education expenditures: budget tracking analysis of thirty

THE TRANSPARENCY AND ACCOUNTABILITY PROJECT (TAP)
A JOINT PROJECT OF BROOKINGS AND RESULTS FOR DEVELOPMENT INSTITUTE
EDUCATION EXPENDITURES:
BUDGET TRACKING ANALYSIS OF
THIRTY PARAGUAYAN
EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS
Cynthia Brizuela Speratti
CADEP
June 2008
THE TRANSPARENCY AND ACCOUNTABILITY PROJECT (TAP)
A JOINT PROJECT OF BROOKINGS AND RESULTS FOR DEVELOPMENT INSTITUTE
EDUCATION EXPENDITURES: A BUDGET TRACKING ANALYSIS OF THIRTY
PARAGUAYAN EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS
First Draft for Deliverable A
June 2, 2008
CLAUSE OF NON RESPONSIBILITY:
This report is an internal document produced on demand of the Brookings Institution. Analysis and comments enclosed are
under the full responsibility of its author and do not constitute an official position.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Summary sheet of the Report
Writer: Dr. Cynthia BRIZUELA SPERATTI
Date :
DD/03/YYYY
Organization: CADEP
e-mail : cbrizuela@cadep.org.py
REPORT TITLE
THE TRANSPARENCY AND ACCOUNTABILITY PROJECT (TAP)
A JOINT PROJECT OF BROOKINGS AND RESULTS FOR DEVELOPMENT INSTITUTE
EDUCATION EXPENDITURES: A BUDGET TRACKING ANALYSIS OF THIRTY
PARAGUAYAN EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS
AUTHOR(S)
Cynthia BRIZUELA SPERATTI
COUNTRY
Paraguay
SECTOR OR AREA
Education
MAIN CONCLUSIONS
Name of file : TAP/CADEP-ED08
The budget of the Ministry of Education and Culture is increasing and represent
an appropriate percentage over the GDP.
This budget covers the teachers and employee's salaries
There is lack of transparency in the administrative processes within the MEC.
Assignations of Special assistance programs are also lacking transparency.
LESSONS LEARNT
The standards of quality are not the same to all stakeholders, including that of the
researchers. It must be addressed from the beginning.
When addressing transparency issues people become apprehensive. “Corruption” is still a
taboo issue to cope.
RECOMMENDATIONS
Recommend to the Ministry of Education to define schools as budget units with the
relevant transparency.
Design budget with objectives and stop a system of expenditures based only on request
and political influence.
Strengthen the parent's association through training in their ability to manage their own
budget, design departmental and a national network and become a real interlocutor of the
Ministry.
INDEX
I – OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY ...................................................................................... 5
II - LIST OF ACRONYMS .................................................................................................. 7
III – GENERAL FRAMEWORK AND INTRODUCTION ................................................... 8
III.1 – THE FRAME WORK OF THE STUDY: GENERAL INFORMATION ON
PARAGUAY ..................................................................................................................... 8
III.1.3 – CORRUPTION IN PARAGUAY ....................................................................11
III.1.4 –INTERNATIONAL SUPPORT TO PARAGUAY ...........................................13
IV –METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH ............................................................................14
IV.1 – GENERAL APPROACH .......................................................................................14
IV.2 – IDENTIFICATION OF THE 30 SCHOOLS FOR FIELD INQUEST ....................14
IV.3 – QUESTIONNAIRE USED AT SCHOOL LEVEL .................................................14
V - ANALYSIS ....................................................................................................................15
V.1 – THE FRAMEWORK OF EDUCATION IN PARAGUAY .....................................15
V.1.1 - THE ORGANIZATION OF THE EDUCATION IN PARAGUAY ...................15
V.1.2 - THE STAKEHOLDERS INVOLVED IN THE PROCESS OF EDUCATION ..15
V.1.3 - THE LEGAL FRAMEWORK AND ITS EVOLUTION ...................................17
V.1.4 – GENERAL STATUS OF THE EDUCATION SYSTEM IN PARAGUAY ......18
V.2 – EDUCATION EXPENSES AND BUDGET IN PARAGUAY ................................19
V.3.1 – THE GEOGRAPHICAL TERRITORY INVESTIGATED ...............................20
V.3.2 – VISITING A PRIMARY PARAGUYAN SCHOOL ........................................21
V.3.3 – SCHOOLS BUDGET COMPONENTS ............................................................26
V.3.4 – QUANTIFICATION OF SCHOOL'S BUDGETS ............................................29
V.4 – THE MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND CULTURE ...............................................30
V.4.1 – GENERAL INFORMATION AND ORGANIZATION ...................................30
V.4.2 – THE MAIN DIRECTIONS CONCERNED BY PRIMARY EDUCATION ......30
V.4.3 – GENERAL AND PRIMARY EDUCATION BUDGETS .................................32
V.4.4 - TEACHERS AND OTHER HUMAN RESOURCES ........................................34
V.4.5 – FORMAL AND INFORMAL RULES OF RESOURCES ALLOCATIONS TO
SCHOOLS -THE TRACEABILITY OF THE MINISTRY'S BUDGET ........................35
V.4.6 – EFFICACY AND EFFICIENCY OF THE MEC ..............................................36
VI – GENERAL CONCLUSIONS .......................................................................................39
VI.1 - TRACEABILITY AND TRANSPARENCY OF PUBLIC BUDGET
EXPENDITURE IN PRIMARY EDUCATION ................................................................39
VI.2 - QUALITY OF PUBLIC PRIMARY EDUCATION ...............................................39
VI.3 – CIVIL SOCIETY INVOLVEMENT ......................................................................40
WEAKNESSES ........................................................................................... 41
GENERAL .................................................................................................. 41
PUBLIC RESOURCES ................................................................................. 41
INVOLVEMENT OF CIVIL SOCIETY .............................................................. 41
QUALITY OF EDUCATION ........................................................................... 41
BUDGET TRANSPARENCY ......................................................................... 41
PUBLIC EDUCATION EFFICIENCY............................................................... 41
VII - RECOMMENDATIONS .............................................................................................42
VIII – ANNEXES ................................................................................................................43
ANNEX 1 – BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................................................................44
ANNEX 2 – LIST OF CONTACTS..................................................................................46
TAP - Education expenditures: a budget tracking analysis of thirty Paraguayan educational institutions -First Full Draft - June 2008
ANNEX 3: QUESTIONAIRE FOR FIELD WORK .........................................................47
ANNEX 4: STRUCTURE OF THE PARAGUAYAN EDUCATIVE SYSTEM ...............49
ANNEX 5: MODEL OF OPERATION (ACTION & ADMINISTRATION) FOR
PARENTAL ASSOCIATIONS ........................................................................................50
ANNEX 6: LIST OF SCHOOLS SELECTED FOR THE CASE STUDY.........................51
ANNEX 7: STATISTICALS PORTRAIT OF SCHOOLS ................................................52
ANNEX 8: SCHEMES .....................................................................................................53
ANNEX 9: COSTS OF LIVING AND LINE OF POVERTY IN PARAGUAY ................54
I – OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY
This study takes place in the Transparency and Accountability Project (TAP) from the Brookings
Institution and Results for Development Institute. As mentioned in the call to proposals "the
Transparency and Accountability Project (TAP) supports improved governance in developing countries
by strengthening the mechanisms by which the public can hold governments accountable. TAP focuses
on strengthening the capacity of local civil society organizations (CSOs) to engage in budget monitoring
and analysis and to advocate for improvements in public expenditure priorities, with the goal of
achieving better development outcomes worldwide."
The work is part of a group of twelve studies, run simultaneously in 12 developing countries, with the
common objective "to perform a detailed budget analysis of public expenditures in either health or
education, develop proposals for improving the impact of those expenditures based on the analysis, and
carry out an advocacy program to achieve the desired result".
CADEP is assigned a specific study that focuses on public expenditures in thirty public primary schools
of Paraguay. This analysis is done in order to establish levels of efficiencies in the public expenditure
process. While doing so, the project will also explore quantitative data on efficacy as well as efficiency
on educational quality. In turn it is expected to establish a compelling set of information that will
demonstrate the relevance of transparency and accountability in such processes.
In terms of efficiency we will assess mainly three questions.
- (1) Does the money arrive where it should? This is really budget traceability with expected barriers
or shadows due to bad administrative work (unintentional) and in some cases do to corruption
(intentional).
- (2) Is there efficacy in the school activity (education, food, health and taking care of children)? We
will assess that through qualitative investigation and interviews of the stakeholders.
- (3) Is there a good efficiency of all the system? That means: is the use available budget
optimized? Could one get a better efficacy with the same budget or even less? Which posses
another question: what is the considered budget? The one voted by the parliament or the one
actually spent by the schools for the necessary expenses. Difference is still due partly to inefficacy
of administrative work and also to corruption.
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TAP - Education expenditures: a budget tracking analysis of thirty Paraguayan educational institutions -First Full Draft - June 2008
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TAP - Education expenditures: a budget tracking analysis of thirty Paraguayan educational institutions -First Full Draft - June 2008
II - LIST OF ACRONYMS
ACE
ANDE
BID
BIRF
CADEP
CEPAL
CONEC
CAF
DGEEC
DOEV
ECLAC
FONPLATA
IADB
IRDB
JBIC
MEC
MERCOSUR
SNEPE
TAP
UNESCO
WB
Asociación Cooperadora Escolar = Association of School Cooperators (Parental
Association)
Administracion Nacional De Electricidad = National Electricity Administration
Banco Interamericano de Desarollo (IADB in English)
Banco Interamericano de Reconstrucción y Fomento (IRDB in English)
Centro de Análisis y Difusión de la Economia Paraguaya
Comisión Económica para América Latina y Caribe. ECLAC in English Economic
Commission for Latin America and Caribbean (located in Chile)
Consejo Nacional de Educación y Cultura – National Council of Education and
Culture
Corporación Andina de Fomento
Dirección General de Estadísticas, Encuestas y Censos – the Secretariat General for
Statistics, Inquiry and Census. The official organization of Paraguay collecting data
and providing general statistics.
Departamento de Orientación Educacional y Vocacional
Commission for Latin America and Caribbean (located in Chile) CEPAL in Spanish.
Fondo Financiero para el Desarrollo de la Cuenca del Plata (a regional fund of the 5
countries of the South Cone)
Inter American Development Bank (BID in Spanish).
International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (BIRF in Spanish)
Japan Bank for International Cooperation
Ministerio de Educación y Cultura – Paraguayan Ministry of Education and Culture
Mercado Común del Sur (Common market of the South)
Sistema Nacional de Evaluación del Proceso Educativo – National System of
Evaluation of the Educative Process
Transparency and Accountability Project
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
World Bank
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TAP - Education expenditures: a budget tracking analysis of thirty Paraguayan educational institutions -First Full Draft - June 2008
III – GENERAL FRAMEWORK AND INTRODUCTION
III.1 – THE FRAMEWORK OF THE STUDY:
PARAGUAY
GENERAL INFORMATION ON
III.1.1 – BASIC DATA ON THE COUNTRY
The Republic of Paraguay is a landlocked country in the heart of South America with common frontiers
with Argentina, Brazil and Bolivia. Paraguay, together with Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay, is a member
of the Regional Trade Agreement of MERCOSUR (Mercado Común del Sur). Paraguay’s territorial
surface is 406.752 Km2 divided in two regions by the Paraguayan river: the occidental or Chaco 246.925
Km2 and the oriental regions 159.827 Km2. In turn, the country is geopolitically divided in 17
departments with a total of 221 municipal districts. Its authorities include: at departmental level, the
Governor and the Departmental Committee; and at municipal level, the Mayor and the Municipal
Committee, all elected by direct elections.
Figure 1: Map of Paraguay.
The most populated areas of the country are marked in circles.
According to the last census (DGEEC1, 2002), the total population is 5,946,471. The country possess a
13.6 population density (inhabitants/ Km2) with notorious differences between its two regions: The
occidental region or Paraguayan Chaco has 61% of the total territorial area and holds only 2.5% of the
population (0.5 persons/Km2); in the oriental region the highest concentration of the population is found
DGEE is the official institution in charge of the country’s statistics, inquiries and census is called “Dirección
General de Estadísticas Encuestas y Censo-DGEEC”
1
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TAP - Education expenditures: a budget tracking analysis of thirty Paraguayan educational institutions -First Full Draft - June 2008
in Asunción, the country’s capital, (4,200 persons/ Km2). Nowadays, with a population of more than 6
millions, increasing at an estimated rate of nearly 1.9 % per year, Paraguay is young, with 46 % under
20 years. In 2005, 58.5 % of the population was urban. Paraguay is administratively organized in 17
departments which show high differences in terms of surface, total population and population density.
The main cities of Paraguay are the capital Asunción (1.6 millions inhabitants), Ciudad del Este (220
000 inhabitants) and Encarnación (98 000 inhabitants). From the total population 43.3% live in rural
areas. The young condition of the country is accentuated by the fact that 46 % of the inhabitants have
less than 20 years old. As presented in the official demographical statistics, the active population is
evaluated from 10 years old (it is a fact that children of this age of the poor classes often work).
Chart 1: Some data on the Paraguayan population (millions of individuals)
Total
Men
Women
Total population
6.01
3.04
2.97
Population under 20 years
2.78
1.41
1.37
Population above 10 years
4.57
2.36
2.26
Economically active population above 10 years
2.67
Source: Projection form data of 2002 from the Dirección General de Estadística, Encuestas y Censos, 2006
Paraguay is a poor country as shows its Gross Domestic Product per Capita. The main resources of
Paraguay are agriculture and hydroelectricity, the last one being the main financial resource of the State
that is nationally administered through a public company: ANDE (Administracion Nacional De
Electricidad-National Electricity Administration).
According to the 2007 Permanent Household Survey “Encuesta Permanente de Hogares (EPH)” carried
out by the DGEEC, 35.6% of Paraguayans live in poverty2, that is to say, nearly 2.156.312 inhabitants
(over the calculated 2007country’s population 6.054.96). And over 19.4% (1.172.274) of this poor
population are in extreme poverty.
