President evaluates progress of Cuban educational program

The president of Cuba, Miguel Díaz-Canel, evaluated the progress of the educational program implemented in the country, national television reported Sunday.

Deputy Prime Minister Roberto Morales and Olga Lidia Tapia, a member of the secretariat of the Central Committee of the Cuban Communist Party, accompanied the president.

According to the report, the meeting examined the preliminary results, in coordination with the Latin American Laboratory for the Evaluation of the Quality of Education, an entity inaugurated in 1994 at the request of the ministers of the sector in Latin America.

The largest island of the Antilles was present at the first two studies, conducted in 1997 and 2006; now it participates in the fourth applied on May 30 and 31 to third and sixth grade students of 251 primary schools throughout the national territory, except Santiago de Cuba and Isla de la Juventud.

The process was carried out without incidents with the presence of national and international observers, and according to specialists, the best results were registered in students of sixth grade and the Spanish Language subject, but the significance of this study goes beyond the figures.

According to Silvia Navarro, director of the Central Institute of Pedagogical Sciences, the intention of this type of study is to identify where the problems are in order to organize work strategies on that basis.

Participants also examined a proposal to gradually introduce elements of automation and robotics at different educational levels.

For its elaboration, experience in this sphere lies in centers such as the Enrique José Varona Higher Pedagogical Institute, universities of Pinar del Río, Oriente, Las Villas and the José Antonio Echeverría University City (Cujae) that was taken into account.

It was learned that the Finca de Los Monos Technology Park, inthis capital, prepares the first courses to introduce children to the world of robotics, starting next April.

On the day, the Cuban president also followed up on the agreements emanating from the ninth congress of the University Student Federation, held in July 2018.