HAVANA, Jan 14 (NNN-ACN) — Despite the lack of resources in the education system, the 2023 school year was successful thanks to decisive support provided by the government and the university community, according to Walter Baluja Garcia, Cuba’s Minister of Higher Education (MES).
The official remarked that said school year, which is yet to finish, will mark the graduation of 39,000 students—60% of them from Cuban universities—as higher education authorities across the country check both the fulfillment of the strategic goals laid down for 2023 and the conditions for the next academic year.
Due to COVID-19, he pointed out, we rearranged our school calendars at all levels of education and established a temporary working group, as instructed by President Miguel Díaz-Canel, to decide whether we needed to devise school programs based on a fiscal year or on the traditional calendar without detriment to the quality of our teaching services.
As a result, MES resolved to start the 2024 school year in January.
The 2024 academic year will feature six new technical programs that will give high-school graduates a chance to enter the higher education system, according to Deysi Fraga Cedré, general director of Undergraduate Studies of the Ministry of Higher Education (MES).
“Cuba counts on 50 higher education centers to develop undergraduate programs for 112 university degree courses and 64 high-level technical programs in various branches of science,” she remarked. “In 2024 we will stick to the two levels of higher education—short courses and university degree studies—as we move gradually to the traditional school calendar, so that we can guarantee the quality of our teaching processes and the return of young people to active military service, which the country needs.”
The official also pointed out that the plans for 2024 include the rearrangement of the syllabus and the permanent evaluation of methodological work in every school, as well as to increase ICT use without neglecting educational and political-ideological work among undergraduate students.
More than 289,000 students are expected to enter the Cuban education system in 2024, 270,000 of them in university courses and more than 12,000 in higher technical courses.
René Sánchez Díaz, MES’s director of Enrolment and Job Placement, stressed that Cuba is committed to help its young people by giving them the opportunity to learn and called on this sector of the population to strive to make the most of it. — NNN-ACN