Chart 2: Main data on Paraguay and neighbouring countries (from CEPAL, 2007)
Total
area
M* ha
Total
Population
2007 M*
Population
growth rate
2005-2010
% of Urban
Population
(2005)
GDP**
2006 M $
Argentina
278
39,4
0.97 %
91.8 %
214 286
Bolivia
110
9.8
2.01 %
64.2 %
11 162
Brazil
851
192.6
1.28 %
83.4 %
1 067 802
Chile
76
16.6
0.97 %
86.6 %
145 841
Paraguay
41
6.1
1.79 %
58.5 %
9 019
Uruguay
18
3.3
0.27 %
91.9 %
19 307
*: M = Millions; **: GDP = Gross Domestic Product, at current market prices
GDP **
growth
rate (2006)
8.6 %
3.8 %
5.3 %
5.3 %
5.5 %
7.5 %
Per Capita
GDP**
2006, $US
5498
1160
5616
8873
1501
5809
One noteworthy characteristic of Paraguay is that the country has two official languages, Spanish and
Guarani, which knowledge and uses are not equally shared within the population. Although Guaraní is
2
The poverty line represents a level of household income just adequate to meet the basic nutritional and non-food
needs of all its members. The extreme poverty line (or indigence) represents a level of household income that can not
adequately cover the nutritional needs of all its members. (173 US$ monthly converted to the nominal exchange rate 2004).
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TAP - Education expenditures: a budget tracking analysis of thirty Paraguayan educational institutions -First Full Draft - June 2008
understood by 90 % of the population, it is mainly used as an oral language in the country side and also
in urban poor and middle class. It is poorly used in a written form, although it is taught in schools as a
second language. Spanish is considered as the "prestigious" language, the language of commerce,
work and international relationships. Guaraní is the language used in most folk poems and songs and
in books and a mixed language between Spanish and Guarani (called Jopara: mixture in Guarani) use
in popular newspapers.
Another notable characteristic of the country is that Catholicism has special status under the 1992
constitution and is the faith of more than 95% of all Paraguayans. However, freedom of worship is
extended to other faiths. Notable among Protestant groups is the Mennonite community.
An overview of the Health System in Paraguay
In June 20, 1992 Congress passed the last and currently implemented National Constitution that in its 68th Article
establishes that the Estate will protect and promote health as a fundamental right of the people. And in its 69
Article establishes that the National System of Health will implement integrated sanitary actions, with policies that
will allow consensus, coordination and complementation of programs with public and private resources.
The real public expenditure in health, for to the Ministry of Public Health and Social Welfare (MSPBS - Ministerio
de Salud Pública y Bienestar Social), has been considerably incremented (583.20% between 1990 and 2006) in
the last decades3. This has been translated into a larger relative weight of this Ministry in the expenditures at the
Central Administration as well as the GDP.
Nevertheless, all these increment in public expenditure has been translated in health services for those who need
most. In Paraguay, the problems of access to health services are part of the reality of the everyday’s life of may
families, especially of those poorer and more vulnerable.
The National Health System has had a rather slow development, although the last couple of years there have
been more participation and collaboration of the local communities and their institutions. But the relationship
between the levels of services provided in each health care centre is scarce.
Paraguay does not have an explicit social policy. The mechanisms of social problem solving are channelled by
various institutions, such as the Ministry of Public Health and Social Welfare, the Ministry of Education, the
Ministry of Justice and Labour, the Secretariat of Social Action, the Institute of Social Prevision (IPS-Instituto de
Previsión Social), the foundation of the First Lady, and the National Institute of Natives (indigenous people).
There are also decentralized entities such as the local governments that have an important the social policies at
local level.
According to the last Annual Household Survey 2006 (DGEEC, 2007)4, only the 18.4% of the population has
health insurance and 81.6% lacks the protection of any insurance. Inside this group of insurance holders, the
major percentage is covered by the IPS.
The provision of health care in Paraguay is based upon three basic sub sectors, which in turn are segmented: (1)
The Public sub sector (MSPBS, the Military Health Providers, the Police Health Centre, the Municipal Health Care
and the Health Clinic of the National University of Asunción); (2) The Private sub sector (united by the private
association of hospitals, clinics and health care centres); (3) The paraestatal sub sector (IPS and the Paraguayan
Red Cross). All of these sub sectors act individually and they are neither related nor involved in any effective
health care system a part of a common policy of the Estate.
3
4
Source: CADEP with data provided by the Minister of Finance 2006.
This is the latest data officially available.
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PARAGUAY; CADEP- Centro de Análisis y Difusión de la Economía Paraguaya
TAP - Education expenditures: a budget tracking analysis of thirty Paraguayan educational institutions -First Full Draft - June 2008
III.1.2 - RECENT HISTORY
After the very long dictatorship of General Stroessner, from 1954 until February 1989, Paraguay started
a democratic transition. It is important to note that on the contrary of Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay,
Paraguay had no tradition of Democracy.
During the dictatorship a way used by the central power to control education was requested from the 20
000 teachers of the country to become members of the Colorado party (the political party of the
government). This was a requirement that enable salary payments.
The 20 of April 2008 opened a new step for the modern history of Paraguay. Supported by a broad
coalition of different left and right parties, a president who was not a member of the dominant "Colorado
Party” was elected. This is an important event for all the public sector in which the Colorado had
systematically consolidated its power for decades, a 62-year grip on the presidency, one of the longestserving political party in the world. The newly elected president will be the first Paraguayan president
since 1946 not to be from Colorado Party.
III.1.3 – CORRUPTION IN PARAGUAY
Paraguay has a bad reputation of corruption. Some data are presented hereunder on the perception of
corruption within the country itself.
The corruption perception index
The Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) is published yearly by Transparency International. The one of
2006 is ranking 163 countries, using data of 2005 and 2006. It aims to express "the degree to which
corruption is perceived to exist among public officials and politicians" and ranges between 10 (highly
clean) and 0 (highly corrupt). It is "a composite index, making use of surveys of business people and
assessments by country analysts".
Chart 3: Corruption Perception Index 2006 for Paraguay and some other countries
Countries
Finland, Iceland, New Zealand
Rank
1
2006 CPI score
9.6
Belgium, Chile, USA
20
7.3
Uruguay, Slovenia, Malta
28
6.4
Brazil, Peru, Mexico, etc
Argentina
Bolivia
Albania, Guatemala, Kazakhstan, Laos, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Vietnam, Yemen, etc
70
93
105
111
3.3
2.9
2.7
2.6
Haïti
Source: Transparency International, 2007
163
1.8
Paraguay appears to be the most corrupted country in the South Cone with a score of 2.6
based on 5 studies. In South America, Ecuador and Venezuela are the only countries with worst scores
(2.3).
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PARAGUAY; CADEP- Centro de Análisis y Difusión de la Economía Paraguaya
TAP - Education expenditures: a budget tracking analysis of thirty Paraguayan educational institutions -First Full Draft - June 2008
The Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) is published yearly by Transparency International. The one of
2008 is ranking 180 countries, using data of 2006 and 2007. It aims to express "the degree to which
corruption is perceived to exist among public officials and politicians" and ranges between 10 (highly
clean) and 0 (highly corrupt). It is "a composite index, making use of surveys of business people and
assessments by country analysts".
Chart 3: Corruption Perception Index 2008 for Paraguay and some other countries
Countries
Denmark, Finland, New Zealand
Rank
1
2007 CPI score
9.4
Chile
22
7.0
Uruguay, Spain
25
6.7
Brazil, Peru, Mexico, etc
Albania, Argentina, Bolivia, Burkina Faso, Egypt, …
72
105
3.5
2.9
Cameroon, Ethiopia, Pakistan, Paraguay, Syria
138
2.4
Myanmar, Somalia
Source: Transparency International, 2008
179
1.4
Paraguay appears to be the most corrupted country in the South Cone with a score of 2.4
based on 5 studies. In South America, Ecuador and Venezuela are the only countries with worst scores
(respectively 2.1 and 2.0).
The perception of corruption within the Paraguayan population:
The results of one national study*
This study was run in 2007* on the same model than two previous in 2004 and 2005. One can notice the
following points:
Main concerns of the population are on the ever rising rate of unemployment and lack of safety while concern
about quality of education occurs only in 14 % of the spontaneous and multiple answers (25 % in 2004). When
people are invited to prioritize the main problem to be solved in the country, only 2.7 % will put education as the
first one. This indicates that the popular pressure on the new government will not be strongly oriented in direction
of education. However, 85 % of people still consider that education is an important problem to be addressed in
the country.
A list of bureaucratic formalities for which bribes can be necessary to be paid is presented. As far as education is
concerned, one can note that the registration of one’s child to a public school requires a bribe in 12 % of the
cases for a current cost of 45 000 Gs (10 $US) always paid to a public functionary.
97 % of the interviewed people consider that their country is corrupted and 40 % that corruption is increasing. The
study shows that even if corruption stays as part of life in Paraguayan the resistance of people to pay bribes is
increasing. 40 % of people advise to denunciate the corrupted functionary while 20 % consider the best way to
solve problems is to pay the bribes.
While police, deputies, senators, central government and political parties are mostly considered as corrupted, the
Church, the media (television, radio, press) and also the teachers have a good image. Nevertheless, the
expectation of improvement of the important role of the teachers in the fight against corruption is high even if the
work they do is mostly considered as correct.
* Encuesta Nacional sobre Corrupción 2007, run by GEO (Gabinete de Estudios de Opinion) for Transparencia Paraguay (in Spanish).
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PARAGUAY; CADEP- Centro de Análisis y Difusión de la Economía Paraguaya
TAP - Education expenditures: a budget tracking analysis of thirty Paraguayan educational institutions -First Full Draft - June 2008
III.1.4 –INTERNATIONAL SUPPORT TO PARAGUAY
As a poor developing country, Paraguay benefits of a continual international support from the major
donors as Inter American Bank of Development, World Bank / International Bank for Reconstruction and
Development, Japan Bank for International Cooperation, European Commission, and of bilateral co
operations with various European or Asian countries.
Considering the data of 2007, the Gross Domestic Product of Paraguay was 11.8 billions of US$. Direct
external financial support to the different governmental entities (Ministries, Secretariats, etc) for the
same year was 1.1 billions US$ equivalent to 9.6 % of the GDP.
Chart 4: Main external financial support to Paraguayan Governmental Entities
Fund Provider
Total amount available
(millions US$)
% of total support (IN
THE TABLE)
Amount effectively
credited/engaged????
(DESEMBOLSADO)
IADB
643,4
56,8 %
312,1
57,3 %
JBIC
BIRF (WB)
308,9
107
27,3 %
9,4 %
183,8
25,1
33, 7 %
4,6 %
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PARAGUAY; CADEP- Centro de Análisis y Difusión de la Economía Paraguaya
% of total engaged (IN
THE TABLE)
TAP - Education expenditures: a budget tracking analysis of thirty Paraguayan educational institutions -First Full Draft - June 2008
IV –METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH
IV.1 – GENERAL APPROACH
The study was conducted by setting in place the following steps:
General documentation and pre-inquest
Identification of the stakeholders involved in the process of primary public education
Definition of a questionnaire and inquest on the field: school's visits
Interviews to different secretariats of the Ministry of Education
Interviews of other stakeholders
Data analysis and summary
Formulation of conclusions and writing of reports
The different steps of inquest and interviews were ran simultaneously, taking into account the data that
was initially considered as necessary as well as the information collected on the field and the new
questions that they generated. A special effort was made to cross-verify various sources for the
subjective information expressed as opinions by the stakeholders.
IV.2 – IDENTIFICATION OF THE 30 SCHOOLS FOR FIELD INTERVIEWS
A semi-random selection of the 30 public primary schools was run so that to represent the diversity of
schools for the following criteria:
Official (public) schools
Urban schools
Size of the school (= number of pupils)
Human development level of the parents and neighbourhood population,
These 30 schools are located in the Central region of the country including the nation’s capital
(Departamento Central y Asunción). Both, the Departamento Central and Asunción are the most
populated region in the country, and it is also the region with the highest agglomeration of public
elementary schools.
V.3 – QUESTIONNAIRE USED AT SCHOOL LEVEL
It is presented in ANNEX 3. The survey on transparency in the specific Paraguayan context of MarchMay 2008 created special interrogations and some apprehensiveness, as it occurred immediately
before and just after the presidential elections which meant a change of power, ending a 62 years
period of power of the same party.
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TAP - Education expenditures: a budget tracking analysis of thirty Paraguayan educational institutions -First Full Draft - June 2008
V - ANALYSIS
V.1 – THE FRAMEWORK OF EDUCATION IN PARAGUAY
V.1.1 - THE ORGANIZATION OF THE EDUCATION IN PARAGUAY
There are three sectors of education in Paraguay: public (público), private supported by the State
(providing teachers´ salary) (subvencionado) and private (privado).
1.
2.
3.
4.
In the Paraguayan educative system (for all three sectors) there are four levels of schooling:
Initial Education - Educación Inical EI (with maternal, kindergarten and preschool being
preschool mandatory). There is a total of 5.549 schools that have this level of schooling, 4.453
of them are public.
Basic or Primary Education – Educación Escolar Básica EEB (with three cycles, each with three
grades). There is a total of 8.296 Schools that have this level of schooling; 7.104 of them are
public.
Middle or Secondary Education – Educación Media EM (with three grades). From the total
number of 2.213 secondary schools nationwide, 1.713 belongs to the public sector.
Higher Education.
Public Schools house 83.3% of the entire Primary School universe in the country and 78.5% at the
Initial level (kindergarten and preschool).
There are 119.128 children enrolled nationwide in preschool, and 93.537of them attend public schools.
At the Primary School level in the first and second cycle there are 913.056 children enrolled and
760.645 are in public schools while in the third cycle of primary school, 257.645 out of the 317.130
enrolled students are in public schools. It is curious to notice here that between the second and third
cycle there is a considerate dropout phenomenon and a definite challenge to universalized education at
this level.
It is also noteworthy that the 7.104 primary public schools are supplemented by only 1.713 secondary
schools nationwide.
The organisation of education is presented in the scheme of ANNEX 4.
V.1.2 - THE STAKEHOLDERS INVOLVED IN THE PROCESS OF EDUCATION
They are represented in the scheme of the next page. Only a short description of each stakeholder will
be provided here before the chapter dedicated to their specific role.
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The Ministry of Education and Culture (MEC)
The Ministry of Education is the regulatory governmental entity that supervises all the educative
processes in Paraguay (Public and Private). Its description will be detailed in chapter V.4.
The CONEC
Defined by law (No. 1 264 art d), the National Council for Education and Culture – Consejo Nacional de
Edcuación y Cultura (CONEC), has as its main objective to periodically evaluate and report to the
Executive and Legislative powers, about the situation and evolution of the National Educative System.
The Parents associations - ACEs
They are local key stakeholders. The parents associations are involved in the management—especially
helping with repairs, and they are supposed to also accompany the curriculum development of each
school. They are officially recognised by the MEC, that provides (or is supposed to) assistance and
guidance to help empower these organizations.
