According to Martin Fuentes, coordinator of the National Human Development Report of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) on the Isthmus, the results of the virtual classes in two years of confinement due to Covid-19 were not those expected: the pedagogical delay is greater than that country had before the pandemic.
Among the reasons for this reality, the expert pointed to the country’s significant gap in access to computers and the Internet.
Fuentes revealed that in the last six months of 2021, the percentage of use of laptops, laptops and tablets was very low, because if it barely reached 50 percent in the provinces of Panama and West Panama, in the rest of the demarcations and counties it was indigenous people not even exceed 10 percent.
He also saw advances in internet access through the purchase of data, but this made it difficult to be a permanent offering that the entire population could access.
The arguments of the UNDP expert confirm a study by the Educational Research Center of Panama (Ciedu), which says that in 2020 at least seven out of ten students in official schools did not have a computer at home, and four out of ten he had no internet too have home.
For its part, statistics from the Ministry of Education show that in 2020 about 10,643 students were not connected to the system; that is, 1.4 percent of the student population.
The situation arose despite the fact that the institution launched the Ester platform and internet and mobile data plan that would benefit public sector students and teachers for free through the use of the social network WhatsApp and access to technological platforms , among other.
Andrés Millares, a member of the organization Jovenes Unidos por la Educación, explained in a forum on the subject held in Panama last week that of the 60 percent of children and young people who used mobile phones for study, 51 percent had to share the device.
He also stressed that all the problems education has been warned about are occurring in the country, including a growing dropout rate as one in five students is absent from classes at home due to economic problems.
At this meeting, the coordinator of the Multisectoral Permanent Council for the Implementation of the National Commitment to Education, Anayka de La Espada, called for the reduction of early school leaving and the technological divide in order not to lose the way to quality, inclusive and equitable education.
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