Introduction

In this chapter we describe and analyze the Chilean educational landscape during the time it has been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, continuing and expanding on a previous analysis carried out following its onset (Bellei et al., 2022). Based on secondary sources (official records, surveys, and studies—including one coordinated by the authors), we paint a picture of policies, schools, teachers, and students during this crucial period. In each case, we have identified what we think are the critical knots that have characterized them. Taken as a whole, our interpretation is that the pandemic affected the very foundations of the regular operating of the Chilean education system and – as a consequence – incited a process of deinstitutionalization. This process has been demonstrated by extreme difficulties of school reopening, teacher absenteeism and mental health problems, and student irregular attendance, learning losses, and behavioral problems. Our analysis suggests that the effects of the pandemic were built on weaknesses previously present in Chilean education and society. Reversing this trend will therefore involve an enormous and persistent effort to strengthen the institutions of the educational field and the teaching profession, and to innovate both in its internal dynamics and in its relationship with society.

The Chilean educational system is highly decentralized, privatized, and socially segmented (Bellei et al., 2022). The Ministry of Education does not have direct authority over the management of public schools, which are administered autonomously by the 350 municipalities. The vast majority of private schools are managed directly by their owners (most of which only have one or two schools), forming a radically fragmented system. School enrollment is concentrated mainly in publicly funded schools (92%). The state provides funding to schools based on the number of students who actually attend classes. Subsidized private schools (56%) are mainly attended by families of middle and low middle socioeconomic status, public schools (36%) are attended by low-middle and low SES families, and non-subsidized private schools (8%) are only attended by the high SES families. School choice for families is not restricted by geography, and parents are free to enroll their children in the school that seems to be the best fit for them – whether that be public or private. This voucher-like system creates a highly dynamic market in which all schools compete for the preferences of families. The Ministry of Education has tried to “guide” this market by requiring students to take an annual, national exam known as the SIMCE test and widely disseminating results to families, schools, and the press. More recently, a performance-based accountability system was created to sanction chronically underperforming schools and provide support to low performing schools.

The COVID-19 pandemic found Chile in the midst of an intense social protest that began in October 2019 and ultimately led to a process of constitutional change that is still underway.Two constitutional plebiscites and a Constitutional Convention were held under strong restrictions on social and economic activity to control and reduce contagion. In our view, social unrest and low popular support for the government undermined its ability to successfully lead the educational system during this tumultuous period of health, social, political, and economic crises (Bellei et al., 2022). Diagram 1 shows some milestones regarding the evolution of the COVID-19 pandemic in Chile. To face the pandemic, several important aspects of the Chilean educational system had to be temporarily modified. Over the 2020 and 2021 school years, the state stopped financing schools according to their students’ attendance and instead allocated them a fixed amount of resources, and suspended the SIMCE test. In addition to this introduction, the chapter is organized as follows. In the next section we describe and analyze the situation of schools during the pandemic, highlighting the difficulties they faced in resuming in-person activities once they were authorized by the government in mid-2020. Then, we analyze the aspects of the teaching profession that we consider critical to quality educational opportunity for students: work absenteeism, work overload, and poor mental health. Following, we analyze student experiences during the distance learning period that have made it difficult to resume “normal” functioning of the Chilean educational system, focusing on mental health problems, school violence, low educational achievement, and the enormous rates of absenteeism and relative disconnection with their schools. Finally, we reflect upon the pandemic’s impact on the deinstitutionalization of the Chilean education system.

A timeline lists the main events during the pandemic in Chile. Some of the milestone events in 2020 are the national curfew, quarantine in metropolitan Santiago, and National Constitutional Plebiscite, and in 2021, vaccination for teachers and school workers, and the end of the national curfew.

Schools and Educational Policies

The beginning of the pandemic in Chile coincided with the start of the academic year in March 2020. The government ordered the closing of all educational institutions and implemented several policies to support distance learning (Bellei et al., 2022):

  • Online pedagogical support for teachers, students, and families (e.g., the webpage “I Learn Online,” which brings together pedagogical material, textbooks, videos, and exercises for all grades and TVEduca, a television channel with educational programs, an educational radio station, and a Digital School Library);

  • Technical support to schools and teachers (e.g., free software, courses, training, and conferences on the use of educational platforms and the use of ICT tools, a curricular prioritization that significantly reduced the compulsory curriculum, and many guides and teaching materials to implement this curriculum)

  • Support focused on students, especially in low income and rural areas: computers, tablets, mobile phones, internet access, and traditional educational materials for isolated areas.

