translated from Spanish: Mineduc reported that complaints of supplies in school supplies and texts decreased by 65% in the last five years

This day the Ministry of Education reported that complaints against schools for elite demands, uniforms and school texts decreased by 65% in the last five years. As a result, the Minister of Education, Marcela Cubillos stated that “schools must think about their families and proxys, and how hard it is to start classes for them by buying texts, useful and school uniforms, and therefore are unacceptable additional demands that some impose on them and we want the proxys to be informed, demand their rights and know that their children will not be discriminated against because they do not have elements of certain marks or from a single supplier”, and added that “today there are no excuses for schools and any of them can ask in their list, and agree with editorials, the purchase of texts similar to those that the Mineduc distributes free of charge to public and subsidized schools, generating very significant savings for families. Publishers can market these texts and schools can order those and not others, which, moreover, with the changes made by the Ministry, are just as good as those in the private market.” For his part, the Undersecretary of Education Raúl Figueroa detailed the actions that have been implemented to promote transparency in the process of choosing school texts and purchasing alternatives to reduce expenses. Figueroa explained that “we want to involve the school community and promote transparency in the process of selecting school texts so that families have access to a fair and informed price of the texts.” To this end, the Ministry of Education informed directors of schools and parent centres about the positive effects of buying the texts directly from publishers and the possibility of publishing houses to market the same texts that the Ministry distributes free of charge in the subsidized system,” he added. It should be noted that reports decreased by 65% over the past five years. And the figure remains significant in 2019 with a 55% drop, compared to the previous year.

Original source in Spanish