High- Quality Education

So far, I have been exposed to an international school called Fe y Alegria that has students from middle-lower SES backgrounds. This school is similar to what can be considered a charter school in the United States because it is publicly funded and has private administrators. I haven’t started working there, but from the tour and talking with the teachers, I could tell that it was a good school in terms of the resources, quality teachers, and variety of extracurricular such as sewing, gym, and art. These three things are related to what makes a high- quality education but are just the “surface” factors. A high-quality education involves much more and is even debatable on what is involved. In Peru, there is a debate on whether the public or private schools are of higher quality, or whether private or public schools is where students will receive the best education and have higher test scores. The initial thought was that private schools are all around better than public schools, but as later research has shown, like stated in Balarin’s article “Default Privatization of Peruvian Schools” that conclusion is not true all the time. The important things to look at are people’s socioeconomic status and the socioeconomic status of the schools. The fact that Fe y Alegria is a fairly good public school is contrary to the belief that private schools are always better than public schools. The teachers at this school seemed to really care about their students and want the best for them. Having teachers show that they care is an important factor in deciding if a school is providing high-quality education in this context of middle-lower SES areas. This is a factor because one of the reasons that Balarin states about why public schools have the reputation of not being high-quality is because the teachers are not reliable because they may go on strike a lot, for example. The reason behind this is because public school teachers are some of the lowest paid in the region. These teachers have to work two jobs sometimes- teach at a school in the morning and early afternoon, and then teach at a school in late afternoon- the evening. When one is not being paid enough for all the work that is being put in, then it is hard for people to want to become teachers in that work environment. This is seen in the United States as well.

Having teachers that actually care and actually love teaching is just one factor that contributes to what makes a high- quality education. Different schools also may have different perspectives on what constitutes as a high-quality education. For example, Colegio Roosevelt is a grade A international school, so it is the best of the best, and it serves the elite in Peru. This school is privately funded, so it supports the idea that people from higher SES backgrounds tend to go to the private schools. The focus in this school is to be able to positively and effectively participate in the social world outside of school. The whole idea is being able to learn skills in school, such as collaboration, creativity, communication, inquiry, etc. that can then be applied to the students’ ability to function well in society. This school has top of the art resources and emphasizes these “life skills,” but these life skills aren’t only able to be taught in top schools. These life skills can potentially be taught in any school, as long as the school is creative and proactive in doing so. Because the focus of high- quality education is not just on the resources, but instead possibly on the content being taught and the skills being learned, then perhaps the strong divide between private and public schools could be weakened in Peru. The fact that there can be many different opinions on what constitutes as a high-quality education might be related to the debate between private and public schools. If some people believe that one can only get a high- quality education from private schools, then that is where parents will send their children. Public vs. private is a very complicated issue, not just in Peru, but also in other countries like the U.S. A solution to this problem won’t come easily, but a step in the right direction would be to make sure everyone is informed about the different schools around them, and for maybe the focus of all schools to revolve around more life skills instead of just core subjects like science, math, language arts, and social studies.