Despite these efforts, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic was particularly severe in the case of Chilean education. The clearest indicator of the pandemic’s impact is the relatively extended period of school closure and ensuing difficulties the system encountered in returning to normal functioning. Figure 3.1 demonstrates that in comparison to its OECD peers (2022), school closures in Chile lasted for the longest period of time. This chapter will address the several factors, linked primarily to political, organizational, and social issues, that accounted for these extended periods of school closure in Chile.

Fig. 3.1
A stacked bar graph plots the number of days of school closure in 27 countries. In 2020, the school closure is the highest in Brazil 1 followed by Costa Rica. In 2021, it is the highest in Latvia followed by Poland and Chile. In 2022, the school closure is the highest in Poland followed by Latvia.

Number of instruction days of full closure of lower secondary schools, excluding school holidays, public holidays and weekends

Full size image

According to our analysis (Bellei et al., 2022), extended school closures were due to poor management by national authorities, marked by contradictory signals towards the educational system and a weak capacity to generate trust among educational actors. During the first and second years of the pandemic, continuous clashes with the teachers’ union resulted in the Ministry of Education’s failure to convince the school population (i.e., families and education workers) that its care, prevention, and health equipment measures allowed a massive and safe return to the classroom. It is likely that this situation was also affected by the climate of high social conflict that has prevailed in Chile. Just before the pandemic, widespread and violent demonstrations triggered a process of constitutional change and exposed the extremely low confidence in political authorities and institutions present across the country. Although this process began at the end of 2019, the debate is alive and well to this day. Although the government tried to reopen schools in mid-2020 (conditional on the health situation of the respective commune), at the end of that school year only 10% of the schools had resumed in person instruction; and in most cases, only for some courses and with very low levels of student attendance (Claro et al., 2022). Thus, in practice Chilean students did not receive in person instruction for the entirety of the 2020 school year. The government then directed local educational and school authorities to plan during the summer to reopen schools at the beginning of the 2021 school year (which in Chile begins in March). This plan to reopen schools in March 2021 was strongly motivated by the then-emerging evidence indicating that prolonged school closures negatively impact children and school systems. This plan was proposed after the creation of an advisory council to reopen schools (which included educational stakeholders and academics) and became the central government policy that year. Given that one of its main focuses was to guarantee the conditions for a safe return, the government increased the budget allocated to school infrastructure by 61%. These resources were granted to schools through open calls to present improvement projects for the adaptation of infrastructure and different means to comply with health protocols and provide security to school communities. It should be noted that many schools cited the lack of appropriate material conditions to face the health emergency as the key reason to remain closed.

Teachers and school staff were prioritized in the national vaccination plan to combat COVID-19 launched at the beginning of 2021. The vaccination of adolescents between 12 and 18 years old began in mid-2021, followed by 6–11 year olds in September and 3–5 year olds in December. 82% of the Chilean school population between 3 and 17 years old was vaccinated by March 2022, marking a successful vaccination campaign. Another two measures implemented to facilitate the school reopening since mid-2021 were:

  • The authorization to keep schools open in all phases of the “step-by-step plan;” given that, until then, schools were prohibited from operating in periods of quarantine or total confinement in their respective commune.

  • The flexibilization of the full school day, which allowed schools to open with reduced working hours.

Nevertheless, school reopening was a slow process; therefore, in September 2021 the Superintendence of Education dictated that all schools were required to resume in-person classes and remain open. However, compulsory attendance for students wasn’t reinstated until March 2022. Only since then were schools not required to maintain online teaching for students at home.

In parallel to the measures promoting in-person classes, during 2021 the government maintained support for remote education implemented in 2020 (Bellei et al., 2022), especially strengthening programs focused on literacy and mathematics. Likewise, it maintained pandemic policies related to curricular prioritization, the suspension of national standardized testing, and flexibility in the use of school funding. Due to high figures of disengagement and school absenteeism observed during the pandemic, the Ministry of Education implemented a nationwide “early alert system”, for the registration and monitoring of students at risk of dropping out, and a “Contact Tool” to reconnect with students who had lost contact with their schools (Mineduc, 2021).