The international support
The Inter American Development Bank (IADB) is the most important international support of the
educative reform process as shown in the next table. As far as primary education is concerned, IADB
supported a 9 years project named "School Alive – Escuela viva" .
Chart 5: Financial Support to the Ministry of Education and Culture – Current status in 2007 –
Founder Program
Starting
Amount
Engaged
%
Millions US$ Millions US$ eng.
Support to Primary Education Reform / Prog.
Fortal. de la Reforma Educación Escolar
Dec 00
40
39,97
99,9
IADB
Básica
Support to Initial Education / Prog.
Mejoramiento de la Educación Inicial y
June 04
23,4
14
60,0
IADB
Preescolar
Support to Secondary Education / Pyto.
Reforma de la Educación con Énfasis en la
June 04
24
17,16
71,5
IRDB
Educación Media
TOTAL OF CREDITS
87,4
71,16
81,4
Support to the National Agency of Ecalaution
and Acreditation of Superior Education /
Fortalecimiento de la Agencia Nacional de
Oct 05
130
Evaluación y Acreditación de la Educación
IADB
Superior (ANEAES)
TOTAL DONATIONS
130
Source: Minister of Finance 2008.
Political parties and syndicates
Political parties are not officially involved in the process of education but it must be underlined here the
specific role of the dominant party of Paraguay "Partido Colorado" which has the power since 1947. In
the time of dictatorship, belonging to this party was necessary to become a teacher (Domingo M.
Rivarola, 2000) and that was one way for the party to ensure its power on the educative system.
Nowadays, it is still a part of the reality, however, there are hiring regulations (a very bureaucratic
selection process) set in place since the beginning of the Educative Reform (1996), but with recent
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(2003) implementation with complains from teachers (used to having ¨system´s godfathers¨ from the
Colorado Party to ease them into the system).
The public companies' support
ITAIPU is a major bi-national (Paraguay – Brazil) public company in charge of the largest hydroelectric
plant that currently exists worldwide. Itaipu has resources allocated to social development support.
Since 2004 these social funds from Itaipu were utilized to support building new infrastructures or
repairing the existing in schools nationwide.
The private supports to education
There are private companies that by request of the Principals or the ACEs are involved in some aspects
of funding repairs, or donating books, or health care assistance to the children.
These school supporters include different types of Foundations, NGOs, Private (wealthy) schools and
universities.
V.1.3 - THE LEGAL FRAMEWORK AND ITS EVOLUTION
The Education reform process started in 1994 and is currently in progress. In 1998, Congress ruled the
General Law of Education that instituted the Educative Reform. Such reform set into practice changes
to the national educative system, particularly related to general education and basic education, as well
as changes in terms of the organization and administration of the system. Also, the ministerial
secretariat changed its name from “Ministerio de Educación y Culto – Ministry of Education and
Worship” to “Ministerio de Educación y Cultura (MEC) – Ministry of Education and Culture”.
The law of 26th of May 1998 n°1264 in its Primary Education as follow:
Article 32 describes:Primary education is obligatory and free of charge in the public schools and this includes
preschool (form the Initial education level). Gratuity will expand progressively to programs of nutritional
complements and school supplies (called the school Kit) to low income families. Gratuity can be expanded to
other levels, institutions or individuals in accordance to budgetary resources.
Article 33 reads: The objectives of primary education will be defined and updated periodically by the pertinent
official authorities, taking into account the philosophy of the educative reform, the needs and the potential of
pupils at this level, as well as the secondary and higher education and the unavoidable conditions of the
education in the (Latin-American) region.
Article 34 reads: Primary education will encompass three cycles organized by areas that will be mandatory and
will have a global and integrated character. The definition of areas and its contents will be determined and
reviewed periodically by the Ministry of Education and Culture.
Article 35 reads: Evaluation of the third cycle of primary education will be continuous and integral. Students that
by the end of the 9th grade have rich the benchmarks of the objectives of their cycle will receive the title of
Graduated Primary School - Graduado en educación escolar básica, which will allow them to access secondary
school. All students will receive an accreditation of the institution in which will be certified the attended years and
the obtained scores in the different areas. Such accreditation will be accompanied by an orientation of the
academic and professional future of the student, that in any case will be prescriptive and that will have a
confidential character.
Article 36 reads: For all students older than sixteen years old that wish to attend primary school a differentiated
curriculum that will respond to their level of instruction can be established.
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V.1.4 – GENERAL STATUS OF THE EDUCATION SYSTEM IN PARAGUAY
From what has been said, one can summarized that the educative system in Paraguay presents its
challenges in terms of efficiency and quality of education.
Politicized school systems
For over 50 years the school system in Paraguay was politicized formally. There were no formal hiring
system to access a post; the only formality required was to belong to the Colorado Party. Currently, this
long exercised practice has become an unsaid rule. And, even though there are currently formal
bureaucratic processes to access a post, those who belonged to the Colorado party (the party in
power), until very recently were given hiring preference.
Just by looking at the details of the budget for Education in Paraguay one can draw the conclusion that
more resources are allocated for paying salaries and that poor resources are therefore planned for other
educative programs. When analysing various indicators of efficiency in Education (registration, retention
and attainment) one can see that there are some accomplishment of the system. However, one can
also see that the results on academic achievements did not improved and in some cases they worsen.
The inappropriate (lack of transparency and very costly) selection process or the assistance programs
such as the nutritional complements and academic kits were very badly managed and highly politicized.
Increase of budget but not according to the needs on infrastructure and pedagogical support to
teachers. The general qualifications of teachers are poor, there is an urgent need to improve the quality
of Teacher’s education, and this constitutes a major challenge in the Paraguayan educative system.
The Paraguayan educative reform has had strong International support. However, the internationally
financed projects often focus on infrastructures rather than on strengthening the quality of education.
According to the National Human Development Report (UNDP, 2003), there are a series of facts that
explain the negative results, despite the important political and administrative changes made in terms of
education in Paraguay. Amongst these facts there are the following: The deficient teacher training, the
bad assignation of public resources, the sub utilization of evaluation instruments of the implemented
policies, and the scarce incentive to study.
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V.2 – EDUCATION EXPENSES AND BUDGET IN PARAGUAY
The public expenditures in Education or more specifically in primary education of Paraguay show
appropriate levels (in consideration to other countries in the region) when considered in percentage of
Gross Domestic Product and are compared to the neighbouring countries. However, an expression in
US dollars per capita (adjusted by purchased power parity) shows the poverty of the means of
Paraguay.
Chart 7: Public expenditures in Education (Source UNESCO : 2005 data)
Argentina
Bolivia
Brasil
Chile
Paraguay
Uruguay
USA
Total public expenditures in education
as a %
as a % of total government
GDP
expenditure
3.8
13.1
6.4
18.1
4.4
3.5
18.5
4.3
10.8
2.6
7.9
5.6
15.3
Public expenditure per student
% GDP per capita $US PPP* per capita
- primary
- primary
11.4
1511
16.2
421
14.1
1152
12.3
1557
12.6
580
7.9
746
22.0
8243
* : total public expenditure per student in the primary level are expressed in US dollars adjusted by
purchasing power parity (PPP) terms.
Chart 8: Level of public expenditures for education in 2005 (Source: UNESCO)
GDP per
capita PPP$
In the late 1980s spending on education was slightly below defence spending, at about 12 percent of
the total budget. The number of schools is insufficient, especially in rural areas, and adequate teaching
resources are scarce everywhere.
In terms of the sectarian composition of the public expenditure, the expenditures in education were the
most important of the last two decades. Educational expenditures have also incremented its
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TAP - Education expenditures: a budget tracking analysis of thirty Paraguayan educational institutions -First Full Draft - June 2008
participation within the total of social expenditures, from 39.9% in 1990 to 48.5% in 2000 and over 50%
for 2005.
V.3 – ANALYSIS OF SOME PRIMARY SCHOOLS DATA
V.3.1 – THE GEOGRAPHICAL TERRITORY INVESTIGATED
The Metropolitan Area, that includes Asunción and its adjacent cities—from the Departamento Central,
were the subject to this study. Here one can find the highest density of population as well as schools.
One can also find the highest contrast in terms of extreme richness and poverty. The Departamento
Central is becoming less and less rural, thus the schools that once were urban, and to date are still in
that category at the MEC’s statistical records, have become semi-urban.
Figure XX shows the geographical distribution of the public schools in Asunción. And in figure XX it
becomes obvious how schools concentrate in the Metropolitan Area.
Figure 2: Map of Public Elementary School distributed in Asunción (capital city)
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TAP - Education expenditures: a budget tracking analysis of thirty Paraguayan educational institutions -First Full Draft - June 2008
Figure 3: Map of public elementary school distributed in the “Departamento Central”
V.3.2 – VISITING A PRIMARY PARAGUAYAN SCHOOL
Surprisingly in all 30 public schools5 that we visited, the people interviewed (parents, school principals
and teachers) showed apprehensiveness in the beginning of the interview process but after one hour
talk, trust began to develop and most asked to go over some of their responses. The answers were very
vague and general in the beginning but after going over their answers there were at ease to express
their opinion.
The infrastructures
Most of the schools are over 20 years old. The average school size is that of 400 students for most
public schools in the Asuncion area. However the actual capacity is only that of about 150 to 250
students at a time.
All the school buildings normally houses “one Institution with two turns or three turns: Morning TurnTurno Mañana, Afternoon Turn-Turno Tarde and Night Turn-Turno Noche” or “two Institution one with
double turns and a different Institution and educational level on the Night turn. Normally the Night turns
have older non traditional students who work during the day and go to school at night; and out of the 30
schools, 28 had the High School (Educación Media) level at the night turn.
5
Refer to ANNEX 6 to find the list.
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PARAGUAY; CADEP- Centro de Análisis y Difusión de la Economía Paraguaya
TAP - Education expenditures: a budget tracking analysis of thirty Paraguayan educational institutions -First Full Draft - June 2008
This posses strain on infrastructure and it certainly shows: malfunctioning bathrooms for over usage,
floor tiles (or some schools without tiles, just bare cement) deteriorated, walls that need to be painted at
least once a year to keep it clean, wore down blackboards (all schools that we visited had blackboards).
The Administrators were deeply concern about infrastructure, every single one interviewed mentioned
that their time is mostly (about 80%) occupied by fixing or trying to fix the school building.
Regardless of size and number of students all the schools interviewed seemed to have the same
financial problems: Lack of budget to pay for infrastructure as well as the necessary pedagogical tools
and support to function at a minimum or just average capacity.
Every single work of infrastructure, either a new construction or just fixing a doorknob, comes through
parental-principal negotiations:
o Donations
o Activities of the parental association
o Principal’s “asking-campaign” to NGOs, enterprises, international organizations, and sporting
clubs amongst others.
o Or parents being directly asked to collaborate in paying these works.
We have found out that in almost all schools visited the building that house the school for the first time
(between 60 and 15 years ago) were donations from traditional families. Some schools started without
being officially recognized until after 5 or 8 years of them functioning as schools. In some other cases,
parents of the community got together and requested to the municipal authorities the land; they also
requested the MEC authorities, and other NGOs, foundations and enterprises some aid to build the
community’s schools house.
Nowadays, and by means of a project financed by the IADB, the MEC builds and repairs existing
infrastructure.
The children
Every school visited has cases of children at risk.
In 70% of them, most of their school population (at least 60%) of children come from some kind of
violent and poor family environment.
We have found that all 30 schools have as pupils who work on streets while they are not in classrooms.
These children often come to school to be away from home (which in most cases home=the streets).
Some public schools (those that are located in a more commercial or residential area of Asunción) have
a higher population of students that come from a lower middle class family, these children have often
parents who work as clerks on supermarkets, or who are construction workers, housekeepers, or
teacher’s children.
One of the schools (República de Chile) has children who belong to three different orphanages and only
10% of their pupils do have a more traditional family setting (who live in poverty and in many cases
extreme poverty).
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The managing team
Each of the 30 school has at least on School Principal, who is often a woman. The administrative team
is composed of one School Principal for each turn, in most cases-23 schools, the same person had both
turns; one secretary for each turn; one vice Principal-17 schools had this post and were the same
person in 15 cases; and in 12 schools there were one technical support post assigned by the
Supervision; 3 schools had on pedagogical coordinator and an administrative assistant post-these were
bigger schools 980 students-populated that served as “head schools” to other two smaller and poorer
ones.
With the exception of three school principals and two vice principals all lacked the ability to make a
financial plan. Principals are in fact teachers who acquired a general responsibility at school's level but
without any special training. They do not manage a school budget but check teacher's presence and
write requests for various expenditures. Needless to say, that the rest of the administrative team did not
have the financial ability as well.
All school principals were not certain on how were the resources assigned by the MEC. 3 “head
schools” functioned as the Supervisory unit to other three smaller schools and they were given some
privileges over administrative matters such as faster answers to furniture repair requests and building
reparation requests to the MEC.
There seems to be a mystery the way schools are selected to be granted the special support-programs
of the MEC: “complemento nutricional”, and “Kit escolar”
In most cases (23 of the 30 schools) the School Principal is the one involved in the financial planning
and fund trusting.
The teachers
We have seen (and the School Principals confirmed) a strange mixture of vocation and devotion to duty
mixed with a high level of incompetence! This incompetence was described as lack of knowledge to
handle disciplinary issues (violence amongst students), or psychological problems of children with
broken homes (main characteristics of the schools visited). The incompetence was also due to the fact
that the training they have received to become teachers were insufficient or lack quality. There were
also some teachers that needed more competence in language related issues (bilingualism/ the Guarani
language / Spanish literature) as well as math and sciences.
Every one interviewed mention the need of training on technology and new pedagogical skills. They all
need continuous education on instructional technology, educational psychology and in different fields of
expertise: mathematics, language and literature, sciences in general.
The principals from every school interviewed mentioned that their biggest problems with new teachers
(those just hired and even those with 4 years of experience) were the self-esteem. There seems to be a
lack of professional identity or self assurance that perhaps has to do with the fact of their poor training
they have received during their teachers’ education program.
Teachers also need:
 Better educative settings (classrooms are poorly equipped: mostly academic chairs
and a blackboard is all that exists; some have one bookshelves or a table as a
teacher’s desk). All the pedagogical decorations such as pictures, audio visuals,
maps, etc, either comes from the parental contribution or the teachers’ creativity.
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
Better salaries.
