On the Road to Equality for All: An Interview with Ecuadorian Minister of Education, Maria Brown Pérez

A portrait of Maria Brown Pérez, Minister of Education. Image provided by Maria Brown.

Ecuador’s education system has greatly expanded in recent years and is working towards achieving universal literacy. Primary education has been made mandatory and free for all until the age of 12. Further efforts are currently being set up to establish a more diverse curriculum and to facilitate access for all disadvantaged groups. 

To better understand how the challenges faced in the educational sector, in Ecuador, are being dealt with, I sat down with Minister Pérez. She emphasized that working in line with the sustainable development goals established by the UN and “advancing towards inclusive education for all throughout life” was the focus of her projects. In May 2021, Maria Brown Pérez assumed duties as the Minister of Education of Ecuador. Working alongside newly-elected President Guillermo Lasso, Pérez has set forth education strategies and policies to achieve inclusion and improve the quality of education for all. Her main objective is to revamp the Ecuadorian public education system to one that promotes gender, geographical, and economic inclusion. From her prior experience at the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), Minister Brown has learned how to tackle issues regarding quality education, intercultural education, and early childhood education.

Minister Brown Perez, can you explain the main focus of your policy? How do you wish to enhance and diversify the educational curriculum? 

Our plan at the Ministry of Education proposes to put equality and inclusiveness at the heart of our national education plan for the 4 years of President Guillermo Lasso's government. Within this work plan, we intend to introduce flexibility and allow for customization of educational programs based on the different situations in our country. In this sense, a couple of initiatives have already been set up. One such initiative is the launch of an educational level-playing field process called “Aprender a Tiempo” (“Learning on Time”) in order to help students who are behind with their studies. Another is the Galapagos Contextualized Curriculum, a contextualized curriculum that is designed as a new pedagogical model. It promotes education based on interdisciplinary projects and also contemplates a stronger link between the school and the community. With the advent of the pandemic, additional focus is placed on curricula specific to different territorial realities to address geographic, cultural and linguistic specificities, among others. 

How do you think you can facilitate access for poorer communities dispersed across different geographical settings such as individuals in the mountains, rural areas, and the coast? 

The most vulnerable population is the one most at risk of dropout and educational exclusion. In Ecuador, we have a regulation that guarantees that students can enroll in the free public system throughout the school year, without the need for any documentation. Within this framework, more flexible offerings are being created to serve these vulnerable populations, for example, the creation of distance schools such as “Guayacanes” and “Arupos,” each one adequate for the different climate zones and academic calendars that Ecuador has, Sierra-Amazon and Costa-Galapagos. The aim is to establish the design of a pedagogical model for Unidocentes or Pluridocentes schools (schools that have students up to 13 years old and work in multigrade/multilevel groups in order to serve distant populations), in order to improve the quality of education in these institutions that constitute about 40% of the institutions that exist nationwide. 

Is there going to be an incentive to encourage teaching as a professional career and provide training to provide better-qualified professors? Will there be an initiative to provide better-suited facilities? 

A major axis of the educational plan proposes the strengthening of the career path for teachers. Take for example our work to create a teacher’s card, which will issue access discounts and other incentives not linked to remuneration. We are working on reforming the merit-based competitive examination mechanism so that teachers may obtain a permanent appointment, providing them with greater job stability. We are also trying to speed up the processes of sectorization or transfers of teachers who request to be relocated to other institutions or cities in the country to manage needs for staffing and teachers’ requests. 

At the same time, in terms of infrastructure, we have worked on designing architectural models for schools that use construction techniques with local materials and are consistent with the culture and climate of the territory. The previously existing models, which consisted mainly of concrete models, have been made more flexible. 

How will you address the social divide and ensure access to quality education for all?  How do you differentiate policies for public and private schools? 

The Constitution of Ecuador guarantees free education from 5 years of age to 18 years of age on a compulsory basis and has the means to provide free higher education opportunities. Ecuador’s national education system administers public educational institutions, that is to say, they belong to the state and are free and open access. This administration seeks to improve the work of public schools (with a combination of both public and private funding) but also intends to support private schools so that they can expand and improve their work with greater autonomy, but also with greater transparency about their services and costs. Many private schools serve low-income populations. Both public and private schools, however, are seriously underfunded and forced to operate with very low budgets. 

What policies are the ministry putting in place to provide the same educational opportunity for both boys and girls?

Gender gaps in access to education in Ecuador have been significantly reduced. According to the national education’s website, there are around 4,314,777 students among which 2,138,904 are girls. However, there is a high rate of pregnancy among adolescents and girls. According to the National Institute of Statistics and Census (2020) in one year, 1,631 babies were born to girls between 10 and 14 years old and 43,260 live births were born to adolescents between 15 and 19 years old. This phenomenon, which places Ecuador among the countries with one of the highest rates of pregnancies in girls and adolescents in the region, is being addressed by an inter-institutional committee that until May 2022 will be led by the Ministry of Education. 

At the moment, the Plan and Policy program for the reduction of pregnancy in girls and adolescents is being updated, including Comprehensive Sexuality Education. The actions taken to close the gap include mainly the development of strategies to strengthen identification and referral for comprehensive care of pregnant students and the training of teachers in sexual education. 

How do you think you will be able to meet the challenges of bilingual education (Spanish / Quichua)? 

On bilingualism, we are working in conjunction with the Secretariat for Bilingual Intercultural Education to strengthen the country’s bilingual intercultural educational institutions, which represent 10.6% of the country's institutions. The Kichwa people constitute the majority of indigenous nationalities. “We are working on tailoring contextualized curricula as well as hiring teachers who speak the language of their nationalities. It is important to strengthen and revitalize the ancestral languages and intercultural bilingual education.”

How will the education sector recover from the pandemic? How will it adapt to the new reality? 

The first measure to ensure the reactivation of the education sector after the pandemic was to request the national Emergency Operations Committee to authorize a gradual, voluntary, and safe return to the classroom. 

This measure has been accompanied by the vaccination process. At the moment, 1,295,624 children between 12 and 17 years old have already been vaccinated with at least one dose, close to reaching 100% of this population, and on October 18 the vaccination process for children between 6 and 11 years old began, seeking to reach 2 million children in the month of October and early November.  

Can you talk a little bit about the progress in the use of technology in education and how you plan to further increase access to the digital world? 

6,794 educational institutions in Ecuador do not have internet access. The Ministry of Telecommunications and Information Society is working to increase connectivity. By December, it plans to provide internet coverage to 50 parishes that did not have it before. Likewise, through the program Apadrina Una Escuela (Sponsor a School), work is being done on technological infrastructure with the support of the private sector and local governments. 

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In light of this interview, the challenges ahead for Ecuador’s educational system are clear: the Covid-19 pandemic recovery, the maintenance of infrastructures, the support for teachers and instructors, as well as furthering the progress of equal education regardless of gender, social class, or location. Maria Brown Pérez wants “to optimize the way the Ministry of Education system works so that it promotes flexibility, innovation, the use of technologies, co-responsibility, and the link with the community. And for that, we have to rethink how the function of the Ministry of Education is defined in general terms and then in specific terms the functions of the different officials at the national level.”

Alexia Pérez is a Staff Writer and a sophomore (BC’24) studying History and Mathematical Sciences. She is half Ecuadorian and as such keen on the critical role education can play to the economic advancement of emerging economies. 

The Minister of Education is a relative of staff writer Alexia Pérez.