Despite these efforts, large-scale reopening of schools was not achieved. In March 2021, 76% of schools remained closed for in-person classes. Of the schools that the Government allowed to reopen according to health protocols, the majority (55%) decided to remain closed instead (PUC-CIAE, 2021). Moreover, among those schools that reopened at the beginning of 2021, most did so only a few days of the week and with reduced school days. These choices revealed the objective, subjective, and organizational challenges that made the reopening process a significant issue in Chile. By the middle of the school year, June of 2021, 71% of schools were still closed. It is important to note that there was not a policy to prioritize disadvantaged schools nor students in special need for in person teaching; schools opened according to their capacity and students attended based on family decisions.

Although 92% of principals reported hosting in-person classes by September 2021, most schools did not offer those classes regularly and recorded high rates of student absenteeism. As a consequence, the 2021 school year closed in a still critical situation. Although practically all schools (98%) declared to have in-person activities, the school day was partial and instructional time reduced. In December 2021, only 9% of schools had the same school day as before the pandemic; therefore, it was estimated that the duration of the school day actually available for students was just over half (55%) of what it was before the pandemic. Reduced opportunity to learn in school then contributed to increasingly lower rates of student attendance: only 42% of students attended in-person classes at least one day a week, showing that even this reduced-day education was far from being experienced by most students (PUC-CIAE, 2021). In this way, the enormous challenge of guaranteeing regular and massive attendance of students was added to the institutional and organizational complexity of reopening schools.

The beginning of the 2022 school year marked a major return to in-person learning in Chile and coincided with a change in government: By March 2022 (the beginning of the new school year) 99% of schools in Chile were open for in person learning, and the vast majority (88%) were able to resume pre-pandemic school day durations.Footnote 1 Despite this success, student attendance issues persisted: approximately one third of the school population (32%) did not attend classes regularly. To respond to these challenges and pave the way towards relative “normalcy,” the new government launched a Comprehensive Educational Reactivation Policy that proposed a systemic and intersectoral approach to address the main issues facing the post-pandemic educational system: the learning loss, student disengagement, absenteeism and school dropout, and the mental and socio-emotional health and well-being of school communities. The plan introduced a phased temporal approach to respond to immediate effects (2022–2025), to project systemic transformations in the medium term (2023–2025), and to consolidate these transformations (2026 onwards) (Mineduc, 2022). Among the most important measures is the creation of a National Strategy for Strengthening School Coexistence and Well-being, the creation of the National Mental Health Strategy, and National Learning Strategies such as the National Strategy for the Strengthening of Reading and Writing. The plan also includes the strengthening of the “early alert system” and other monitoring systems for students at risk of dropping out; the incorporation of the School and Territorial Program for Re-linking and Accompaniment of Educational Trajectories; a National Plan for Digital Transformation and Connectivity; and a National Infrastructure Plan, aimed at recovering and improving spaces of the public education system. This comprehensive policy is now in its early stages of implementation and has faced financial restrictions linked to the economic crisis caused by the pandemic in Chile.

Teachers

Teacher absenteeism as a key problem of returning to school.

High rates of teacher absenteeism and difficulties reported by schools trying to fill open teaching positions has become a significant challenge to the Chilean education system’s return to in-person, regular, and effective learning. Unfortunately, there are no official census statistics that allow us to precisely measure these problems; however, there are some administrative sources and surveys of school leaders that permit an approximation to the magnitude of the phenomenon.

According to official estimates based on administrative records,Footnote 2 there was an increase of 22% in teaching absences from work due to medical leave during the first half of 2022 as compared to the same period before the pandemic (2018–2019). Given that teacher absences were already considered an important problem prior to the pandemic, this increase is especially significant. The most critical situation was experienced at the beginning of the school year, when the estimated increase in teacher absences from work reached 89% compared to the same month in years prior to the pandemicFootnote 3. Prior to the pandemic, the absence of teachers from work extended on average for 13 days – a figure that increased slightly to 14 days in 2022. According to these same sources, the youngest teachers (under 40 years of age) increased their absence from post-pandemic work in greater proportions (Study Center, Mineduc, 2022).

