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News > Chile

Chile: Teachers Reject Resuming School Year Over COVID-19

  •  Chilean Teachers' Association President, Mario Aguilar, April 2020.

    Chilean Teachers' Association President, Mario Aguilar, April 2020. | Photo: Twitter/@RepFederalChile

Published 20 April 2020
Opinion

This decision jeopardizes 3,600 000 students, 200,000 teachers, 200,000 assistants, and the administrative workers in schools, academies, and colleges.

Chile's Professors College refused Sunday to resume the educational year in May. The union expressed its disagreement with the Chilean president's administrative decisions.

RELATED: 

Chile Registers 9,252 COVID-19 Cases, With 116 Deaths

Sebastian Piñeira, Chile´s president, announced administrative measures to resume social and economic activities amid the pandemic. Piñera stated gradual retake on productive and public labors April 27. Chilean mandatary also announced professors and students would return to schools. 

Mario Aguilar, the educators’ union president rejected these statements. "We find it outrageous that just when the pandemic is at its peak, (there is) a return to classes. "It is a direct attack on the health of the people and the students," affirmed Aguilar to local news media.

According to the union leader, This decision jeopardizes 3,600 000 students, 200,000 teachers, 200,000 assistants, and the administrative workers in schools, academies, and colleges. All the personnel and learners would interact in facilities and institutions spaces, despite social isolation recommendations to stop the virus spreading.

"WE WILL UNITE TO DEFEND AND PROTECT THE HEALTH" 
If you don't take care of us, we take care of each other, students, parents, teachers, education assistants, school communities and citizenship.


Aguilar expressed the professor’s request to student representatives to not send them to schools until the state guarantees the health of the facilities. According to Chilean educators’ leader, Piñera’s decisions are a response to consortiums and companies' economic pressure.

Mario Aguilar also expressed discontent with public workers returning to labor. As he expressed, this retake on work activities would force one million people to break social isolation and to be vulnerable to the pandemic.

So far, Chile registered 10,088 COVID positive cases, 133 deaths due to the virus and 4,338 recoveries. 

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