After more than two years of the pandemic, this September 1, 1.8 million Ecuadorian students from the Sierra and the Amazon restart classes in person, with which one hundred percent of the educational system returns to the traditional teaching process.
“At last we return to face-to-face attendance from the beginning of the school year and we hope that it will continue throughout this school year,” said the Minister of Education, María Brown, in a televised interview.
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The official indicated that the system is ready to receive the students and assured that the Government disbursed this year more than US$150 million to repair the educational infrastructure.
She noted that among the more than 12,300 public educational centers in the country, almost 1,000 received comprehensive repairs, while more than 42% of the total received partial repairs.
It is expected that 6,669 educational centers will start classes on the first day and the rest will do so in stages, according to the type of education.
In Ecuador there are two school systems, one in the Sierra and the Amazon, and the other on the Coast, where the current school year began last May.
The Ecuadorian Ministry of Education had ordered a return to classrooms on previous occasions, but the waves of COVID-19 forced dates to be postponed and in some cases to apply the so-called hybrid model (face-to-face-virtual).
As a preventive measure to stop the pandemic, the use of the mask in closed spaces and on school buses was established.