Among the Shambles, Some Hope for Haiti's Schools?

Our recent coverage of Haiti's education system was a bit gloomy; and having just spent six weeks volunteering there, I was fairly saddened by what I saw

But here's some hope that I wasn't aware of: The Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (comprised of Haitian and international officials) has big plans for the country, including a revamping of the education system. While not designed to be publicly-run, per se, a new system, infused with hope and foreign aid, will nevertheless be evaluated, accredited, and partially funded by the government.

Sounds like this might create — at last! — something like greater access to education, at the very least. According to a New York Times editorial, about half of the funding for the first five-year phase and some of the program design will come from, among other entities, the Inter-American Development Bank.

Big promises leveraged include building 625 new primary schools, offering subsidies to families who send their children to newly-accredited schools, and training  2,500 new teachers a year in a redesigned curriculum, with the goal of providing free or nearly-free K-12 education to all Haitians in the next 20 years.

That's a long way to go, of course. But Haiti's school system can really only go up from here, and focusing on building a publicly-funded infrastructure is a great big Step One. In my recent experience, the few schools in operation are still just tarps next to rubble sites,  providing limited hours of schooling to the few kids whose families can afford to buy uniforms and led by the few teachers who can afford to teach for free or for peanuts. I hope that, soon, this will no longer be the case.

Photo credit: Sara Bernard