Chilean Students Back to the Streets

In Chile this week, hundreds of high school and university students protested a new education reform bill in Congress that they say prioritizes profits at the expense of education. Demonstrators shut down a number of high schools, and earlier this month protesting students at four universities went on strike.

This week's actions and earlier street demonstrations follow years of student opposition to the country's education system, that boiled over in 2006. Then high school students took to the streets shutting down schools for more than a month, in the so-called penguin revolution, in reference to their uniforms.



The movement forced the ousting of the minister of education and the installment last year of a Presidential commission. The commission made up of educators, education administrators, school operators and students tabled a report that was the framework for the new education legislation.

In committee discussions students demanded clauses that allowed for profit making from public funds in the education system be removed, but it was rejected by most committee members.

Students say the basic principle of profiteering by private operators in education remains in the new legislation.

Profit was introduced to the education system during the military dictatorship as part of introducing market forces to the public sector. The dictatorship also dropped schools into the laps of unprepared municipal governments telling them to compete for students with individuals that opened new schools.

Students are demanding that the new bill be withdrawn and redrafted with the profit provision removed.

David Mora, Vice President of the Catholic University of Valparaíso Students' Union, says "we are mobilized because the Presidential commission that prepared the education bill did not remove from the proposed legislation the issue of profit making with public funds earmarked for public education, as we demanded it in the Commission."

"The government has failed to reject the concept of profiteering with public funds we want them to do so that is our position. That is why we oppose the new legislation."

Another major demand is public funding to public universities that now only receive limited and unequal funding between universities. Many public institutions are in financial peril.

Chile's education system is made up of three segments, public schools, private schools that receive public funds and truly private schools.

The conflict is in private schools that receive public funds operated by individuals who are more concerned with making money than providing education.

Also students demand that public schools be run by the government. Students charge municipalities do not have the capacity to operate schools.

High school student leader Matías Ponce says the new education legislation must be withdrawn. "It is extremely important the President let us know what she thinks because during the state of the nation speech she did not do so."

"She failed to discuss the flawed bill that is being debated in Congress, a bill we want withdrawn," Ponce adds.

But the center-left government does not appear moved by the students' mobilizations.

Administration spokesperson Minister Francisco Vidal says the bill is in Congress, now it is up to elected officials to debate it.

Vidal says decision lies with the people's representatives not with school assemblies. "Students' are calling for the end of profit and their rejection of the new education bill; Chilean society has to make a decision on where public policies are debated."

Vidal says "in a democracy they are decided in Congress another option is they be debated in a student assembly. Chile's decision was to listen to all stakeholders, but the place to make decisions is Congress."

The government wants the bill approved, because there is an agreement with the right-wing opposition to approve the legislation as drafted that includes the controversial profit concept.

Meanwhile students will continue to demonstrate against the bill.