The parent's associations - (Asociacion Cooperadora Escolar – ACE)
All visited schools have an ACE, in one way or another. They are regulated by a guidebook edited by
the MEC through a 1996 project financed by the IADB. This guidebook is supposed to be one of the
teachers’ resources, because teachers are suppose to be the liaison of the parents to the school’s
culture and more specifically, to their children’s school experiences.
Parents are called to a first meeting by the teachers on the first two weeks of school (at the beginning of
the year). In that meeting each class is called to elect a parent representative that will later be part of
the School association. In order to constitute this association, the School Principal calls the meeting
during the first two months of the beginning of school. The Parental Association, that will cooperate in all
aspects of the school’s need, in constituted at a general assembly.
This process varies from one school to the other. All 30 school principals mentioned the difficulties they
had have to conform this Association, but many of them have said “we need these associations or
otherwise we will not be able to hold the school up”.
In all 30 schools parents pay matriculation fees that are called voluntary fee. The fee is a preset amount
of money that is established by the principal on an estimated basis of beginning of the year needs
(office supplies, chalks, blackboard erasers, paint, some textbooks, and pedagogical support). However,
and taking into consideration that the Principal cannot (it is not allowed by MEC regulations) “touch or
ask” for money – education in free for all, the ACE is the one in charge to request this money from
parents. In cases where parents are extremely poor and cannot pay this fee, then the ACE, together
with the Principal organize fund raiser activities.
The relationship between parent's association and principal are correct or good most of the time. In only
5 of the 30 cases there is very poor relationship between the principal of the school and the parental
organization. In ANNEX 5 one can see a model of the interaction of the ACEs within the educative
community.
The fear to federate parents' associations
As each school of Paraguay has its owns parent's association, generally active and efficient, one can be
surprised that these associations are not further organized and federated at departmental and national level to
obtain a political weight and the power to collect more resources. After a few field visits we asked why to a
mother, an impressive president of a parent's association, in a very poor locality. She answered us that in
Paraguay the fear of creating associations is still alive. When the local community built themselves the school, in
the early 1980's, people had to meet at night, in the darkness, to define their plans as they were considered as
subversives and "communist" despite of their main support from the Church. Today, the parent's associations are
recognized by the Ministry of Education and Culture and have to follow rules but have still no legal status neither
any type of federation.
Some specificity of Paraguayans schools
The Turns. We have already mentioned that Schools have different “Turns” and they are usually
Morning, Afternoon and Night. Of the 30 schools studied, 4 started on the first cycle (grades 1 st, 2nd and
3rd) to experiment with one turn of 6 hours, from 7.30 a.m. to 2.30am (with an hour lunch break in
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between, and during the first tryout year, the MEC provided food for the children as an aid program-a
part of the nutritional complement).
The Bilingualism issue. As mentioned earlier, Paraguayans are somewhat bilinguals—most, at least
80%, understand and speak moderately Guaraní. Guaraní is traditionally an oral language, a language
used also as a “friendship” language—the language used in circles of friends, at home or in informal
gatherings and sharing. There is an estimated 40% of the population that uses Guaraní as their first
language and understand very little of Spanish—Spanish is use for commercial reasons / it is only
“economically functional”. This is also the population with the highest illiteracy rate (or highly functional
illiterates) and Guaraní is mainly oral.
Guaraní is only formally used in the arts and as part of the school’s curricula. The teaching of Guaraní
as a second language has become a controversial issue (amongst educators, researchers and parents).
In rural areas, where Guaraní is the first language it is essential that classes be taught in it, then the
curricular approach of “Guaraní-as-second-language” is not appropriate.
Recurrent concerns identified from the school' teams. The overall themes running across the 30
schools interviewed are poverty and lack of transparent channels of communication between schools
administrators, teachers and parents on one hand and the MEC on the other.
By poverty we mean:
 Poor administrative / financial knowledge
 Poor infrastructures
 Poor organization (administratively and pedagogically)
 Poor pedagogical supports
 Poor teachers’ education and psychological support
 Poor instructional technology
 Poor innovations
 Poor quality of education
 Poor parent-children schooling relationships
 Poor parent-teacher relationships
 Poor teacher-administrators relationships
 Poor teachers-students relationships
By lack of transparent channels we mean:
 Lack of transparency in budget planning by Schools and MEC
 Lack of transparency in budget assignation from MEC to Schools
 Lack of transparency in supplies administration and assignation from MEC to Schools
 Lack of transparency in necessary bureaucratic steps to obtain resources to repair or
build infrastructure
The nutritional complement issue. In 10 of the 30 schools interviewed, parents were upset because
the “nutritional complement: a program commonly known by the community as "el vaso de leche" = "the
glass of milk”, did not have arrive to their schools yet. These schools were interviewed before April 30,
which was the day the MEC officially began the supply to all schools affected by it.
Consulting with MEC officials about the criteria used for selecting schools they have mentioned the
following:
 Schools will be assigned nutritional complement aid when:
o They are in the periphery of Asunción (in a poor neighbourhood).
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o They have a high (more than 50%) of student’s at risk (extreme poverty, orphans, from
violent homes)
Considering the above criteria, one can say that all official schools in the country are candidates for the
assistance. For the ACEs, and the school principals, the only criterion that exists is that a request by the
interested school must be submitted.
Computers at school
9 schools had some kind of “computer lab”. Only in two cases were these rooms appropriate with ten computers
and correct furniture. But one has to consider that these were schools with 400 students.
In a school of a very poor neighbourhood the computer lab consisted on one Computer locked in a cage.
In the other cases there were between two and five computers locked in rooms with no windows. When they were
asked the reason why, the simple response was because it will be harder to get stolen this way.
V.3.3 – SCHOOLS BUDGET COMPONENTS
One can first point out that the terminology of school budget is inappropriate. There is no formal school
budget but various school expenditure and various resources.
The scheme in ANNEX 8 summarized the various expenses of a primary school.
Chaos or politics?
When visiting Paraguayan schools, the first impression is a general lack of support of the State. Going
into details one can be surprised by the heterogeneity of the amount of money received from the
Ministry. In one school, it was possible to obtain the money for important infrastructure building. In
another one, where it appears rapidly that neither the Director, neither the father's association has any
link with the Colorado Party, only the teacher's salaries come from the Ministry.
Functionaries' salaries
The salaries of teachers and school principals the MEC. Since 2003, the salaries are paid in a timely
manner at the end of each month. At school level, salaries are transparent and presented in a document
called “cuadro de personal / personnel’s salary chart”.
It is important to note that the level of monthly salary depends only on the grade of the functionary and
not on its seniority. The annual salary is 13 x monthly salary. The 13 th month is paid in December of
each year as a Bonus (“Aguinaldo”).
Most Schools (approximately 94 % - MEC 2007) have double sessions (doble turno) each day: Morning
sessions / Turno Mañana TM (7 to11 a.m.) and Afternoon sessions / Turno Tarde TT (1 to 5 p.m.).
Salaries are considered on a “session basis”, thus, a school principal or a teacher with double sessions,
will have double salaries.
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TAP - Education expenditures: a budget tracking analysis of thirty Paraguayan educational institutions -First Full Draft - June 2008
Chart 9: Salaries of various functionaries working in primary schools
Grade
Monthly Salary
Annual Salary**
Millions Gs
$ US
Millions Gs
$ US
Principal (one turn)
1,2048
274
15,7
3560
Principal (two turns)
2,4096
548
31,3
7119
Vice Principal (one turn)
1,194
271
15,5
3528
Teacher (one turn)
1,176
267
15,3
3475
Teacher (two turns)
2,352
535
30,6
6949
Cleaning agent
1,0043
228
13,1
2967
* rate considered : 1 $ US = 4400 Gs.
** one year salary = monthly salary x 13 includes a standard one month bonus.
A simple salary of teacher doesn't allow living in the cities but can be considered as acceptable in the
country side, please refer to ANNEX 9.
Replacing a retired teacher takes between 3 to 9 months, it all depends on how organized the School
Administrators are to begin the bureaucratic selection process. First, the Principal must request
permission to run the selection process to the General Secretariat of Administration and Finance and to
the General Secretariat of Primary Education EEB. This request has to go through the Supervision Unit
academically in charge of that School. Most of the time the School has a substitute teacher (who either
volunteers his/her time) covering the retired one, until the selection process is done. This teacher who
volunteers their time usually is the one who, after taking the examination for selection, stays with the
post. In the study, there were at least 9 teachers found in all schools interviewed, in expectation of a
position. They were working without being paid; one teacher had work 4 months before the assignation.
When a teacher gets sick, he or she needs to find a substitute who gets pay by the teacher who got
sick. Teachers have health care provided by IPS (the Institute of Social Pension of the Ministry of
Health).
There are apparently no formal rules for the availability of positions for specialized teachers. On one
hand, there are schools that have a physical training teacher or a dance teacher with a position of
functionary (most of the time these teachers work part time in different schools). On the other, and with
unclear reasons, have none. One could think that this “specialized teacher phenomena” was related to
the school’s population; however, there were schools with over 800 students with no physical education
teacher for example.
We found one School Principal that received only a teacher’s salary and the explanation was that there
was no “open posts” on this category just yet. Even if the difference is low, one can be surprised by this
lack of official recognition.
There are also some schools that have intendant's salaries that are part of the official roster. This is
linked neither to school size nor the location.
In the bigger schools is possible to find a secretary who control teacher's assistance and help the
principal in their work.
Supervisors are not part of the schools' team directly but they clearly represent an important budget
costs to education. There are pedagogical and administrative supervisors in charge of two to ten
schools. Some supervisors only visit schools once a year. The administrative supervisors only control
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TAP - Education expenditures: a budget tracking analysis of thirty Paraguayan educational institutions -First Full Draft - June 2008
signatures on schools rosters (to verify salary acquisition), the involvement in budget management is
limited to signing documents of requests for funding or changes in personnel.
Other salaries
In most of the schools, one or a two salaries are directly paid by the parent's association, being often
their major annual expense. The most common employees are cleaning agent, cooker but sometimes
there are teachers such as Physical Education Teachers, Language (English) Teachers, Music
Teachers.
In one school there was an English Teacher paid by a private company.
Equipment
Academic Kits (notebooks, eraser, pencils and a ruler) do not have a school specific budget, but they
are received by schools that are located in an at risk neighbourhood, although distribution is not
accurate to number of students per school. In this study, every school received their academic kits, but
on request basis (they were incomplete in most cases). The unitary costs of the Kit was not provided by
the MEC.
Other school supplies (chalks, blackboard erasers, construction papers, cleaning supplies, brooms, etc.)
and photocopies are paid by the parental association.
Small Constructions and repairs
They are usually paid by the ACEs and sometimes repairs are done by the parents themselves.
Utilities
In most (not all) schools the utilities (electricity, phone and water supplies) are provided by the
concerning public companies. At the school level nobody know the real costs of these services.
Food and milk
In 2005 nutritional complement consisted in a glass of milk and bread at mid morning or mid afternoon,
and then lunch. Nowadays, it only consists of milk and bread at mid morning or mid afternoon
depending on the turn.
The educational law stipulates that gradually all schools will receive the nutritional complement. All the
schools visited were part of the program but none received the milk and bread on time except the one
that was from the departamento central There was one school that have received the packages of
bread the day they expired. (see V.4.6. Anecdote).
ACEs are nowadays in charge of the lunch for most schools. There are schools that stop the program
allthogher.
Infrastructures costs
Together with the Principal, we (interviewers and school staff) made a list of general basic needs on
supplies and reparation that they undertake normally in one year. And we came to the general
conclusion that on average 600 students - schools need 80,000,000 Guaranies (around 20 000 USD) a
year to cover their basic pedagogical-infrastructural needs.
The MEC only finances the salaries and on demand they provide furniture and / or office supplies as
long as they still exist on storage.
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PARAGUAY; CADEP- Centro de Análisis y Difusión de la Economía Paraguaya
TAP - Education expenditures: a budget tracking analysis of thirty Paraguayan educational institutions -First Full Draft - June 2008
In 80% of the cases the water, electricity and phone expenses are exonerated. There are some schools
that pay their own bills (the parental associations pay the bills).
There are special aid programs financed mainly by BID and IRDB. BID has paid for the entire main
infrastructure repair, constructions of new classrooms for the Initial Education level, library-rooms seen
on the schools visited.
V.3.4 – QUANTIFICATION OF SCHOOL'S BUDGETS
As there is no formal school budget, its quantification can only be obtained through compilation of data
obtained from different sources. One must point out here that none of these data were provided by the
Ministry of Education and Culture. The following table intends to present what would be the full budget
of one example of school in Asunción.
Chart 10: Estimated budget of a primary school of 300 pupils
Millions
Gs
401
2,6
x 1000
US $
91,1
0,6
% total
School's equipment + photocopies
Small repairs
Utilities (electricity, water, phone)
Food – Nutritional complement
1,4
0,3
4,8
40
0,3
0,07
1,1
9,1
0,3
0,1
1,0
8,4
Total annual expenditures
Books
Furniture
450
0,3
2,0
102,4
0,07
0,5
94,5
0,1
0,4
Infrastructures and construction
Total of other expenditures
GRAND TOTAL
23,9
26,2
477
5,4
6,0
108
5,0
5,5
100
Functionaries salaries
Other salaries
84,1
0,6
Paid by
MEC
ACE + private
company
ACE
ACE
Public companies
MEC (75 %) +
parents
MEC
MEC + public
companies
IADB
Source of
estimation
School's director
ACE + School's
director
ACE
ACE
School's director
ACE and others
School's director
School's director
School's director
From the previous table, one can note that:
The school budget is mainly made of salaries and essentially of functionaries' salaries.
Other expenditures are kept at an extremely low level. As far as school's equipment, books,
furniture, etc, are concerned, the school are in a position of survival, allowing just the pupils
seated on old chairs in front of old desks to listen to the teachers. The number of books
available by school is extremely low.
The cost of utilities is not only unknown at the school level but also at the provider's levels.
Neither the ANDE (Electricity public company) neither the ESSAP (Water Company) seem to be
able to identify the school's consumptions and therefore the public costs of school's utilities.
Nutritional complement is received by schools on request and generally the deliveries do not
meet the needs. Comments on nutritional complement delivered by the MEC can be found in
V.4.6. Only a small part of the school currently received nutritional complement form the MEC
despite the intention of the law to generalize it. In the considered school, MEC provides only
milk for half of the requirements. The cost per litter of this milk was estimated as expensive (see
V.4.6) for an annual total estimated to 30 millions of Gs. Bread is bought by the parents (around
10 millions of Gs/year).
