Educational Rights and Principles in Chile
Principles and Aims of Education in Chile
Article 1: Scope and Purpose
This law regulates the rights and duties of members of the education community. It sets minimum requirements for each level of education: nursery, primary, and secondary. It also regulates the state’s duty to ensure compliance and establishes requirements and processes for official recognition of educational establishments at all levels. The aim is to have an education system characterized by fairness and quality service.
Article 2: Definition and Types of Education
Education is a lifelong learning process that encompasses different stages of people’s lives. It is intended to achieve their spiritual, ethical, moral, emotional, intellectual, artistic, and physical development through the transmission and cultivation of values, knowledge, and skills. It is part of the respect and assessment of human rights, fundamental freedoms, diversity, multiculturalism, peace, and our national identity. This enables people to lead their lives fully, to live and participate responsibly, tolerantly, with solidarity, democratically, and actively in the community, and to work and contribute to national development.
Education is manifested through formal or regular education, non-formal education, and informal education.
- Formal or Regular Education: Structured and delivered systematically and sequentially. It consists of levels and arrangements to ensure the unity of the educational process and facilitate its continuity throughout people’s lives.
- Non-Formal Education: A training process, by means of a systematic program, not necessarily evaluated. It can be recognized and verified as valuable learning and may eventually lead to certification.
- Informal Education: A process linked with the development of people in society, facilitated by interaction with each other, without the tutelage of a school or educational institution. It is obtained in a non-structured and non-systematic way from the family unit, media, work experience, and generally, the environment in which the person is inserted.
Article 3: Principles of the Chilean Education System
The Chilean education system is built on the basis of rights guaranteed in the Constitution and in international treaties ratified by Chile that are in force, particularly the right to education and academic freedom. It is also inspired by the following principles:
- Universality and Permanent Education: Education must be affordable for all people over a lifetime.
- Quality of Education: Education must tend to ensure that all pupils, regardless of their circumstances, achieve the overall objectives and learning standards defined by law.
- Equity of the Education System: The system will tend to ensure that all students are given opportunities to receive a quality education, with special attention to individuals or groups requiring special support.
- Autonomy: The system is based on respecting and promoting the autonomy of educational establishments in the definition and development of educational projects within the framework of the laws that govern it.
- Diversity: The system must promote and respect the diversity of processes, institutional educational projects, and the cultural, religious, and social diversity of the populations served by it.
- Responsibility: All involved in education must fulfill their duties and be held publicly accountable as appropriate.
- Participation: Members of the educational community are entitled to be informed and participate in the educational process in accordance with current regulations.
- Flexibility: The system must allow for the appropriateness of the process to the diversity of institutional realities and educational projects.
- Transparency: Information about the whole system, including income, expenditure, and academic results, should be available to citizens at the establishment, commune, province, region, and country levels.
- Integration: The system will facilitate the inclusion of pupils of different social, ethnic, religious, economic, and cultural conditions.
- Sustainability: The system will promote respect for the environment and the rational use of natural resources as an expression of concrete solidarity with future generations.
- Interculturalism: The system must recognize and value the individual in their specific cultural context and origin, considering their language, worldview, and history.