Students and teachers return to classrooms

Scores of thousands of Panamanian public education students returned to the classrooms on  Monday, December 4 after the teachers’ unions reached an agreement with the Ministry of Education to end more than a month of the strike, which affected some 800,000 students, to put pressure against the contract between the State and Minera Panamá.

“We recognize the social balance that the teaching unions represent, even in different struggles and achievements throughout history,” said the academic vice minister of Education, Ariel Rodríguez, to the TVN network.

He added, “However, we are finishing a school year and for us the call to return to classes and return students to classes was fundamental.”

Last Saturday, the teachers and the education ministry reached an agreement that puts an end to the strike that began on October 23. The teachers committed to returning to educational centers from Monday until December 29, when the school year ends. Those who work in areas with difficult access will do so gradually, according to the official statement. The agreement also contemplates “the full return of salaries withheld from educators”, a measure taken by the authorities as a way of putting pressure on them to return to the classrooms, and the teaching unions will be included “as observers in the orderly closure process of the mine”, according to the Ministry of Education.

“I’m happy, I missed them (the students), but I was fighting for a just and necessary cause, which was to get the mining company out of Panama (…). I was fighting for them in the street so that tomorrow they can enjoy nature,” teacher Miriam de Vázquez told EFE this Monday from a school in the populous neighborhood of San Miguelito, on the outskirts of the Panamanian capital.

Among the priorities of the Panamanian authorities and teachers are recovering the educational content lost due to the strike as well as allowing students to move on to the next course.

The 2023 school calendar for official and private schools is from March 6 to December 22, 2023. However, due to protests, it was interrupted in public schools while private schools continued teaching, relying some days on the virtual modality.