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TAP - Education expenditures: a budget tracking analysis of thirty Paraguayan educational institutions -First Full Draft - June 2008
The annual school's budget is therefore mainly based on public resources from the MEC. The
parent's associations do their best but are not in a position to collect enough money to
compensate the lack of public resources.
When constructions were made these last years, it seems that it was always on IADB funding
which is consistent with the very low budget available at MEC for investments (see V.4.3). The
state is therefore the infrastructures despite of the growing numbers of pupils and adequate
buildings.
V.4 – THE MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND CULTURE
V.4.1 – GENERAL INFORMATION AND ORGANIZATION
This ministry is in charge of both education and culture. The MEC budget is the second of the Nation,
after the one of Finance (Ministerio de Hacienda).
As each ministry in Paraguay, the MEC shows an organization chart where several General
Secretariats (Direcciones Generales) are gathered under the responsibility of a Vice-Minister. One can
find 2 to 6 Secretariats (Direcciones) within a General Secretariat.
As far as primary education is concerned, two sets of Secretariats have to be considered:
The ones under the responsibility of the vice minister of Education including General Direction
of initial and primary education, General Secretariat of Educative Development (Dirección
General de Desarollo Educativo), Dirección General de Supervisíon Educativa
The ones directly controlled by the minister among which can be especially considered the
General Direction of Administration and Finance (Dirección General de Administración y
Finanzas), and the one on Planning of Education and Culture (Dirección General de
Planificación Educativa y Cultural).
V.4.2 – THE MAIN SECRETARIATS OF MEC CONCERNED ABOUT PRIMARY EDUCATION
SNEPE: the tool to assess children level
Depending on the General Secretariat of Educative Development (Dirección General de Desarollo
Educativo), the SNEPE (Sistema Nacional de Evaluación del Proceso Educativo = National System of
Assessment of the Educative Process) was created in 1995, in the process of the reform of Education.
The aim of the SNEPE is to develop and applied tools to measure children level in Mathematics,
Language and Science. The SNPE is supported by IADB and World Bank since its creation and doesn't
receive any budget of the MEC apart of the salaries of 16 functionaries (with permanent contracts) and
4 contracted (on yearly basis) employees. The SNEPE has collected a large amount of data yearly and
produced several reports—which unfortunately show poor analysis and lack of data interpretation.
Thus, the results are always expressed through graphs showing means by school, groups of children,
etc., but never explaining or presenting the standard deviations and therefore the statistical significance
of the differences apparently observed. Furthermore, the test models and methodologies differ every
year which makes it impossible to observe any accurate evolution on the children’s performance over a
period of time.
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TAP - Education expenditures: a budget tracking analysis of thirty Paraguayan educational institutions -First Full Draft - June 2008
It is noteworthy that all the tests are written and run in Spanish even if the explanations are often given
in Guaraní.
According to the SNEPE, evaluation processes are not always very welcome in schools as teachers
consider it as a personal evaluation and often argue that children are stressed during the tests and do
not achieve their actual potential.
General Secretariat of Administration and Finance (Dirección General de Administración y
Finanzas)
This office is a key one as it manages the whole set of funds and financial issues of the Ministry. This
office is in charge of the Ministry Human Resources department and it takes care of the recruitment
processes of all functionaries including teachers. They are in charge of planning, implementing and
monitoring all financial programs. They prepare the budget that they latter send to the General
Secretariat of Budget at the Ministry of Finance for consideration, which later on is included in the
Nation’s Budget.
Secretariat General of Basic (Primary) Education (Dirección General de Educación Escolar
Básica)
This office is the one in charge of all the organizational and pedagogical aspects of this educative level
within the Paraguayan System. The work closely with the Supervision Secretariat and they coordinate
and monitor the curricula implementation in all schools nationwide (public and private).
They oversee the evaluation process and take control of statistical data of such processes. In this
aspect they work closely with the SNEPE.
They are in charge of the continuous training of the grade teachers, and are supposed to update
instruction skills as to implement the curriculum of the educative reform more effectively.
Secretariat General of Educative Supervision (Dirección General de Supervisión Educativa)In
December 2000 (Ministerial decree 10 710) the new System of Educative Supervision (in compliance to
the General Law of Education 1 264) was approved, and in it, its new functions are determined. Since
then, the supervision system is conformed of two types of supervisory posts: those supervisors that
provide Administrative Assistance and those who provide Pedagogical Assistance. The Supervisors
support both public and private institutions which, according to the objectives, should allow the MEC to
accomplish the implementation of the educative reform nationwide. One of the main objectives of this
Secretariat is to enhance mechanisms of accountability and transparency of schools educative
processes both, administratively and pedagogically. In doing so, supervisors are also supposed to aid
the solid constitution of the ACEs, considering that parents are major stakeholders in the life of a school
system; and that only good organizations can be efficient and effective.
Since 2005, and with an objective to reach all the schools in the country, this secretariat underwent
structural changes in its organization. This change in structure was translated into the generation of
more administrative posts. The figure of a Departmental Coordinator of the Supervisors was created
and more supervisors to each Department (taking into consideration its population and the numbers of
schools) were added.
Nowadays, there are a total of 18 Departmental Supervision Coordinators, 58 Supervisors of
Administrative Control and Support and 159 Supervisors on Technical and Pedagogical Support. In the
Department of Central there are 11 Supervisors of Administrative Control and Support and 49 on
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PARAGUAY; CADEP- Centro de Análisis y Difusión de la Economía Paraguaya
TAP - Education expenditures: a budget tracking analysis of thirty Paraguayan educational institutions -First Full Draft - June 2008
Technical and Pedagogical Support that respond to a Departmental Coordinator. Asunción has 10 of
Administrative and 20 on Technical / Pedagogical. Their functions are prescribed by the MEC.
The Special Unit of “Escuela Viva” School Alive.
This is a Unit that respond directly to the Vice Minister of Education. The Unit was created to implement
the educative reform with all what it implies into the Secondary school level (Educacion Media).
Originally the program was called Meses, but after changed of administration (in the three changes of
government since the reform began) the program was changed to aid the strengthen the Basic
Education system—primary school level. Since then, 2001, the program is called Escuela Viva. All the
people who work in the unit are paid by the BID, although since 2006 there are permanent functionaries
being trained to continue the program.
Recently, in May 2008 the IADB has approved another credit to complement the USD 44 million with
which the program began. The new credit consists of USD 45 million.
The fist part of “Escuela Viva” (especially since 200) was focused on supporting the betterment and
construction of infrastructure, although there were also support to access, retention and completion of
schooling. There was a big emphasis on the evaluation processes, and the SNEPE was one of the
beneficiaries of the program. The IADB, through donations, cover the costs of the standard evaluation
processes run by SNEPE The results, made public by means of reports, created a new and necessary
instrument to measure students’ competencies to provide feedback to schools’ academic performance.
It is the objective of the second part of this project to enhance the schools’ community-relationships
between parents, teachers, administrators and students; and at the same time improve the
administration of the basic education system.
V.4.3 – GENERAL AND PRIMARY EDUCATION BUDGETS
In terms of financial resources, MEC was the institution with most benefits over the last two decades:
From 1989 to 2000, its expenditures incremented more than 850%, growing from 9,322 millions of
Guaranies to a 79,341 millions. In other words, the MEC passed from representing the 11% of the total
expenditures of the Central Administration to the 22%. With respect to the GDP, MEC’s expenditures
represented 1.2% in 1990, while in the year 2000 it changed to 4.7%.
A big part of this increment has been destined to personal services, which basically includes salaries,
which in turn has permitted re-categorized teaching as a profession. Until 1988 a teacher’s salary was
only one third of that of a regular worker; from 2001 the teacher’s salary surpasses that of a worker.
Nevertheless, a big portion of the increment has been destined to administrative personnel instead of
teachers. Another aspect to be taken into account is the budgetary location of the posts that sometimes
do not coincide with their actual location, because some posts are assigned to an institution but the
person works for another.
The budget of the MEC showed a significant growth these last 4 years (+ 64 % between 2005 and 2008
in current Gs, + 43 % in current $US) which can be interpreted as significant effort of the government
towards education.
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TAP - Education expenditures: a budget tracking analysis of thirty Paraguayan educational institutions -First Full Draft - June 2008
Chart 11: The budget adopted by law of the State and of the Ministry of Education and
Culture
Year
rate US
$/Gs
State budget
Billions Gs
Millions $ US
MEC's budget
Billions Gs Millions $ US
Percentage of
State Budget
2006
5636
21 991
3902
2 250
399
2007
5079
24 614
4846
2 535
499
2008
4 400
27 918
6345
2 986
679
Source: Paraguayan Minsitry of Finance, 2008 (Ministerio de Hacienda - Datos del Sistema
Administración Financiero - SIAF)
10,2
10,3
10,7
Integral de
The execution of the budget is detailed in Chart 11. It is split into three main parts:
(1) The central activities, corresponding to the central expenditures of the Ministry itself,
(2) The action programs line where will be find the school expenditures
(3) The investment budget.
The central activities represent an important part of the budget (19 to 24 %). It is worrying to notice
that the amount allocated these central activities grows faster than the total budget. This can be
considered as a degradation of the Ministry efficiency.
The "action programs" line is made of salaries of teachers and employees in schools or in supervision
units and of other school expenditures. The initial and primary education part is the most important
(64-65 %). Focusing on this 99.7 to 99.8 % of its budget is made of salaries which means that nearly
nothing is left for teaching material, furniture and also nutritional complement which should be provide to
each child, each day.
Therefore the continuous increase of these last four years of the initial and primary education budget
line is explained by salaries growth. The growth in salaries also means a growth in teachers´ population,
and not just an increase in salary rates. This also shows a bigger effort on the part of government
policies to improve the quality of education.
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PARAGUAY; CADEP- Centro de Análisis y Difusión de la Economía Paraguaya
TAP - Education expenditures: a budget tracking analysis of thirty Paraguayan educational institutions -First Full Draft - June 2008
Chart 12: Budget of the MEC (executed/ effectively spent, except for 2008) in millions US$ (Billions Gs)
Budget line / Year
2005
2006
2007
2008
GENERAL BUDGET
Central activities
58
79
113
160
(357)
(447)
(576)
(706)
Action programs
221
276
337
484
(1366)
(1523)
(1711)
(2128)
Investments
16
25
23
35
(97)
(142)
(119)
(153)
Total
295
375
499
679
(1819)
(2113)
(2406)
(2986)
Within Action Programs:
INITIAL AND PRIMARY EDUCATION
Salaries
137
170
213
303
(852)
(959)
(1085)
(1335)
Nutritional complement
1.4
1.6
1.0
2.1
(8.6)
(9.2)
(5.3)
(9.2)
Teaching material
3.0
2.5
2.9
4.8
(19)
(15)
(15)
(21)
Others
Total Initial and Primary education
142
174
217
310
(882)
(982)
(1104)
(1306)
Within investments:
Infrastructures
3
3.8
3.2
4.7
(18)
(21)
(16)
(21)
Exchange rate considered (Gs/$US)
6178
5636
5079
4400
The investments represent only between 5 and 6 % of the total executed budget. It must be underlined
that rate of execution of this line is the lowest (45 to 63 % for the last 3 years), while this rate is between
94 and 99 % for the two previous other budget lines. This shows that the MEC has not only a poor
capacity of investments but also inability to spend the corresponding budgets. Within investments, the
infrastructure line is very small. In fact, most of the investments in school infrastructures completed
these last years were based on international support and in the case of primary schools, on Inter
American Bank funding.
V.4.4 - TEACHERS AND OTHER HUMAN RESOURCES
According to the record provided by the MEC (2007), there is a total of 92 370 teachers paid by the
government in Paraguay. They are distributed as follows:
Initial Education level:
8 641 teachers.
EEB level (in al three cycles): 59 833 teachers
 1st and 2nd cycles :
32 904 teachers
 3rd cycle
26 919 teachers
High School level
29 306 teachers
At a national level, 89% (29 244) of the assigned teachers to the 1st and 2nd Cycles of EEB have a
Teacher’s diploma. There is a 1% that of this population that teaches with only a primary (elementary)
school education, 6% that teaches with a high school diploma, another 1% that have higher education
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TAP - Education expenditures: a budget tracking analysis of thirty Paraguayan educational institutions -First Full Draft - June 2008
level education and a 3% that have education for another field. Only 67,4% (18 138) of the teachers of
3rd Cycle posses an adequate education for the level.
It is particularly important to the objectives of our study to notice the difficulties in tracing efficiency in
budget expenditures in Education in Paraguay. As one can see, data mentioned above, provided by the
MEC differ that of the Ministry of finance presented in the chart below. We were working on tracking
how were the budget calculated for the different subject matters and how were the teachers assigned
these hours, but this task was unsuccessful in reconciling the data: the ones given by the MEC with
those given by the Ministry of Finance.
Chart 13: Number of functionaries of the MEC
Year
2006
2007
2008
a
b
a+b
b
Teachers
82.641
83.305
85.037
Administrative staff
5.683
5.645
5.437
Teachers + admin. staff
88.324
88.950
90.474
Academic Hours6.
3.481.229
3.554.620
3.867.910
Source : Ministry of Finance, 2008, datos del SIAF
V.4.5 – FORMAL AND INFORMAL RULES OF RESOURCES ALLOCATIONS TO SCHOOLS -THE
TRACEABILITY OF THE MINISTRY'S BUDGET
Top-down: starting from the MEC
Teachers and employee's salaries
One of the main goals of this study was to follow the budget chain from the public sources of money
down to the school but stays in fact unachieved. Despite of several meetings with different directors of
the MEC and written requests, no budget by school was obtained from the ministry. Taking into
consideration that salaries are by far the highest expenditure paid by the MEC, specific request of
salaries budget sorted by schools were presented without more success. There might be two possible
non exclusive conclusions:
(1) There is no wish to produce the requested information. It can be intentionally to hide bad
practices or just by negligence.
(2) The information system of the MEC is not able or not easily able to produce the information
sorted by school. This is at least a lack of efficiency showing that the schools are not
considered as management units with their own needs, budget process, expenditures and
control system.
Other expenditures:
Concerning other expenditures than salaries, there was no way in the framework of this study to obtain
any organized information more accurate than the general budget. Available budget for teaching
material, furniture, nutritional complements and infrastructure building or maintain is very restricted.
