translated from Spanish: Minister Cubillos with the policy of the club criticizes the Child Defender for arguing that education is a fundamental right that cannot be restricted

After deliberately staying on the sidelines during the early days of the 2020 PSU process, Education Minister Marcela Cubillos continues to make noise with her statements about different actors in the system. To her hard-handed strategy against the students who staged riots and promoted the boycott, and her criticism of the Board of Rectors and the Demre, now the secretary of state fired on the Children’s Defender’s Office.
Cubillos’s annoyance is that this entity offered help to students who are sanctioned for boycotting the PSU and who will be left out of the 2020 admissions process. “Unlike the Ombudsman’s Office, we as a government, among the young people who promoted violence and made this boycott and the young people who suffered it, we are about to defend the young people who suffered the violence,” she said. One of the actions of the Ombudsman’s Office that angered the minister relates to the Minister’s warning that the State’s Internal Security Act “is inapplicable”, as the Government intends with its complaint against leaders of the Secondary Student Coordinating Assembly (ACES).
But, moreover, the Children’s Ombudsman has questioned the Decision of the Demre – endorsed by Mineduc – to exclude from the selection process those who were involved in the boycott. Patricia Muñoz explained to CNN Chile, this has to do “with ensuring the right to education of those who can receive from a regulatory point of view any sanction from the Demre that involves preventing access to education, because no regulation may be above a constitutionally guaranteed right. And this has nothing to do with the criminal consequences that can be taken in criminal matters in respect of those persons for the wrongdoings investigated.”
But the Children’s Ombudsman has focused not only on the young people targeted by the Government and responsible for the boycott or riots, but also on the universe of those affected by the suspension of language, science and mathematics tests.
The agency also asked Demre for explanations about young people who were unable to take the test under normal conditions, and demanded that in the new process of surrender – on 27 and 28 January – all those students “who were forced to surrender the PS U on conditions not favorable to concentration and tranquility that a test of this nature demands”.
Moreover, the Children’s Ombudsman announced that “with regard to the decision of demre and CRUCh to void the History Selection Test, we are looking at the legal actions that allow those affected by this measure to be assured of equality before have the certain possibility of taking a test that could promote their position of admission to the university, as well as, in some cases, concrete the proper surrender of that test as a requirement for some university careers . In this sense, we also need DEMRE’s information to individualize who the affected young people are and to appeal to their behalf,” they added.
Cubillos, the insper.
On another flank, from the Board of Rectors Cubillos’ criticisms of the management of the process also responded. “What I have to say about it is that I find these statements unfair,” said CRUCh Vice President Aldo Valle, adding that they have met since November, every Thursday on the fourth floor of the Ministry of Education with the Undersecretary of Education Higher Education, Juan Eduardo Vargas.
“We always understand and continue to understand that, that the undersecretary represents the Mineduc, and the Minister of Education and the government as a whole,” she said.
However Valle questioned the minister’s responsibility to the system, confirming that she has not attended any of the meetings of the Council of Rectors, confirming the complaint of MEP Camila Rojas.
“There is some agreement, that the Board of Rectors for these purposes is an independent body of the government (but) under no circumstances is the person who holds the office of Minister of Education obviously exempted from responsibility, because this responsibility is of a nature and is not delegated and no one can therefore be exempted or disengaged from the associated responsibilities of that position,” he said.
“That’s right, she hasn’t attended any meetings of the Board of Rectors,” she admitted, adding that the absence “is not part of normality.”
Yasna Provoste’s review
In questioning Minister Marcela Cubillos, was the senator of The Christian Democracy (DC), Yasna Provoste, with whom she has had a history of encounters.
“It is difficult to isolate this week in her role, because she has been absolutely absent not only in this week’s drama that has been experienced for many families regarding PSU, she has been absent and in a permanent boycott of educational reforms” Provoste said in an interview with Radio Cooperative.
Regarding the Government’s decision to invoke the State Security Act against ACES student leaders, Provoste argued that “it is very complex because in a society where children and adolescents are sought to protect children, where education is the vehicle the most important way by which the values on which a society is founded are conveyed, what we have seen from this Government and particularly of Minister Cubillos is that the only libretto she knows is violence and provocation to educational communities , to students.”
 

Original source in Spanish