This paper analyzes the critical issues that the Chilean education system is currently facing with a specific focus on the need to strengthen public education. The complexity of the issue will require a wide array of actions in order to improve the system, and it may require drastic changes to a system’s architecture and a complete overhaul of its inherent institutionalism. The central problems that the Chilean education system is facing are clear: poor teaching quality and a system marked by socio-economic and geographic segregation. During the last 25 years, these failures have continuously gotten worsen, given that system’s faulty institutionalism strips the Chilean state of the one tool needed to provide accessible, quality education to its citizens: a solid public education system. Although economic shortcomings exist within the Chilean educational system, they are not entirely to blame for the current educational crisis. The primary reasons behind the system’s deterioration are its inherent institutionalism and the lopsided competition with private education, in which it is forced to partake. The unfair competition existing between public and private education is categorized by three main components: the funding model (student subsidies and co-payments), institutionalism (municipal and regional), and the imbalance between the resources allocated to the schools and the demands made of them. Realizing that it is an essential condition for the substantial improvement of the public school system, a certain degree of consensus exists regarding the need for sweeping policy changes to be made to the architecture of the education system. However, a universal agreement on how to approach the issue does not exist, and the differences and similarities between the various organizational changes proposed are examined in this paper.
Education in Chile; Strategic problems-education; New Institutionalism; Public education