There don't seem to be any clear ambition to develop these parts of the budget. There are apparently
no plan and no formal rules to affect the amount available to one school or the other. Officially, all
depends on the requests of each school's directors and if they look justified or not. In practice, the key
factors seem to be the political support of the school's director, its own pugnacity and its capacity to wait
during hours for a hearing in the ministry's office.
6
The academic hours. In the third cycle of EEB (7th, 8th, 9th grades) and the three years of EM there are different
teachers for each subject taught. This data is the one that the Iformatic System of Administration and Finance of the Ministry
of Finance utilizes.
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PARAGUAY; CADEP- Centro de Análisis y Difusión de la Economía Paraguaya
TAP - Education expenditures: a budget tracking analysis of thirty Paraguayan educational institutions -First Full Draft - June 2008
As far as the nutritional complement is concerned, the law indicates that it must be progressively set up
for all the pupils. The budget does not show a clear tendency to growth. Various scandals were reported
by the press the most famous being "la galleta de oro" = the golden cookie where cookies distributed to
the children would have been paid 2 to 3 times the standard prices to companies closed from the MEC
deciders. The same kind of story can be found on the milk. This study doesn't allow at all checking
anything of all these denunciation by the press. We were just able to check on the field that everybody
considers these kinds of corruptions as highly possible.
As underlined previously the infrastructure investment budget is especially low and most of the
recent buildings in primary schools appear to have been paid directly on IADB funds. This bank has an
old experience of supporting education in Paraguay and it is interesting to note that the choice was
made to transfer funds directly to parent's association avoiding any transfer through the MEC system. It
still remains not completely clear how were chosen the schools which were supported. The entity in
charge of this choice is fully part of the MEC. We were not able to obtain lists of schools with needs
sorted by level of importance or of emergency.
Down—top: starting from the schools
Teachers and employee's salaries
Each school's director has available a table written by hand (“cuadro de personal / personnel’s salary
chart) of all the teachers and of the other employee salaries who are paid by the MEC. This table can be
considered as a good tool for transparency. As the salaries depend only on the grade and not of the
seniority, it is very simple to build a salaries budget starting from these school data.
We expected therefore to be able to compare the school's salaries table with the corresponding
information within the ministry but never succeeded to get the data from the MEC. We cannot conclude
if there is embezzlement of money on the salaries budget lines but we can conclude there are no tools
for transparency and apparently poor tools of management.
One can notice from most of the school stories of teachers waiting for a position of functionary and who
were working without any payment during months. These kinds of teachers never appear in any table
and in any formal or informal budget.
Other expenditures
When a director is successful in a request of expenditure, he will be able or not to know what is the
corresponding amount of money. In some examples there was a clear credit line for infrastructure
projects especially when the MEC was not able to pay for all the investment. On another hand books,
nutritional complements, teaching materials are often delivered at a school without any document on
their value. This does not allow to a director to know the full public cost of its school.
V.4.6 – EFFICACY AND EFFICIENCY OF THE MEC
This study does not allow evaluating the efficacy and the efficiency of the MEC and we can only make a
few subjective remarks:
In most of the visited offices of the MEC, one is always surprised by the number of functionaries
apparently doing nothing, during at least the time we had to wait for interviews. One can observe that
several functionaries are seated at an empty desk (nor computers, phones neither papers nor any office
tools indicating a workplace).
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TAP - Education expenditures: a budget tracking analysis of thirty Paraguayan educational institutions -First Full Draft - June 2008
As underlined previously, the costs of the central administration are increasing without showing any
improvement at school levels. This is very discouraging, especially after noticing all the needs that
exists in the schools: better and more bathrooms, better chairs and tables, books and pedagogical
support (audiovisual materials), office supplies for the administrators, bookshelves, desks, computers,
printers (for office / administrative and teacher-aid type of work), an IT appropriate setting… and the list
o materials can go on. If it was not for the work and support of the parents and the extenuating job of
fundraising that teachers and principals undergo, schools will be in very bad shape (some would have
already collapsed). The needs for improvement are not only about infrastructure or supplies, but also,
and most importantly on the competences of teachers and principals.
If we add quality to the efficiency aspect of the education system, especially in a school setting from
what was observed and gathered during the study, one can conclude that the system still lacks both at
this moment. Let us consider the MEC’s mission statements and objectives set forth in 1996 (12 years
ago), and are still the ones to date.
MEC’s mission statement and objectives
The MEC sets forth as its fundamental mission to guarantee a quality education with the aim
to contribute the betterment of the livelihood of all in Paraguay. Amongst its main objectives
one can read:
To develop, implement and optimized the Educative Reform at all levels and modalities of the
educative system.
To optimized the use of resources of the MEC
To better the competencies of the human resources
To develop and implement a system of quality management.
To reach all effective levels of communication, internal and external
To promote the development of decentralized processes
To stimulate and develop programs of educative, scientific and technological research
To manage financial and technical, national and international cooperation
To promote the usage of means of communication for social education
To improve the application of follow-up, monitoring and evaluation of the whole system
Many good ideas were put into action and wonderfully designed programs such as “Meses (Programa
de Mejoramiento de la Calidad de la Educación Secundaria)” a secondary education quality
improvement program that later on turn into SNEPE and “Escuela Viva”; or the nutritional compliment
that in the programs’ beginning consisted in breakfast (milk and bread) and a full lunch service, and
nowadays is just the milk and bread; or the academic kit program that in its beginning was a full set with
a textbook included and now they are just four notebooks, four pencils and some crayons or colourpencils for the entire year. All of these programs began with the implementation of the educative reform
in 1996, some like Meses (now Escuela Viva) were financed by the BIRF and then the IADB, or the
Academic Kit program that was financed partly by the BIRF.
These programs changed every time governmental changes occurred: they have changed the people
that worked in them and efficiency of execution began to suffer terribly. None of the MEC’s standards
set forth in its mission statement, nor in its objectives, were yet fulfil and the perception of them in the
interviewed schools is very poor. Many Principals, teachers and parents interviewed believe that these
programs could be better and could really aid them in their educative purposes. However, the way they
37
PARAGUAY; CADEP- Centro de Análisis y Difusión de la Economía Paraguaya
TAP - Education expenditures: a budget tracking analysis of thirty Paraguayan educational institutions -First Full Draft - June 2008
are running now, they represent yet another bureaucratic and incomprehensible task to undergo. Tasks
that they believe, take precious time of the academics (teacher-student-knowledge time). Thus quality is
lacking for all the programs and processes undertaken by each educative institution.
The MEC’s golden bread (the re-run story)7
In 2006 there was a big scandal on the process of adjudication of the bread provider for the nutritional
complement program. The bid process was apparently transparent but amazingly the highest bidder was
adjudicated the job, not only was it strange but to make more suspitious the winner was a close relative of
one the MEC’s officials closely involved in the process. The entire country was talking about the “golden
bread”. The prices of bread in the market (for anybody at the local baker) vary from 2 300 guaranies (50
cents USD) per Kilo—average cheapest to 6 000 (1.2 USD) per kilo—(average more expensive), while the
price of the bread of the winner provider was 9 900 per kilo (this was known after 8 month of
implementation! The worst part of this story is that once again there was a similar problem detected to this
years’ bred provision! Now the bread costs 8 800 per kilo to the MEC and its distribution began three
month after school began.
Getting back to budget numbers, it is interesting to go into some details:
- The 2007 budget of MEC for nutritional complements was of 9.2 billions Gs from which only 5.3 billions
were executed (58 %) which is a concern in itself. Fortunately, in the previous years the rate of execution
was close to 100 % with 8.6 billions Gs in 2005 and 9.2 billions Gs in 2006.
- One can calculate the necessary budget to provide milk and bread everyday to each of the million of
pupils registered in primary schools. Considering food at a standard market price, ¼ litter of milk will cost
500 Gs (2000 Gs/litter) and 250 g of bread will cost 750 Gs (3000 Gs/kg). The total amount by pupil would
be therefore of 1000 Gs/day and of 180 000 Gs/year. To be able to feed one million of pupils, a budget of
180 billions of Gs would be necessary to be compared with the 9.2 billions of current budget (± 5 % of the
needs!). On top of that if the MEC contracts as denounced by the newspaper at 2 to 3 times the standard
market prices, one can imagine the necessary corresponding budget!
- Where does the current limited budget go is not an easy issue to address as no list of school receiving
milk and bread seems to be available at MEC. Around 300 schools in Asunción should be concerned
which means around 300 schools x 150 pupils (in primary levels) = 45 000 pupils x 180 000 Gs =
8,1 billions of Gs which is close to the current budget. If high prices products are delivered by the MEC,
only part of the needs (30 to 50 %?) of the 300 schools can be covered. This makes sense with data from
the field where it seems that a lot of delays occur in deliveries which are never caught up during a school
year, that sometimes just milk or just bread are delivered, etc.
- As a conclusion, this budget of the MEC dedicated to nutritional complement looks like a good example
of lack of transparency, possible high corruption and low efficiency in public education expenditures.
It is however very positive all the improvements on the retention and repetition statistics of the MEC, but
nevertheless, all the bureaucratic and administrative inefficiencies play a detrimental factor to the overall
efficiency in budget tracking as well as in education expenditures.
Corruption in education is a major hindrance to achieving the second Millennium Development Goal of
comprehensive primary school education for all the world's children by 2015. "Corruption is a major
drain on the effective use of resources for education and should be drastically curbed."—World
Education Forum: Dakar Framework of Action (2000).
7
This is a newspaper (abc Color) headline. April 2008.
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PARAGUAY; CADEP- Centro de Análisis y Difusión de la Economía Paraguaya
TAP - Education expenditures: a budget tracking analysis of thirty Paraguayan educational institutions -First Full Draft - June 2008
Inefficient administration of education is very costly to the country, it prevents the poorest to access
quality education (or in many cases to drop out of the system all together) thus having devastating
consequences in all aspects the socio economical life of the country.
VI – GENERAL CONCLUSIONS
VI.1 - TRACEABILITY AND TRANSPARENCY OF PUBLIC BUDGET EXPENDITURE
IN PRIMARY EDUCATION
Budget transparency is defined as "full disclosure of all relevant fiscal information in a timely
and systematic manner" in the OECD Best Practices for Budget Transparency (2005).
Within the limits of this study, one can conclude that the public budget expenditure in primary education
is not transparent and cannot currently be controlled by the civil society.
The general primary school budget of the MEC is published by the Ministry of Finance and is mostly
made of salaries but it was almost impossible to follow it down to the school level and to check if the
salaries listed in the MEC have an exact correspondence on the field. This is surprising especially for
the salaries as each school has available its own personnel's salary chart. The Supervisions all have
copies of these charts by schools, but none have a financial plan for the schools they supervised.
The school is in fact never considered as a budgetary unit with an annual budget, planned, executed,
controlled and reported. Aside form the functionaries’ salaries all the expenditures are never planned
and are part of an annual or perennial budget but are based on a system of requests where all the
political and personal influences seem to play a much bigger role than the rationality of the school's
need. In the absence of budgetary and reporting process the whole system is completely opaque and
neither its effectiveness nor its efficiency can be assessed.
On another hand, the budget of the Ministry of Education and Culture is not associated with a clear
strategic plan with objectives and true indicators for each of its Secretariats. Nothing justifies the
increases of the costs of the central administration of the MEC. For instance, since 2005 the increases
in numbers of administrative staff such as Supervisors made an impact on the budget, but to date it had
not yet prove efficiency in both, academics and finances of the nations’ school system. Many positions
within the central administration but also at the supervisor level do not seem to be clearly justified
considering the executed work and seem to be occupied by people recruited more on their political
belonging than on their professional qualification, sense of responsibility and commitment.
VI.2 - QUALITY OF PUBLIC PRIMARY EDUCATION
Teacher's qualification and the availability of teaching material are the most important current limiting
factors for the quality of the primary education in Paraguay.
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PARAGUAY; CADEP- Centro de Análisis y Difusión de la Economía Paraguaya
TAP - Education expenditures: a budget tracking analysis of thirty Paraguayan educational institutions -First Full Draft - June 2008
Internal evaluation system of the MEC does not lead to clear and operative conclusions which would be
the base of a modernized policy of Education. For instance, it is unclear what are the proper channels to
follow through, when conducting a budget traceability evaluation.
Nevertheless, there are good efforts to produce better statistical analysis. As an example, the General
Secretariat of Educative Planning is organizing and systematising existing data. They design and
publish easy to read publications that are available on the web site for all to see.
However, when it comes to analyzing the impact on quality of the public primary education while
considering the special programs for assistance to educative processes: Infrastructure and pedagogical
support via Escuela Viva, the nutritional compliment program (milk and bread), the academic kit
(notebooks, pencils, ruler, etc.), the conclusion is that no improvements on academic results are
observed. Parents and school principals need support via training to be able to truly support schools´
systems not just as fund suppliers. The nutritional compliment is a bureaucratic and time consuming
activity for the Principals and teachers: supplies came in late and some in bad condition (outdated
bread) and paperwork have to be filled. The academic kit is rather poor and does not cover the
pedagogical needs of student.
Making transparent and quality-based administrative and academic activities for the Paraguayan
Educative System mean eradicating corruption. Curbing corruption in education requires a similar
approach to tackling corruption in other social sectors. National and local governments should work to
increase accountability in educational systems and within the civil service generally. The civil service
needs clear recruitment and career-development rules that are based on merit, with simple and clear
lines of responsibility. Capacities must be built within institutions so that officials can apply existing
regulations.
VI.3 – CIVIL SOCIETY INVOLVEMENT
Civil society is under-empowered at national level to monitor and counter control the public education
system. This seems as a big contrast with the involvement of the parent's association at school level.
Nonetheless, this parental involvement is only as fund raisers—a tiresome activity that hinders the true
potential of these associations.
Budget transparency, while not a goal in itself, is a prerequisite for public participation and
accountability: a budget that is not transparent, accessible and accurate cannot be properly analysed.
Furthermore, with lack of transparency, budget’s implementation cannot be thoroughly monitored and
needless to say that its outcomes are impossible to evaluate.
Proactive information campaigns, carried out at the right time by government or by NGOs, can generate
public interest in monitoring public expenditures in education and thus prevent leakage of funds. We
have become certain that utilizing means as simple and inexpensive as putting budget information on
school notice boards or doors can give a tremendous boost to preventing corruption.
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PARAGUAY; CADEP- Centro de Análisis y Difusión de la Economía Paraguaya
TAP - Education expenditures: a budget tracking analysis of thirty Paraguayan educational institutions -First Full Draft - June 2008
The strongest and weakest points on the public Paraguayan education system and its budget
transparency
WEAKNESSES
STRENGHTS
GENERAL
- School is not effectively free of charge for the
parents who have to paid direct contributions.
