The Power of Persistence: Education System ... - EQUIP123.net

financing, and ensuring adequate levels of equity, access, and quality. This tactic
of consensus building and communicating the education agenda continues with
MINED’s most recent 16-year plan, Plan 2021, launched in 2005. Plan 2021
emphasizes improving the quality of learning and increasing El Salvador’s global
competitiveness through a better-educated population.
The two stated goals of the reform—decentralizing education provision and
establishing broad participation—intersected to provide support for the ultimate
objective: expanding access to primary education. Increasing access was
especially relevant for populations in rural areas. Many of these communities had
few, if any, state-sponsored education services in the 1980s due to the conflict. As
a result, at least 500 community-run schools operated informally for years, mostly
in rural zones. Following its decentralization rationale, MINED attempted to
address the short-term emergency of educational coverage by sanctioning these
community schools. MINED encouraged municipalities, NGOs, parents, and
other private agents to be actively involved in educational affairs (World Bank,
2003). Independent community schools were therefore incorporated into the
national system and supported by donor programs such as the USAID-funded
Strengthening Achievement in Basic Education (SABE) Project and World Bank
loans. MINED named this initiative EDUCO.
Perhaps the most influential reform project initiated
during this period, Education with Community
Participation, or EDUCO, began as a pilot in 1991.
The project had three initial goals: expand access
for pre- and primary schools in poor and rural
areas; promote community participation; and
establish a bridge, at least in terms of curriculum,
between preschool and Grade 1 (Meza, Guzmán,
… EdUCO’s role was not
only on the issue of access,
but politically it broke the
“clientism” on the part of
the government.
—Darlyn Meza, Minister of
Education
and DeVarela, 2004). As mentioned above, this project formalized community
schools, using similar governing principles but funded by the state. Through
EDUCO, parents organized and registered Community Education Associations
(ACEs) in order to manage government schools. By the end of the initial phase
in 1993, some positive results were evident, notably that enrollment in rural
areas had increased from 76 to 83 percent (World Bank, 2003). According to
MINED, EDUCO became synonymous with educational coverage, exemplified
decentralization through community participation, and helped to lay the
foundation for the transformation of the national education system (Castro
de Pérez, Meza, and Guzmán, 1999).
SECTION 2: lESSONS fROM COUNTRY CASE STUdIES
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