The education in Ecuador 1980-2007

Abstract

This article examines the situation of ecuadorian education in a time of transition from a State and economy models to another one in the frame of a long and troubled democratic succesion. There have been years that ended up in the deepest social and financial crisis of the twenieth century.

Since the 80’s the state´s role has been slowly weakened and there have been attempts to promote maket´s role. As a matter of fact, neither has the “developist model” died nor the “neoliberal model” was born fully.

Between 1980 and 2007 education, particularly public education suffered a great halting and regression in the middle of reform initiatives that eventually failed. Economical crisis and political instability made difficult every improvement attempt of education that did not became part of strong social, political or productive actors. Public policies and particularly educative policies experienced inconsistency and weakness producing a non structured management. The educative agents faced permanently each other due to the lack of economic resources and agreements.

In these crisis years many proposals and a political will arose which have been implemented since 2007 and follows until current time.