Surveys of school principals provide additional information to complement administrative records. In May 2022, 19% of school principals indicated that teacher and staff absenteeism was the main problem they had to face during the reopening of schools. By June 2022 this figure had increased to 36% and by September remained at 31% (PUC-CIAE, 2022), making it the most prevalent and persistent problem faced by the Chilean school system (including both private and public schools). In a nation level study of public schools about the contingencies affecting school management, about 40% of school principals reported in 2019 that they had to solve “problems related to the replacement of teachers” at least weekly. In 2022 this problem was reported by about 60% of school principals, marking a significant increase from pre-pandemic levels. This figure includes a corresponding increase from 9% to 25% of school principals reporting having to solve teacher staffing issues daily (Muñoz et al., 2022). Additionally, school principals estimated that in June 2022, 9.2% of the classroom teachers at their schools had resigned, reduced their contract hours, or missed work due to medical leave at the time of the survey. These figures were even higher amongst early childhood educations, whose principals estimated an absence from work of 24.6% in August 2022. Health problems are the most commonly cited reasonfor these absences, with general medical problems (not linked to COVID) accounting for 44% of teacher absences and mental health problems for 13%. Again, these rates were higher amongst early childhood educators, who recorded 66% and 20% in the same categories, respectively (PUC-CIAE, 2022).

Teaching work overload during the pandemic.

Although direct studies have not yet been conducted to explain the recent phenomenon of teacher absenteeism, the studies and surveys carried out during the two most severe years of the pandemic provide valuable information on factors that greatly impeded the return to in-person learning in Chile. Of these, a lack of trust in government and overloaded working conditions for teachers emerged as two of the most salient factors.

Management problems and conflicting messages during the first year of the pandemic created a lack of trust in school administrators and government officials, making the return to in person classes a matter of socio-political conflict. In a national survey carried out in August 2020 by the Chilean Teachers Union, 86% of teachers said they felt insecure and 66% felt fear (College of Teachers, 2020) regarding the possibility of returning to in-person learning. The conflict became politically polarized to the point that a group of parliamentarians presented a constitutional accusation against the Minister of Education for “putting at risk” the health of school communities by trying to force a return to classes without guaranteeing – according to the accusing parliamentarians – the sanitary and working conditions for a safe return. Certainly, on the other hand, working conditions at home were far from optimal for the vast majority of teachers, which was clear from the beginning of the pandemic and recurrently verified by a large set of studies. Given that the conditions of confinement made it very difficult to carry out empirical studies representative of the national situation, we will report several alternative sources to triangulate our data.

One of the first surveys of teachers conducted during the pandemic (“Situation of teachers and educators in the context of the pandemic” Elige Educar, May, 2020) found that 63% of teachers were working “more or much more than before” the pandemic. In the same study, 23% of teachers said they felt very stressed, 62% very worried, and 52% very anxious. In addition, in a survey conducted by a large network of private schools in July 2020, teachers indicated that the emotions they had experienced most frequently included “Anxious”, “Worried” and “Overwhelmed.” 67% reported feeling worried about their own emotional state (“Survey on Distance Education: Students, Parents and Teachers” SIP College Network, 2020). In that same survey, 70% of teachers indicated dedicating “Much more” time to their work than in a usual pre-pandemic working day. Towards the end of the year, another study found that 75% of teachers considered themselves to be working “much more” than their regular working day – indicating that these challenges did not improve over time. Compounding this overwork were educator reports that deficiencies in proper teaching materials – basic supplies, technological equipment, and sanitary conditions – created a particularly uncomfortable working environment (Figueroa et al., 2021).

Poor teacher mental health as an effect of working conditions.

As work time increased and working conditions disimproved, teachers’ mental health began to deteriorate. In an August 2020 study on engagement and exhaustion of teachers with their work, it was estimated that 57% of teachers had symptoms of “total exhaustion” (chronic fatigue, symptoms of burnout at work). This represented a significant increase to the already high figure of 28% of teachers who had reported similar symptoms just four months earlier. 20% of teachers surveyed presented high risks of exhaustion, which suggests that around 3 out of 4 Chilean teachers were experiencing mental health challenges resulting from remote learning conditions during the pandemic. Additional factors contributing to high rates of teacher burnout include a lack of professional development, inadequate conditions for the effective use of technology to conduct classes online, and emotional management challenges during a tumultuous time. The research estimated that 75% of teachers did not have an exclusive space for work at home, with 33% using the dining room and 23% teaching in their own room. In another study held towards the end of 2020, only half of the teachers surveyed (54%) said they had no problem with having a “quiet place of work” at home and instead almost a third (29%) considered this an enormous difficulty to carry out their teaching work at home. Convergently, two-thirds of teachers reported a sense of stress – including 46% whose sense of stress was very high – and 70% of teachers had a very high concern for their emotional state (CIAE-Inclusive Education, EduGlobal, 2020). Similar and in some cases more concerning results were replicated during the second year of the pandemic. In mid-2021, 87% of teachers said they worked longer than their workday, and 61% felt stressed, 43% anxious, and 42% worried (Ed2020 & Ipsos, 2021). Compared with the same survey in 2020, feelings that increased the most among teachers included being stressed (from 49% to 61%) and feeling frustrated (from 17% to 27%). By June 2021, 80% of teachers stated that their “family life has been negatively affected by their teaching work in distance education” (E2020 & Ipsos, 2021). Finally, a smaller study found that 58.3% of teachers suffered from poor mental health after a year of pandemic, with a higher prevalence among teachers at subsidized private schools and those who worked more overtime than the regular working day (Palma-Vasquez et al., 2021).

