Can a grant program fix the shortage of teachers in Uruguay?
Teachers play a vital role in developing the skills of children and adolescents. Good teachers can adapt their teaching methods to all skill levels and across any circumstance or context. But many factors must come together to have trained teachers, such as recruiting good candidates, training them, encouraging their efforts, and retaining them in their teacher programs.
Although qualification levels have risen in Uruguay over the last few years, the number of qualified teachers is still not enough to cover the needs of secondary education (based on the report on the status of education in Uruguay 2015-2016, National Institute of EducationEvaluation). About 30% of teaching positions in public secondary schools remain vacant or are taken by candidates without any specific training or basic education degrees. Public primary education boasts a rate of qualified teachers of 100%, but given the annual rate of graduates from teacher programs, yearly staff replacement rates needed to offset retirements, and creating new positions could result in a deficit of teachers in the medium term.
In order to attract more and better candidates for teacher training and promote their continuing development and graduation, the Education Training Council (CFE in Spanish), responsible for training education professionals, has set up a grant program to provide financial support to teacher program students and faculty members. These initiatives are take shape in the Julio Castro scholarships and Faculty grants. The Julio Castro scholarships, funded by the Ministry of Education and Culture, benefit 1st and 2nd year teaching students of the various teacher training institutes. Faculty grants benefit students of 1st through 4th year of teaching courses, social educators, and technical teachers, and are managed and financed by the CFE. Both types of recipients currently receive eight monthly grants of two PCBs (Benefit and Contribution Basis, an index used as a substitute for the national minimum wage to calculate taxation, income and social benefits) equivalent to $2,000 per year.
The criteria for awarding these scholarships and grants, in either form, are the socio-economic conditions and academic performance of applicants. Thus, we seek to prioritize high-performing candidates facing economic constraints to pursue their studies. Young candidates who apply for the grant in the first year must submit their high school GPA certificate. Previous performance is considered in case of students who have already completed studies in CFE centers. For Julio Castro scholarships, candidates are interviewed in order to determine their vocation for education. To avoid dropout, the annual renewal of scholarships and grants is subject to passing 70% (60% for first-year students) of the subjects of previous years and enrollment in at least 70% of the subjects in the following year.
Given the interest in determining the effects of the scholarship and grant system, the CFE, through its Computer Science and Statistics Division, participated in the1st International Call for proposals on impact assessment promoted by CAF in 2017. This project was selected to receive support from CAF to design and implement an assessment plan in order to determine the impact of the grant program on enrollment rates, graduation rates and academic performance of students.
CAF expects to draw important lessons from the results of this assessment, which can be used as a management tool and contribute to efforts by the CFE and the Ministry of Education and Culture to improve the education system in Uruguay.
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