- All children have opportunity to access primary
schools.
PUBLIC RESOURCES
- The budget of Education and of Primary Education
- Nearly no State budget available for schools
expressed as a percentage of GDP is within the range
infrastructures and utilities. Bad habit to depend on
of what is observed in the neighbouring countries.
cooperation money on that side.
- -Significant growth of the budget of the MEC and - Low expenditure by pupil expressed as a raw amount
of the primary education.
of money.
- The teachers’ salaries are paid in time.
- Faster growth of the budget of central activities of the
MEC than of the budget directly dedicated to schools.
- Extremely low public budget for investment in schools
as well as for teaching materials, nutritional
complement and furniture.
INVOLVEMENT OF CIVIL SOCIETY
-
Each school has its parent's association.
- Some NGO's active on the field.
Some private companies and foundations
supporting directly schools budgets.
- No legal status for parent's associations.
- No federation of parent's associations.
QUALITY OF EDUCATION
-
Number of teachers apparently appropriate.
Higher retention statistics.
Coverage has extended 3 more years with the
educative reform, thus demonstrates a stronger
educative policy.
- A high percentage of teachers have low or no
qualification for their job. They were selected for their
belonging to the dominant party and not on their
competencies. Training centres of the MEC for
teachers are inefficient.
- Evaluation system of education not conclusive neither
giving strong recommendations.
BUDGET TRANSPARENCY
- Personnel's salary chart available in each school.
- No corresponding information in the MEC: unable to
- Informal chart of school expenditure often available check if there are no "ghost" teachers and employees.
from the school's principal.
- Some teachers waiting for a position stay without
salaries during weeks, even months,
- Apparently, no budget by school at the MEC level.
Allocation of nutritional complements, teaching
material, furniture or infrastructure budget are not
based on needs assessment but on requests and
political influences.
PUBLIC EDUCATION EFFICIENCY
Teachers are generally satisfied with payments on
- Increasing cost and budget share of central
time.
administration of the MEC.
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PARAGUAY; CADEP- Centro de Análisis y Difusión de la Economía Paraguaya
TAP - Education expenditures: a budget tracking analysis of thirty Paraguayan educational institutions -First Full Draft - June 2008
VII - RECOMMENDATIONS
For the School’s Community:
 Support the strengthening of the parents’ associations. Incite them to federate at local and
national level so they can be empowered and take accountability in the educative process of
their children.
 Support and train them in the control of the quality of education.
 Define homogeneous budget framework for school principals and parents associations.
For the Ministry of Education and Culture:
 Set up and publish a strategic plan with objectives and indicators for each Direction. Set up a
systematic external evaluation of its execution involving the civil society and publish the results.
 Design the school as budget units. Build a database of all the public schools with all the basic
information and all the budget lines allocated. Set up and publish a plan of development with
priorities for each school. Produce and publish detailed report of resources allocation to each
school.
 Set up a real transparent budget process with objectives, funds allocations and indicators of
success for each Direction of the MEC. Stop the system of resource allocation based on
individual request and opened to all the political influences.
 Publish an annual report.
 Design and apply a system of teacher recruitment based on qualification and no more on any
political belonging. Introduce external control from the civil society of the process of recruitment.
 Design a plan of training of teachers with a strong external control of its quality of execution.
For the State:
 Establish three or four Educative processes priorities maximum for each academic year on
which to work and address. One of them must be to have more efficient and transparent use of
financial and human resources.
 Carry on with the budget effort for Education.
 Introduce management rigor and transparency rules with a strong external control involving civil
society.
 Create a simple and clear legal status for parental associations and their federations at
departmental and national level.
 Encourage initiatives of the civil society to involve itself in the Education process and its control.
 Strengthen organizations like CONEC and give them sufficient means to play their role.
For the International support:
 Carry on with support to Education reform but with more conditions of transparency and civil
society involvement in its control.
 Support specific projects for developing tools and practices of budget rigor and transparency.
 Support the design of homogeneous budget framework for schools directors and parents
associations. Support training on budget management at school level for principals and parental
associations.
 Support the external evaluations necessary to the process of modernization of the MEC.
 Support the strengthening of parental associations. Incite them to federate them at local and
national level so they can get a real power.
 Support and train them in the control of the quality of education.
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PARAGUAY; CADEP- Centro de Análisis y Difusión de la Economía Paraguaya
TAP - Education expenditures: a budget tracking analysis of thirty Paraguayan educational institutions -First Full Draft - June 2008
VIII – ANNEX
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PARAGUAY; CADEP- Centro de Análisis y Difusión de la Economía Paraguaya
TAP - Education expenditures: a budget tracking analysis of thirty Paraguayan educational institutions -First Full Draft - June 2008
ANNEX 1 – BIBLIOGRAPHY
MEC, Instituto para el Desarrollo Internacional de la Universidad de Harvard. (1999). Paraguay 2020,
Plan Estratégico de la Reforma Educativa, “Enfrentemos juntos el desafío educativo”, 3ª Edición,
Editora Ricor Grafic S.A.
MEC, (2003). “Análisis Cuantitativo de la Evolución Educativa 1990-2001” Programa de Fortalecimiento
de la Reforma Educativa, Escuela Viva Hekokatuva UCP-MEC-BID, MEC- Dirección General de
Planificación Educativa y Cultural.
MEC, (2007). Invertir en la gente, Año 5, Nº 8
MEC, (2007). “Estadística Educativa 2006”. MEC-Dirección General de Planificación Educativa y
Cultural, Asunción.
MEC, Consejo Nacional de Educación y Cultura. (2008). “Ley Nº 1264 General de Educación”.
Asunción.
MEC, Reforma Joven-Jako’ipatékena MEC/BIRF, “Paraguay Educación en cifras 2006”. MECDirección general de Planificación Educativa y Cultural.
CONEC, (2003). “Situación de la Educación en el Paraguay-2003”.
MECES “Manual de Procedimientos escolar. Para las Asociaciones de Cooperación Escolar”. MEC.
Reforma Educativa. Programa de Mejoramiento de la Educación Primaria, UCP, MEC, BID.
MEC, DOEE, SNEPE (1998). “Informe de Resultados Tercer Grado”. MEC. Reforma Educativa.
Programa de Mejoramiento de la Calidad de la Educación Primaria MEC, BID.
MEC, DOEV, SNEPE (1997). “Primer Informe de Resultados Sexto Grado”. Programa de Mejoramiento
de la Calidad de la Educación Primaria MEC, BID
MEC, SNEPE. Reforma Joven, Jako’ipatékena MEC/BIRF. “Informe de Resultados Test Pensamiento
Crítico”. MEC-Dirección General de Desarrollo Educativo.
MEC, SNEPE. (2002), ¿Cuánto aprenden nuestros niños y niñas? 3º grado – 6º grado, “Informe
SNEPE 2001-2002”. Escuela Viva Hekokatúva, Creciendo con la Reforma Educativa.
MEC, Escuela Viva Hekokatúva, Creciendo con la Reforma Educativa. Escuela Viva Hekokatúva,
Desde la Educación Inicial. Desde el aula un espacio abierto. (2005), Nº17. “Las huellas de nuestro
trabajo a través de la evaluación.”
MEC, DOEE, SNEPE (1998). “Informe de Resultados 1998, Tercer Curso”. Programa de Mejoramiento
de la Calidad de la Educación Secundaria. MECES – MEC – BIRF.
MEC, MECES, SNEPE (2001). “Informe de Pruebas Nacionales”. Aplicaciones Tercer Curso 1999,
Sexto Curso 2000. Programa de Mejoramiento de la Calidad de Educación Secundaria, MECES
44
PARAGUAY; CADEP- Centro de Análisis y Difusión de la Economía Paraguaya
TAP - Education expenditures: a budget tracking analysis of thirty Paraguayan educational institutions -First Full Draft - June 2008
MEC – BIRF. MEC, Vice Ministerio de Educación, Dirección General de Desarrollo Educativo, Dirección
de Orientación y Evaluación Educativa.
RIVAROLA, Domingo M. (2000) - La reforma educativa en el Paraguay - CEPAL - SERIE Políticas sociales
N°40.
ROJAS, Flora (2007) Los gastos de cohesión social en Paraguay - Centro Superior de Estudios Matemáticos y
Financieros (CEMAF).
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PARAGUAY; CADEP- Centro de Análisis y Difusión de la Economía Paraguaya
TAP - Education expenditures: a budget tracking analysis of thirty Paraguayan educational institutions -First Full Draft - June 2008
ANNEX 2 – LIST OF CONTACTS
 VICE MINISTER OF EDUCATION AND CULTURE (OF PARAGUAY) – MEC

Marta LA FUENTE, Vice Minister
 INTER AMERICAN BANK OF DEVELOPMENT – IADB / BID

Gustavo CUADRA CHARME – Education Specialist
 CONEC – MEC

Jesús MONTERO TIRADO and other members of the board
 ESCUELA VIVA – MEC
 Ida ESQUIVEL, Program Director and other team members of the unit.
 DIRECCION GENERAL DE ADMINISTRACION Y FINANZAS – MEC
 Raúl RAMÍREZ, General Director
 Juan Ramón EREVIA, Budget Director
 DIRECCION GENERAL DE PLANIFICACION EDUCATIVA – MEC

Eva FLEITAS, General Director
 DIRECCION GENERAL DE EDUCACION ESCOLAR BASICA – MEC
 Lucida MACHUCA DUARTE, General Director and her team.
 DIRECCION GENERAL DE PRESUPUESTOS – MINISTERIO DE HACIENDA

Manuel Acosta, General Director
 SNEPE
 Solamia BURGOS, General Director, and her team.
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PARAGUAY; CADEP- Centro de Análisis y Difusión de la Economía Paraguaya
TAP - Education expenditures: a budget tracking analysis of thirty Paraguayan educational institutions -First Full Draft - June 2008
ANNEX 3: QUESTIONAIRE FOR FIELD WORK
CUESTIONARIO DE VISITA
ESCUELAS PÚBLICAS DEL PARAGUAY
EDUCACIÓN ESCOLAR BÁSICA – EEB
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
Nombre de la Escuela
Año de reconocimiento oficial
Nombre del responsable administrativo (Director/a)
Número de alumnos
EI
1º Ciclo
2º Ciclo
3º Ciclo
a. Turno Mañana
b. Turno Tarde
c. Doble Turno
Total por ciclo
TOTAL DE LA ESCUELA
Número de docentes
EI
1º Ciclo
2º Ciclo
3º Ciclo
a. Turno Mañana
b. Turno Tarde
Total por ciclo
TOTAL DE LA ESCUELA
Pedir la planilla de docentes y verificar turnos (completar formulario de verificación
presupuestaria-Excel preparado por consultor HdC)
Grados de Antigüedad de los docentes
a. Mayor antigüedad
b. Menor antigüedad
Sabemos que los docentes cobran sus salarias en tiempo y forma, ¿desde cuándo ocurre
esto?
¿Cómo se gestiona un nuevo rubro docente?
¿Está contento/a con la calificación de los nuevos y la de los antiguos docentes?
¿Cuenta la escuela con algún docente que aún está esperando ser nombrado en el cargo?
Pedir presupuesto anual general (aunque sea un estimado de gastos) que maneja la ACE
a. Fotocopias
b. Sueldos de profesores especiales (danza, educación física, etc.)
c. Sueldos de limpiadores/as
d. Gastos de reparación
e. Gastos médicos
f. Gastos en útiles de oficina y para las aulas
h. Plomería
j. Electricistas
Verificar si pagan o no utilidades mensualmente
a. Agua
c. Electricidad
e. Teléfono
g. Recolección de Basura ¿qué hacen con la basura?
47
PARAGUAY; CADEP- Centro de Análisis y Difusión de la Economía Paraguaya
g.
i.
k.
b.
d.
f.
h.
TAP - Education expenditures: a budget tracking analysis of thirty Paraguayan educational institutions -First Full Draft - June 2008
14. Verificar cuando se hicieron las últimas grandes reparaciones o construcciones de
infraestructura
a. ¿Cuánto se gastó?
b. ¿Quién financió?
c. ¿Cómo se gestionó?
15. Verificar cuándo se compraron los mobiliarios de la escuela y quién los financió. ¿Cómo se
gestionó el pedido de muebles?
16. ¿Llegan los Kits escolares en forma puntual y para cada niño de la escuela?
17. ¿Recibe su escuela la merienda escolar? ¿Hicieron ustedes alguna gestión para conseguirla?
18. ¿Cómo calificaría Ud. la infraestructura de su escuela?
a. Buena (apropiada a las necesidades pedagógicas)
b. Aceptable
c. Insuficiente
19. ¿Cuenta su escuela con una biblioteca?
20. ¿Son apropiados los baños?
21. ¿Qué tipo de materiales didácticos necesita su escuela?
22. ¿Qué características tienen las aulas? ¿Todos tienen un sitio apropiado para la actividad
pedagógica?
23. Para los padres: ¿Qué tipo de recursos pueden o saben recaudar? ¿necesitan alguna
capacitación en gestión/administración?
24. ¿Qué característica ocupacional tienen los padres?
25. ¿Qué tipo de donaciones gestiona la ACE? Y ¿cuáles reciben?
a. Fundaciones
b. ONGs
c. Otras escuelas (privadas o públicas)
d. Empresas
e. Clubes (de fútbol u otros)
f. Organismos Internacionales (¿cuáles?)
26. Para los docentes:
Grado que enseña:
Años de servicio:
Anos de servicio en la escuela actual:
Si tiene que hacer una capacitación (adquirir nuevas competencias y/o
actualización), qué tipo elegiría y porqué
En cuanto al índice de repitencia:
Cuántos alumnos:
¿Creé que la reforma ha mejorado el nivel académico de los niños? ¿Cómo
y porqué?
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PARAGUAY; CADEP- Centro de Análisis y Difusión de la Economía Paraguaya
ANNEX 4: STRUCTURE OF THE PARAGUAYAN EDUCATIVE SYSTEM
ESTRUCTURA DEL SISTEMA EDUCATIVO PARAGUAYO
Educación
Terciaria
Bachilleratos
4º 5º
6º
2o Ciclo
1º 2º
3º
1er Ciclo
1 2 3
Educación Inicial
SYSTEM
LEVELS
YEARS OLD
EEB no concluida
EDUCACION
INICIAL
1 2 3 4 5
6 7 8
Includes children from
0 to 5 years old.
