still far from the average of OECD countries, which have an investment of 1% of GDP in higher education, while Colombia reaches 0.4%.
Rojas mentioned the draft law for a national agreement on higher education, in which they seek to ensure that various political forces can achieve 1% of public investment as a percentage of GDP in higher education within a 15-year period. And that this is the aim of this government to transform education and change the history of Colombia that the minister mentioned.
“We believe that institutions, beyond being infrastructures made of concrete and wood, where a desk is placed and a teacher is hired to give a lecture, should be environments that allow discussion, ideas; environments of peace, of life, of transformation, of community; the school should be that place where the family is found, where there is a communion between the teacher and the citizenry. In many municipalities in Colombia the State only comes with the police and the teacher, and the church with the priest, these are the three institutions of the most remote municipalities in the country.”
He also said that the National Development Plan set a goal for 500,000 students to attend public higher education. “It is about revolutionizing change, it is about accelerating change,” Rojas said.
