Governor Maximiliano Pullaro, together with the Minister of Education of Santa Fe, José Goity, received recognition from the National Campaign for Literacy "Que Entiendan Lo Que Lean" (Let Them Understand What They Read). On the occasion, the executive director of Argentinos por la Educación, one of the 200 organisations behind the Campaign, Ignacio Ibarzábal, presented a certificate to the Province of Santa Fe in recognition of the "commitment in the implementation of its literacy plan and highlights the progress achieved".
Upon receiving the distinction, the governor stressed: "It is a profound honour to receive this recognition, and I want to thank this organisation that comes from outside to contribute ideas, concepts, but also values and principles that we have to carry forward when we build public policies or when we prioritise public policies".
"When you analyse a public policy, the first thing you analyse is the budget allocated to it and, what we can assess in the province of Santa Fe, is that the problem is not in the resources available to the executive branch through the budget, year after year, but in the reordering of the education system as a whole. And to have these debates one has to be willing to get out of one's comfort zone," Pullaro said. He added: "We didn't come here to let things continue to happen in the same way, we came here to give uncomfortable debates. And we understood that it was fundamental to have a literacy programme that is the same for a boy or girl from the north, from a school in Gato Colorado, or from the south, from a school in Aarón Castellanos.
He also stressed that this programme "goes hand in hand with a very large contribution in terms of school infrastructure", because "if the teachers, the directors and fundamentally the children do not have a friendly infrastructure, a suitable infrastructure, it is very difficult for learning to take place as it should in each of the schools". "Here is a province that is committed and wants its children and adolescents to have the best quality education in Argentina and Latin America," he concluded.
A responsibility that cannot be delegated to the State
For his part, Minister Goity referred to literacy as "a priority issue for this government's agenda. Literacy, and especially initial literacy, is the foundation on which all the learning we will have throughout our lives is based. So, having a consistent initial literacy is what will give us the possibility of developing a school biography that will allow us to put ourselves in another place," he said. "There is a responsibility that cannot be delegated to the state. It is the state and the education system that must provide literacy and the fundamental knowledge for the development of a full life," he added.
He went on to emphasise: "We are working on the evaluation and monitoring of the Root Literacy Plan. We have done it in a very conscious way, in a very core way, analysing the critical points on which an educational plan, and particularly a plan that has literacy as its object, has to be based. And we have been very satisfied with this work.
Finally, Ibarzábal explained that "we are awarding this recognition on the basis of a rigorous process of analysis of different components of the province's literacy policy, which have to do with both the nominal nature of the students and the monitoring of attendance, as well as with teacher training, the provision of materials in schools, evaluation and also with the process of institutionalisation of this policy". "Today, a short time after the beginning of the administration, we think it is important to recognise the process. It is not the same to be acting as not acting and here we are seeing a series of consistent actions that should lead to an improvement in the results", he remarked and concluded: "Without education, neither inclusion nor development nor growth is possible and we are committed to this future".
The event was also attended by the Secretary General of the Ministry of Education, María Martín, the Secretary of Education, Carolina Piedrabuena, the Secretary of Territorial Educational Management, Daiana Gallo Ambrosis, the Secretary of Coordination and Resource Management, Florencia González and the Undersecretary of Educational Quality, Mariana Migliaro, among other authorities.