0–3 Jardín Maternal
7º 8º
9º
3er Ciclo
EDUCACION
ESCOLAR BÁSICA
9 10 11
12 13 14
15 16 17
Examen
Formación
Profesional
Examen
EDUCACION
MEDIA
EDUCACION
SUPERIOR
Youth from 15 to
17 years old.
People from 18 years old
and above.
18 19 20 21 22
Includes children from 6 to 14 years old.
The “Educación Escolar Básica
– Elementary School Education”
is free and mandatory
3–4 Jardín Infantes
4-5 Preescolar
In order to have access to
Professional Education without
having concluded EEB, one must
have 16+ years old and pass a
competency-based examination
ANNEX 5: MODEL OF OPERATION (ACTION & ADMINISTRATION) FOR PARENTAL
ASSOCIATIONS
/ MODELO DE GESTIÓN / ACCIÓN DE LAS ASOCIACIÓNES COOPERADORAS
ESCOLARES ACEs
The ACEs should
cooperate on
infrastructure and on
curriculum &
instruction aspects.
MEC
ACEs
CONCEPT OF
EDUCATION
Concepto de
Educación
SUPERVISORS
Supervisores
PRINCIPALS
Directores
CHURCH
Iglesia
INTERNATIONAL
ORGANIZATIONS
Organizaciones
Internacionales
BID, WB, JICA, EU
FOUNDATIONS,
NGOs,
Fundaciones,
ONGs
TEACHERS
Docentes
COORDINATORS
Coordinadores
ENTERPRISES
Empresas
SCHOOL
Escuela
STUDENT WITH WELLROUNDED KNOWLEDGE
ON COMMUNITY AND
WORLD
ANNEX 6: LIST OF SCHOOLS SELECTED FOR THE CASE STUDY
DEPARTAMENTO
Asunción
SECCION
17
SECCION
12
Asunción
SECCION
14
Asunción
Asunción
SECCION
15
SECCION
15
SECCION
05
SECCION
03
Asunción
SECCION
02
Asunción
Asunción
Asunción
Asunción
SECCION
18
SECCION
10
SECCION
09
SECCION
02
Asunción
SECCION
16
Asunción
Asunción
Asunción
Asunción
Asunción
Asunción
Asunción
Asunción
Asunción
Asunción
Asunción
Asunción
Asunción
Asunción
LOCALIDAD
DISTRITO
SECCION
01
SECCION
03
SECCION
18
SECCION
16
SECCION
02
SECCION
08
SECCION
15
SECCION
04
SECCION
18
SECCION
13
SECCION
12
SECTOR
DIRECCIÓN
TELÉFONO
654
11 PEDRO JUAN CABALLERO
Urbana
Oficial
R.I.6 BOQUERON Y JUAN BAUTISTA RIVAROLA MATTO
606-836
480
121 DR. IGNACIO A. PANE
Urbana
Oficial
33 PDAS. Y RCA. FRANCESA
333-527
PINOZA
516
13 DR. FERNANDO DE LA MORA
Urbana
Oficial
EUROPA ESQ GRECIA Nª 2108
204-998
RECOLETA
563
14 REPUBLICA DE CHILE
Urbana
Oficial
ESPAðA Y SANTA ROSA Nª 1664
661-853
RECOLETA
557
15 REPUBLICA DE PANAMA
Urbana
Oficial
MCAL. LOPEZ Y TORRENI VIERA
643572
DE LAS RESIDENTAS
187
167 CARLOS ANTONIO LOPEZ
Urbana
Oficial
RUTA TRANSCHACO KM. 12 1/2 Nª 2299
292-148
SAN FELIPE
110
18 REPUBLICA DE CUBA
Urbana
Oficial
AVDA. ARTIGAS C/ GRAL. SANTOS Nª 1145
204-872
DE LA ENCARNACION
62
320 ITINA BOGARIN
4865 (15429) CENTRO EDUCATIVO CAMPO
VERDE
Urbana
Oficial
DR. VICTOR E. HAEDO Y 14 DE MAYO
490-860
Urbana
Oficial
AVDA. EUSEBIO AYALA KM 4.1/2
HIPODROMO
10456
SAN ROQUE
355
1 REPUBLICA ARGENTINA
Urbana
Oficial
CERRO CORA Y CONSTITUCION Nª 1167
212-290
MARISCAL FRANCISCO SOLANO
LOPEZ
280
9 ADELA SPERATTI
Urbana
Oficial
AVDA. ESPAðA C/ AYALA VELAZQUEZ Nª 1566
204-713
DE LA ENCARNACION
60
3 REPUBLICA DEL BRASIL
Urbana
Oficial
14 DE MAYO C/ GENERAL DIAZ
449-793
SAN CRISTOBAL
610
DR. LUIS ALBERTO DE HERRERA
503012/15
Urbana
Oficial
Urbana
Oficial
DENIS ROA Y SUCRE Nª 976
MELO DE PORTUGAL E/ MAYOR MARTINEZ Y CPTAN.
ARANDA
673-769
17 REPUBLICA DEL PERU
JARA
120
124 MCAL. FRANCISCO SOLANO LOPEZ
Urbana
Oficial
ENRIQUE SOLANO LOPEZ E/ CONCORDIA Y AMISTAD Nª 103
204-832
TERMINAL
691
142 MARIA FELICIDAD GONZALEZ
Urbana
Oficial
AVDA. FERNANDO DE LA MORA C/ CEDRO
0981 455-609
SAN JORGE
602
1609 REPUBLICA DE BOLIVIA
Urbana
Oficial
CPTAN. MARTINEZ BEN C/ CNEL. ALEJO SILVA
0981 442-381
CATEDRAL
59
2 CELSA SPERATTI
Urbana
Oficial
GRAL. DIAZ E/ CHILE Y ALBERDI Nª 357
BELLA VISTA
262
260 NTRA. SRA. DE LA ASUNCION
Urbana
Oficial
AVDA. VENEZUELA Nª 970
493-890
292-175
/292213
TEMBETARY
552
175 REPUBLICA DE EL SALVADOR
Urbana
Oficial
CELSA SPERATTI C/ CHOFERES DEL CHACO
604443
TABLADA NUEVA
153
1787 SAN VICENTE DE PAUL
Urbana
Oficial
CADETE INSFRAN Y CAPITAN GRAU
SAN PABLO
678
1804 GRAL. PATRICIO ESCOBAR
Urbana
Oficial
NIVACLE C/ ALTO PARAGUAY
556-954
SANTA ANA
499
210 REPUBLICA DE HUNGRIA
Urbana
Oficial
AVDA. PIZZARRO Y 1A.
310-518
ROBERTO L. PETIT
477
1003 CLARA IRMA P. DE CACACE
Urbana
Oficial
333-583
CARLOS ANTONIO LOPEZ
1
421-037
1276 FUND.M.HARINEROS DEL PARAGUAY
Urbana
Oficial
CAPITAN FIGARI E/ 33 Y 34 PDAS.
CMDTE. GAMARRA E/JUAN DE GARAY Y MELO DE
PORTUGAL
DR. RICARDO BRUGADA
112
10 JUAN RAMON DAHLQUIST
Urbana
Oficial
EEUU Y MANUEL GONDRA N° 439
REPUBLICANO
475
1004 DR. LEANDRO P. PRIETO
Urbana
Oficial
GUARANIES Y 4A.
GENERAL BERNARDINO
CABALLERO
289
170 GRAL. MAXIMO SANTOS
Urbana
Oficial
HERMINIO GIMENEZ
204696
142
19 RCA. ORIENTAL DEL URUGUAY
Urbana
Oficial
AVDA. STMA.TRINIDAD Nª 3121
290-345
Rural
Oficial
KM 24 RUTA Nº1 MCAL FRANCISCO SOLANO LOPEZ
Asunción
SECCION
04
SANTISIMA TRINIDAD
Central
J. A.
SALDIVAR
LOCALIDAD A CONFIRMAR
Asunción
ZONA
ROBERTO L. PETIT
Asunción
Asunción
NOMBRE DE LA INSTITUCIÓN
LOS LAURELES
SECCION
01
SECCION
03
SECCION
12
SECCION
09
Asunción
COD.
ITA PYTA PUNTA
8
8799
2400 MONS.JUAN SINFORIANO BOGARIN
422-567
448-547 448110
300-386
0971-268107
ANNEX 7: STATISTICALS PORTRAIT OF THE STUDIED SCHOOLS
Morning Turn
(attend
school from
7.a.m. to
11p.m.)
Full Turn
DOBLE
ESCOLARIDAD
(attend school
from 7.30 a.m.
to 2.30 p.m.)
Nº
School
Nº,
Students
Nº,
Teachers
Nº.
Adminis.
Afternoon
Turn (attend
school from
7.a.m. to
11p.m.)
FT
NT
Night Turn
(attend
school from
7.a.m. to
11p.m.)
MT
AT
1
Carlos A. López
772
27
5
x
x
Kits, Milk, Escuela Viva
2
Celsa Speratti
686
50
9
x
x
Kits, BID
3
Centro Educativo Campo Verde
262
24
5
4
Dr. Fernando de la Mora
685
48
7
x
x
5
Dr. Luis Alberto de Herrera
936
58
8
x
x
x
6
Gral. Máximo Santos
188
26
3
x
x
x
Kits, Milk, Escuela Viva
7
Itina Bogarín
129
22
4
x
Kits, Milk
8
Juan Ramón Dalquisth
404
19
4
x
x
Kits, Milk, Escuela Viva
9
x
x
Kits, Milk
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
Aid-Programs
Milk, Escuela Viva
Kits, Escuela Viva
EM
Escuela Viva
María Felicidad González
430
34
6
10
Mcal. Francisco Solano Lopez
252
24
5
11
Molinos Harineros del Paraguay
350
28
5
12
Nuestra Señora de la Asunción
540
32
6
13
Patricio Escobar
420
33
5
x
x
14
Pedro Juan Caballero
269
27
6
x
x
x
Kits, Milk, BID
15
Rep. De El Salvador
96
10
2
x
x
x
Kits, Milk, BID
16
Rep. Del Bolivia
300
30
5
x
x
Kits, SAS
17
Rep. Oriental del Uruguay
824
48
4
x
x
Kits, Milk, BID
18
República de Argentina
450
19
3
x
x
kits, milk
19
San Vicente Paul
505
23
6
x
x
Kits, Merienda
20
Rep. Perú
913
33
5
x
x
x
Kits, Milk, BID
21
Ignacio A Pane
748
45
8
x
x
x
22
Rep. Hungria
531
32
3
23
Rep. Brasil
650
20
7
Kits, BID
24
Rep. Chile
350
43
7
Kits, Milk
25
26
27
28
29
30
Rep. Panamá
Mons.Juan Sinforiano Bogarin
Clara Irma P. De Cacace
Republica De Chile
Adela Speratti
Republica De Cuba
258
137
870
320
520
1200
21
20
42
26
37
45
4
6
8
4
6
8
x
x
Milk, Escuela Viva
B
Kits, Milk, Escuela Viva
Kits, Milk, Escuela Viva
B
Kits, Milk
Kits, Milk, BID
EM
x
x
x
EM
x
x
x
EM
x
x
x
EM
The number of teachers
reflect only those who
teach 1st through 6th
grade of EEB (taken into
consideration for this
study); from 7th through 9th
grade they have subject
teachers and salaries
differ.
Kits, Milk
Kits, Milk
Kits, Milk, Escuela Viva
Kits, Milk, Escuela Viva
Kits, Milk, Escuela Viva
Kits, Milk, Escuela Viva
Kits, Milk, Escuela Viva
EM= Educacion Media
Secondary School
ANNEX 8:
SCHEME OF VARIOUS EXPENSES IN A PRIMARY SCHOOL IN PARAGUAY
Teacher's salaries
Public
funcionnaries
of the MEC
SALARIES
Principal's salaries
Intendent's salary
Secretary's salary
Other salaries (cleaner, cooker, teacher of English, etc.)
A
N
U
A
L
E
X
P
E
N
D
I
T
U
R
E
S
Academic Kits (notebooks, pencils) (Kit Escolar)
SUPPLIES
Other supplies
SMALL CONSTRUCTIONS AND REPAIRS
Electricity
UTILITIES
Phone
Water
Provided by MEC ("Glass of milk", cookies)
FOOD AND MILK
Others
Provided by MEC
O
T
H
E
R
BOOKS AND OTHER SUSTAINABLE SUPPLIES
E
X
P
E
N
D
I
T
U
R
E
S
FURNITURE
Provided by others
Provided by MEC
Provided by ITAIPU public company
Paid by other sources
Paid by MEC
INFRASTRUCTURE AND BIG CONTRUCTIONS
Paid by other sources
ANNEX 9: COSTS OF LIVING AND LINE OF POVERTY IN PARAGUAY
The monthly cost per capita of the Alimentary Basic Basket (Canasta Básica Alimentaria)—that indicates de total line
of poverty, is 2.5 times higher in Asunción than in the Rural Areas (494.160 versus 196.547 guaraníes respectively).
One can also point out, that on a nationwide average; the Alimentary Basic Basket has a monthly cost by household
(with a 4-members medium) of 1.447.394.
Paraguay, monthly value of the alimentary basic basket in Guaraníes
Per Capita
Per Household
Total Basket
Total Poverty Line
Family Size
(average no of
members)
Alimentary Basic
Basket
Extreme Poverty Line
Total Poverty Line
494.160
489.068
317.433
196.547
4.0
4.3
4.1
4.6
1.079.662
1.158.097
839.398
652.774
1.955.839
2.099.795
1.301.516
910.632
203.658
332.959
Source: DGEEC, Permanent Household Survey 2007
4.3
885.315
1.447.394
Geographic
Domain
Asunción
Alimentary Basic
Basket
Total Basket
Extreme Poverty Line
272.786
269.735
204.725
140.892
Urban Metropolitan
Urban rest
rural
Country
Between 2005 and 2007 the increase of incomes of the extreme poor did not generate relief to their situation do to the
fact that the alimentary goods also increased prices.
Cost of Alimentary Basic Basket on a monthly basis
994.700
Rural
545.831
887.620
1.176.000
Urban rest
704.145
1.044.098
1.176.000
Metropolitan Area
1.017.331
1.429.596
1.176.000
Asunción
1.030.364
1.555.880
0
200.000
400.000
600.000
800.000
1.000.000
1.200.000
Teachers Income
Average Income of extreme poor households
Monthly cost of the Alimentary Basic Basket (per household)
1.400.000
1.600.000
1.800.000
millions of Guaraníes