Today the
School Leadership Preparation group headed over to the Universidad del Pacífico
for our morning session. We had the good fortune of meeting with Mr. Ricardo
Manuel Muñoz, who works with the Peruvian Ministry of Education. He spoke with
us about the arduous task of decentralizing education here in Peru, a process
that began in 2003. The main goal of decentralization is to ensure quality
resources are efficiently distributed to schools. Unfortunately, with the
restructuring of the government, new roles and functions were not clearly
defined, and thus, there has been a great deal of ambiguity as to what the
unique roles and responsibilities of the national and regional governments are.
Mr. Muñoz
further explained how local units of educational administration, called UGELs,
were created to aid in overseeing schools and distributing materials. In recent
years data has been collected regarding these institutions to aid in creating a
standardized process for implementing UGEL design. The UGELs are quite diverse
with some serving more rural communities, while others are in major
metropolitan areas; some are located several hours away from the schools they
serve, while others are within walking distance; some are in districts where there
is no running water, while others are equipped with state-of-the-art
technology. Given the educational diversity and economic disparities throughout
the country, it is no surprise that it is challenging to regulate UGELs.
Despite these impediments to progress, there is hope. The national government
is continuously working to overcome obstacles to decentralization, and Mr.
Muñoz estimates that it will about another ten years to remedy the current
problems.
After our
presentation by Mr. Muñoz, we enjoyed lunch at La Baguette, a café a block away
from the school. We ordered burgers and other sandwiches, including chicharrones
(a sandwich with pork, sweet potato, and onion). The café also had a large
assortment of pastries and other desserts. I ended my meal with an alfajor,
which is a confection consisting of two round cookies with a filling between
them. My personal favorites are alfajores de manjar blanco (manjar blanco is a
caramel filling very similar to dulce de leche). It was so delicious that I
ordered a second one to go! After lunch we joined the rest of our group at
Colegio Nuestra Señora del Carmen.
~ Kimberly
Sanders
No comments:
Post a Comment