Countries of the World/COUNTRYS.BIN/dp/0383/03837.txt

Text File | 1991-06-25 | 41KB | 659 lines

$Unique_ID{COW03837}
$Pretitle{297}
$Title{Uruguay
Chapter 8B.   The School System}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{The Director Foreign Area Studies}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{university
school
secondary
schools
percent
education
primary
students
general
years}
$Date{1971}
$Log{}
Country:     Uruguay
Book:        Area Handbook for Uruguay
Author:      The Director Foreign Area Studies
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1971

Chapter 8B.   The School System

Preprimary and Primary Schools

     Preprimary education is not mandatory, but in 1966 there was a preprimary
school population of 22,267 children, over 41 percent of all children between
the ages of three and five years. Public and private enrollments and numbers
of boys and girls were both approximately equal. The total enrolled was nearly
40 percent higher than in 1958. Most of the establishments were in Montevideo
and offered up to three years of preschooling to children between the ages of
three and six. The teachers had attended the same normal schools that prepared
teachers for the regular primary school system. Special kindergartens for
children of working mothers, some of them functioning as day boarding schools,
are maintained by the Children's Council, a public agency established in 1933
(see ch. 7. Living Conditions).

     Primary enrollment of all kinds increased from about 320,000 in 1960 to
381,000 in 1967 and to a preliminary estimate of 400,000 in 1968. The 1968
figure represented 78.6 percent of the children five to fourteen years old.
Other data indicate that in 1965 almost exactly 80 percent of the primary
students were in public schools.

     In general, the primary school system showed considerable progress during
the 1960s. The average annual increase in enrollment of 2.9 percent was far
higher than the 1.3-percent average annual demographic growth, and in 1966
some 94.5 percent of all children between the ages of five and fourteen either
were in primary school, had graduated from primary school, or had received
some education.

     Under the law, children are required to complete primary school, except
that in rural areas, where complete primary school facilities are frequently
not available, withdrawal from school at the age of ten is permitted. The
Constitution of 1967 enunciates also the principle of compulsory education at
the secondary level; this, however, had yet to be implemented in early 1970,
and the shortage of school classrooms made it appear unlikely that early
implementation could be expected. A compromise solution under consideration in
the late 1960s was extension of compulsory schooling to nine years.

     Primary textbooks are prepared by private authors and published
commercially. Teachers of lower grades, particularly the first grade,
informally prepare textual material related to their particular needs and the
studies followed during the year. There are no rigid governmental regulations
concerning the preparation or content of primary texts. The National Council
of Primary and Normal Instruction, however, furnishes guidance to the
authors, is responsible for editing the texts, and fixes the sales prices of
the books, which are furnished without cost to the students. For several years
the primary schools have made extensive use of a comprehensive text for each
grade; in other words, a single book includes all of the subjects of study.
Beginning in 1963 school authorities distributed relatively more generous
quantities of books and teaching aids to areas with particularly serious
educational problems.

     Children tend to start school at an age somewhat older than that
customary in North America. During the 1961-64 period the largest number of
children was in the nine-to-ten age group. This is in part explained by the
fact that repetitions occur most frequently in the lowest grades, resulting in
nine- and ten-year-old pupils in these grades.

     There are two types of primary school, the complete and the incomplete.
The complete school is found in urban localities and offers a full six-year
course of instruction leading to entry into any kind of secondary school. The
incomplete, or rural, school offered only three years of schooling until 1958.
During that year the number was increased to four, and by 1969 some rural
units had established five-year curricula. There are also a few six-year rural
schools. Because of this relative deficiency in rural education, country
children anxious to attend most kinds of secondary school must travel to an
urban area to complete their primary schooling, an undertaking beyond the
means of those from poor families or those living in isolated localities. Some
secondary agricultural schools, however, will accept children from incomplete
primary schools.

     Although more than 80 percent of the country's population in 1966 was
urban, rural schools outnumbered urban by a ratio of more than two to one.
Many of the country schools, however, were simple one-room affairs, with all
classes taught simultaneously.

     Numerous experimental and demonstration primary schools have been
developed in Montevideo and other urban localities. There are experimental
primary farm schools in several departments and, to meet the needs of children
of migrant workers, there are a few mobile schools. Although primary school
dropouts and grade repetitions represent the system's most serious problem,
they are lower than in most Latin American countries and their rates declined
during the 1960s. For example, between 1960 and 1968 primary enrollments
increased by 23 percent and graduations by 50 percent; and between 1963 and
1965 the primary retention rate rose from 39 to 54 percent. In 1969, however,
a Montevideo newspaper alleged that 54 percent of the urban and 88 percent of
the rural students were failing to reach the sixth grade and that in the
country as a whole some 40 percent of the first-year students were required
to repeat that year.

     There was general agreement that performance improved in higher grades.
In 1963 there were 66,481 dropouts reported in the first grade and 25,109 in
the sixth. In 1970, however, the National Council of Primary and Normal
Instruction was continuing a program aimed at reducing the rate of repetition
of the first grade and eliminating the problem of overage students in primary
schools.

     Teachers are well trained and competent, and the student-teacher ratio
of thirty-two to one in 1968 was about average for Latin America. Since the
mid-1950s the differences between public and private schools in
student-teacher ratios have been minor, with the ratio more favorable in
private schools in some years and in public ones in others. The shortage of
classrooms, which also afflicts the secondary system, is a far more serious
problem, which frequently results in crowding and multiple shifts. It is a
problem, however, that is abating to some extent. It is estimated that in
1949 there were 122 children for each primary classroom; by 1967 the number
had declined to 102. During recent years most of the new construction has
been in the departments of Artigas and Colonia, where the worst shortages
exist.

General Secondary Schools

     From 1849 to 1877 the University of the Republic directly controlled the
young secondary program. A measure of administrative independence was granted
at that time, and in 1935 the National Council on Secondary Education was
accorded under the law approximately the same degree of academic autonomy as
that granted to the university. The general secondary schools, called liceos,
offer academic courses during a basic cycle of four years and a university
preparatory cycle of two years. Sometimes the basic four-year cycle is in an
institution separated from the preparatory years, but as a rule the six years
are elements of a continuing system with the university as its only goal. In
the basic cycle the number of class hours ideally ranges from twenty-four to
twenty-eight a week, but room crowdi