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Leyes y políticas nacionales sobre derechos de escolaridad o enseñanza gratuita – Georgia

Importa si el Estado facilita la enseñanza gratuitamente o si cobra derechos de enseñanza. Todos los Estados del mundo han firmado por lo menos un tratado internacional que les obliga a hacer que la enseñanza primaria sea gratuita y obligatoria y que la educación secundaria llegue a serlo progresivamente. Pero la educación no puede ser obligatoria si no es gratuita también y esta contradicción suele ser ignorada con demasiada frecuencia. Además, ¿qué significa realmente la enseñanza gratuita en un mundo lleno de costos evidentes y ocultos para los estudiantes, los padres y las comunidades locales? Según los resultados de una encuesta realizada por Katarina Tomasevski en 2006, la enseñanza no era realmente gratuita en la gran mayoría de los países del mundo. La información que figura a continuación sobre su país, fue sacada de este importantísimo estudio.

 

Las leyes y políticas nacionales son las aplicaciones de la constitución, aunque pueden ser más avanzadas, porque son examinadas y elaboradas de nuevo con más frecuencia. Las leyes son hechas por el gobierno, los parlamentarios y los burócratas, a menudo en consulta con la sociedad civil. No obstante, esto también las expone a la vulnerabilidad y el retroceso, pues pueden convertirse en instrumentos de la política y las prioridades a corto plazo. Las leyes y las políticas son accesibles al cambio y la influencia por medio del proceso democrático y las campañas de la sociedad civil. Y sus violaciones deben, si es posible, ser impugnadas en los tribunales o mediante la revisión judicial.

 

 

 

 

El Estado es el actor principal en cualquier reclamo del derecho a la educación, es el principal detentor de obligaciones, el principal ejecutor, es el garante, la firma respecto a las normas internacionales que lo obligan a respetar, proteger y realizar el derecho a la educación. El Estado debe, por lo tanto, ser juzgado o cuestionado sobre la base de su texto principal sobre el derecho a la educación, sea éste la constitución, las leyes o las políticas.

The government of Georgia claimed in its PRSP, in June 2003, that primary education had already been universalized. This is not confirmed in internationally comparable statistics which place the enrolments in primary school for 2003 at 89%, while school attendance and completion are likely to be even lower. The subsequent transition of governance through the ‘rose revolution’  raised expectations that governmental performance would substantially improve and that government’s self-assessments would come closer to reality.

Also, corruption-free public services constituted an important popular demand at the time of the ‘rose revolution’, including in education. One facet of previous governmental policy made corruption in education inevitable because teachers’ salaries had been set below the official poverty line. In 1995, the average teacher’s salary of $10 per month was insufficient to cover the cost of public transportation to and from work.  The consequences were detrimental and affected all public education.

In particular, informal charges in the form of ‘private tuition’ emerged so as to supplement inadequate teachers’ salaries. The Committee on the Rights of the Child was concerned in 2000 that “low wages have forced teachers to offer private tuition, creating a two-tier system of education”. Other forms of corruption proliferated, such as the sale and purchase of school places, exam results and grades. In its reports under human rights treaties, the government admitted that such “an informal system of payments” has transferred the financial responsibility for education to “Georgian households [which] fund much of the educational institutions”.

Formal legal guarantees of free education continued unchanged but the abyss between them and governmental policy broadened. The government allowed schools to charge tuition and other fees as well as to collect funds from parents as ‘additional expenses’ or ‘voluntary contributions.’ NGOs reported how these charges were levied in practice:

Teachers inform pupils of the necessity for additional payments for the needs of the school. There are always reasons for additional payments: school and class funds, new school inventory, etc. The fees are legal to a certain extent. Parents are requested to pay for additional expenses. Schools also receive voluntary contributions and they have a right to organize fund-raising events. Unfortunately, children very often participate in the collection of the fees.

Although the law mandates the first eight years of schooling to be free, for-fee education was formally introduced: “Fee-paying instruction and other activities are permitted at State- run educational institutions; the profits are at the disposal of the respective institutions'  administrations”. The permission to levy charges was a likely government’s response to its inadequate funding of public schools. The reasons for Georgia’s “chronically under-funded education” were, according to Neil MacFarlane, that “the Georgian state started weak and was further damaged by two de facto secessions and a civil war”. He has added that Georgia was “deeply dependent on western assistance,” much of which was wasted through corruption. As a consequence, formal and informal payments cover almost the entire cost of education. How much and how fast the post-2003 government will be willing and able to change the policy of public funding and thereby improve educational performance is an open question.