Citizens dream of an education that should prepare students for work and for life, with good teachers and schools with adequate infrastructure, according to the more than 20 thousand concerns and proposals submitted.

They also called for supervision and evaluation processes focused on guaranteeing the quality of the educational activity, which should not be conditioned to any political party management or the socioeconomic level of the student’s family and, above all, that it be bilingual.

The reality is far from these objtectives, according to the newspaper La Estrella de Panama, pointing out that at least 14,000 students leave the educational system every year and the results of international tests show serious deficiencies in mathematics, science and Spanish.

The educational gap is much more marked in rural areas. Educational coverage has been increasing, but quality continues to be “one of the great challenges” of Panama, the newspaper adds.

jrr/jav/mem/ga