Ministry of Education is Ready for 2012-2013 School Year

Ministry of Education is Ready for 2012-2013 School Year
Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, 8/19/2012

The Ministry of Education (MINERD in Spanish) will begin classes on Monday August 20 for the 2012-2013 academic year. The official opening of the school year was celebrated at the Cristo Rey School of San Juan de la Maguana, at 10:00 am. PresidentDanilo Medina and the Minister of Education, Josefina Pimentel attended the event.

The Ministry of Education has worked arduously in preparation of the school year in the areas of pedagogy, logistics and school buildings in order to guarantee a successful academic year and to fulfill all of its obligations on the school calendar, which the Ministry shares with teachers, students, families and the community.

More than 2.7 million children are returning to school this fall in the public, private, semi-private/public, elementary and middle schools, technical and professional schools, art schools and special sub-systems for adult learners.

The Ministry of Education has worked arduously in preparation of the school year in the areas of pedagogy, logistics and school buildings in order to guarantee a successful academic year and to fulfill all of its obligations on the school calendar, which the Ministry shares with teachers, students, families and the community.

As part of the preparations, the Ministry acquired 4,479,674 textbooks for early education and elementary students and another 3,650,610 for middle school students. The books are being delivered free of charge to schools around the country.

Classroom Repairs

During summer vacation, the Ministry of Education was hard at work repairing, renovating and beautifying the school buildings around the country. Work included sanitary and electrical system repair, painting and cleaning outside areas.

All together 20,000 classrooms in 3,000 schools were renovated through MINERD’s Office of School Infrastructure Maintenance with a budget of $300 million pesos.

The total amount earmarked for materials and paint, $171 million pesos, was deposited in the accounts of the Decentralized School District Offices to be used to repair bathrooms, electrical systems, doors, windows and outer areas. The resources came from MINERD’s general fund.

Summer projects

The Ministry of Education also sponsored special events to orient, review and improve teaching techniques and other practical issues affecting all those involved in the education process. There were nearly 60,000 participants, including teachers, staff, directors, coordinators, administrators and others involved in the schools.  The curriculum review process, underway on all levels, modalities and sub-systems, was discussed by participants who presented ideas and participatory projects and plans for improvements. All of this was undertaken with a budget of $117 million pesos.

Consumable Materials

From August 12-19, MINERDheld 41 events in different Regional Education Offices to buy materials and school supplies from local merchants, which cost $235 million pesos, to be handled by the Decentralized School District Offices (regional, district and local) with the goal of strengthening participation of the communities in school activities. The events, or school fairs, were organized by the Deputy Minister of School Services through the General Office of Educational Management and Decentralization.

Educational Documents

At the same time, theMINERDacquired and is in the process of distributing essential educational material and documents for the development of teaching activities such as school calendars, registration forms, grade books, qualification bulletins and learning and development reports for 79,978 sections around the country.

EducationalProcedures

As a way of supporting educational procedures in the public schools, Education Minister Josefina Pimentel, recently handed out laptop computers and provided wide band wireless Internet connection to a group of school principals. A total of 6,463 laptops were distributed in the 18 Education Regions and the 104 School Districts throughout the country.

This was part of the Connecting Schools Program, which seeks to provide computers with Internet access to the more than 8,000 schools in the system to be used to organize all pertinent information going on in the schools, such as student registration, building conditions, the school calendar, teaching assignments and grades.

These school principals have also been trained in the management of the School Administration System and have computer-programing tools such as Office, Text Processors, databases and the capacity to give presentations and projections. All of this is being done within a unified communication system under the Ministry of Education’s site, Portal Educando, which also offers online teaching resources.