Quality in education is the key

[NewsWhore]

The main recommendation of the day long DR Economic Perspectives Seminar organized by the Ministry of Economy, Planning and Development on the occasion of its first year anniversary celebration was that the government needed to increase spending on education. Panel members called on the extra spending to be monitored, as with spending in private business, to ensure a quantum leap in the quality of Dominican education. Economic consultant Carlos Asilis stressed that there was a need to improve the quality of Dominican education, adopting common sense protocols to monitor the service in the same way as in the private sector. Former Central Bank governor Bernardo Vega described education as the DR's greatest problem. He stressed that with public school students only attending school for an average of 2.5 hours per day, the DR cannot keep up with the competition. He warned that if Cuba opts for a Vietnamese economic model, the DR would suffer even more, because the Cuban population is highly educated. Vega said that the DR has lost jobs in the manufacturing sector due to the high wages but low-skilled labor. Former Central Bank governor Carlos Despradel also called for improvements in the educational system in order to achieve greater work productivity. Isidoro Santana also said that social spending needed to be increased to improve human skills and that this should not be limited to producing propaganda about government spending on education. Santana said that the country's greatest failure is that while international surveys show the low quality of Dominican students, the public seems to be satisfied with what it is getting, which he concludes is just a reflection of the general population's low education levels.

More... (http://www.dr1.com/index.html#2)