Real lives

Andrea Costas: “I want to be a Child-friendly School teacher when I grow up”

Andrea poses with her classmates at the Cachuelita Child Friendly School.

By Delina Garsón
Cachuelita – Porvenir, Pando – With great conviction and hope reflected in her eyes, Andrea, a ten-year-old girl, states, “I want to be a child-friendly school teacher when I grow up, because I want to teach other children and because my brother Marco is a deaf-mute.”
The Cachuelita community school is located in the municipality of Porvenir in the Amazonian department of Pando. It has two multi-grade classrooms and a recreation room with a library, musical instruments, sports equipment and games. It also has potable water, thanks to a new tank, as well as both boys’ and girls’ toilets outside. The school is also currently building a new kitchen and dining hall; its electricity comes from a gas-powered generator.

“I like school a lot: maths, but especially reading”, says Andrea, sitting beside her 5-year-old brother Marco. They both smile and Andrea responds shyly to the questions we ask her.

“My mum and step-father go out to work very early: she cooks at my aunt’s restaurant and he works at a sawmill. I have to get ready by myself and help my brother so that we can come to school” - a task she does very well through basic hand and body signals that she uses to communicate with him. “My mum fell down a gulley when she was pregnant with him, so that’s why he can’t talk or hear,” Andrea tells us.
“When we get to school, we queue up and sing the national anthem; then we go into class – but before we do that we eat our school breakfasts,” she says. These breakfasts are handled by one of the mothers in the community, who prepares the meals according to a menu agreed on with the Municipality.

There are 34 children attending the Cachuelita School, ranging from initial education to sixth grade of primary school. They are grouped into the two available classrooms for multi-grade teaching (children of varying ages in class together with one teacher). “There are only 17 students right now, because the rest are out picking Brazil-nuts. They’ll be back in a month, but are helping their parents right now,” says Andrea. From December to March, some families from Cachuelita move to the Brazil-nut harvesting areas, where everyone, even the young children, work to obtain income that will help them to get by until the next harvest season.

“My teacher wants us to read and write well; she gives us math exercises; we do music together and science and social studies. Three days a week we play the games that were brought here for the Child-friendly School: we jump rope, play ball, play board games, cards… We have a lot of them and share with everyone.”

Andrea, together with her mother and brother, does her homework every day.

Andrea’s future

When class is out, Andrea and her brother Marco go back home. She serves them the lunch that their mother has left for them, does the washing up and the laundry and tidies the house. “My mum is pregnant again, so when she gets home from work she needs to rest. She lets me touch her tummy and feel the baby move. My brother and I go to the fountain to wash up and then I play with my aunts and cousins. We play with dolls, change their clothes and put them in buggies.”

“I took my son Marco to Cochabamba for lab tests to find out if he would ever be able to talk or hear, but they told me the only thing we could do for him was to give him special education. Someday I hope we can take him and all go to live there,” comments Dariechi, Andrea’s mother.

“When I was a little girl I didn’t go to school, so I don’t know how to read or write. In Cachuelita, most of us grown women don’t know how. We’re just now learning, thanks to a government programme, and now I do homework with Marco and Andrea every day. Andrea has to study so that she can have a very different life from mine - a better one”, Dariechi says hopefully.

School – a child-friendly place

UNICEF’s child-friendly schools project has been working in the Municipality of Porvenir since 2005. The Municipality has a total of 18 schools to cover primary and secondary education, of which all 18 primary sections are participating in the project.
Child-friendly Schools are run in conjunction with local government counterparts in the following areas: access to education; community participation school groups for parents, teachers and children; teacher training on teaching techniques and educational management; water, hygiene, and sanitation; environment; and school transportation.

Most of the teachers are interim, people with no formal training as instructors but who are taking weekend and 3-month vacation classes to be able to graduate as teachers with higher vocational training.

The project is supervised by the Pando Departmental Education Service (SEDUCA), which together with the Child-friendly School’s municipally-appointed Pedagogical Support Technician, carries out 15 follow-up visits to the schools each year.

Andrea’s teacher reports that her children are very outgoing, creative and ready to learn. They have shown significant progress towards improving their hygiene habits as well. “The parents see that their children progressing, and they become interested in participating in school activities.”

This change has come about through the raising of community awareness of children’s rights, parent participation, and provision of supplies like: library, musical instruments, games and an electric generator, experience-sharing field trips to other schools and teacher training. Also, before the project started, very few children had birth certificates, but now, everyone has them.

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Education in Bolivia

Bolivia is reported as being the second poorest country in Latin America with 34.5 per cent of the nation's population living in extreme poverty (less than USD 1 per person per day) and 67 per cent of the population living in poverty of some degree (less than USD 2 per person per day).

Especially in disadvantaged urban and rural areas of the country, poverty is severe and access to public services limited. In average, infant mortality is reported at 54 deaths in 1,000 live births, under-five child mortality lies at 75 in 1,000 live births and life expectancy is 66 years. In rural parts of the country, infant mortality raises to 67 and under-five mortality to concerning 96.

Literacy rates (age 19 and older) are reported at 85 per cent at national levels and 71 per cent for rural areas. School attendance rate for children aged 6 to 19 is reported as 79 per cent at national level and 74 per cent for rural areas of the country; half of rural children once enrolled in school – many of them girls – drop out before completing the eight years of primary school. In disadvantaged areas of the country, such as – for example - the Amazon and Guarani-speaking areas, the Net Enrolment Rate (NER) for 6th grade is 88% and 52% for 8th grade only (2004). The promotion rate to 6th grade is 78% and to 8th grade 45% only.

Even more pronounced is the problematic of access to quality education services for the population younger than six years of age. Reliable (gender disaggregated) data on access to services for children younger than four years of age are not available, and data on four and five years old children having access to pre-school services suggest an estimated rate of 40 per cent for girls and boys (national data, urban and rural areas of Bolivia).

Poverty, external factors (for example chronic emergency situations), cultural beliefs and values, and weak teaching processes and educational management are barriers causing low access to and quality of education at all levels.

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