Chile: Climbing on Giants' Shoulders: Better Schools for all Chilean Children

Chile has made impressive progress in educational attainment. Yet, despite recent improvements, outcomes, as measured by PISA results, still need to catch up with OECD standards and equity problems should be addressed. One decisive ingredient will be better teachers. Chile should aim to attract qualified individuals to the profession and bolster initiatives to improve initial teacher education and training. A second ingredient will be stronger quality assurance mechanisms. For a long time, Chile has relied to a considerable extent on competition to ensure school quality. But there has been limited success, in part due to very unequal conditions for public and private schools to compete in terms of their ability to select children, their flexibility to employ teachers and in terms of financing. Chile has started to address this by prohibiting the selection of students until 6th grade. The ongoing introduction of a nation-wide quality assurance system based on independent evaluation of results is a welcome complement. Finally, Chile will have to improve outcomes for students with poor results even more than for the rest which would lift the average and improve equity at the same time. The government has recently made important changes to invest more in students from weak socio-economic backgrounds. These extra resources can help to make considerable progress. This Working Paper relates to the 2010 Economic Survey of Chile (www.oecd.org/eco/surveys/Chile).<P>Chili : Un défi de taille : des écoles plus performantes pour tous les jeunes Chiliens<BR>La progression des niveaux d.instruction au Chili est impressionnante. Pourtant, malgre des ameliorations recentes, les resultats . mesures dans le cadre du PISA . doivent encore rattraper ceux des pays de l.OCDE, et il faut aussi s.employer a resoudre les problemes d.equite. Les enseignants auront dans ces domaines un role capital. Le Chili doit s.efforcer d.attirer des personnes qualifiees vers le metier d.enseignant et de soutenir les initiatives visant a ameliorer leur formation initiale et en cours d.emploi. Il faut egalement renforcer les mecanismes d.assurance qualite. Depuis longtemps, le Chili recourt largement a la concurrence pour assurer la qualite des etablissements scolaires, mais cette methode n.a eu que des resultats limites, en partie a cause de regles du jeu tres inegales entre ecoles publiques et privees concernant la selection des eleves, le recrutement des enseignants et le mode de financement. Le Chili a commence a s.attaquer a ces problemes en interdisant la selection des eleves jusqu.a la 6eme annee de scolarite. Le nouveau dispositif national d.assurance qualite, fonde sur une evaluation independante des resultats, est en cours de mise en oeuvre et viendra utilement completer l.ensemble. Enfin, il faudra aider les eleves en difficulte encore plus que les autres si le Chili veut ameliorer les resultats scolaires moyens et renforcer l.equite dans le meme temps. Les pouvoirs publics ont entrepris recemment des reformes d.envergure pour investir davantage en faveur des enfants de familles modestes. Ces ressources supplementaires peuvent contribuer a obtenir des progres considerables. Ce document de travail se rapporte a l.Etude economique de l.OCDE du Chili 2010 (www.oecd.org/eco/etudes/Chili)