It is not easy to discern the causes of the mental health challenges experienced by Chilean teachers during the pandemic, but research has made considerable progress in identifying relevant factors associated with the prevalence of this condition. A study that used an index based on instruments validated and adapted to Chile to detect mental health pathologies found that 68.8% of teachers reported mental health problems, including 43.6% for whom the situation was serious and indicative of psychopathologies. This negative mental health situation affected more severely women and younger teachers and no differences were found according to school type – (public/private) suggesting that this is a structural issue that affects the entire teaching profession in Chile (Orrego, 2022). When teachers were asked what they considered the main cause of their discomfort, most identified the imbalance between their personal lives and work, and the overwork caused by the pandemic.

To delve into the causes of this phenomenon, a study investigated the factors that produce psychological distress, conceptualized as a proxy of discomfort/teacher well-being. In the context of the teaching profession in Chile, this would be denoted as a reaction to situations of “constant hypervigilance, impairment of their authority, feeling of incomprehension and overload of tasks” (Cabezas et al., 2022). These can be found at the base of stress and other symptoms of physical discomfort that teachers frequently experience, such as chronic fatigue, loss of voice, body contractures, and more. According to this research, the psychological anguish among Chilean teachers during the pandemic was greater for: women, younger teachers, those who had children or dependents, those who led live online classes instead of recording and sending material to students, those who had less time available for work, those with larger class-size, those with a greater technological means for remote work, and those who worked in non-subsidized private schools. Interestingly, factors typically identified as protective and supportive, such as teamwork or having support from superiors, were not associated with lower levels of distress in this unique context. It seems that a greater overload and excessive labor requirements are potentially linked to more expectations that teachers be digitally available after working hours and weekends. Certainly, identifying the factors that cause teacher mental health problems requires observing the multidimensional interaction of factors that add up to produce them. For example, López et al. (2021a, b) found that teaching experiences at the beginning of the pandemic were more difficult for female teachers who had fewer years of experience and who taught students of lower socioeconomic status – suggesting an intersectionality of these three variables that indicate structural inequality in the Chilean school system. Indeed, there is evidence that traditional Chilean gender norms that inequitable distribute the completion of household chores upon women contributed to this sense of overwork amongst female teachers – especially those who cared for dependents. In an in-depth study of working women in different jobs, Arteaga-Aguirre et al. (2021) argued that women were affected by the “simultaneous double presence in times of coronavirus, which leads women to intensify simultaneity as a strategy to address the different demands.” They mention that female teachers have been particularly affected by this during COVID, given the demands of leading a classroom, attending to students, and working without fixed schedules all while addressing domestic responsibilities (Arteaga-Aguirre et al., 2021). Finally, studies have shown that structural inequalities present across the education system contributed towards mental health declines in Chile. In their study, González and Santana (2022) demonstrate that schools located in contexts of poverty or who were already underperforming were most negatively affected by the onset of the pandemic. Attempts by school leaders to address these issues were impeded by a lack of resources and poor institutional capacity, enabling structural inequality to become “perverse” (González & Santana, 2022). Even prior to the pandemic, Chilean educators were faced with longer workdays and larger class sizes than their peers in other OECD countries. Although recent policies of salary increase and improvement of the professional teaching career have been implemented (Ávalos & Bellei, 2019), these policies have not yet been enough to solve the acute shortage of teachers.

Students

Inequalities in Remote Instruction and Their Effects on Student Learning

As happened in many other countries, the closure of schools that occurred in Chile during the years 2020 and 2021 and -marginally- in 2022, after three years of pandemic, it has become clear that school closures in Chile had various negative impacts on students. Of these, the loss of learning and skills, the increase in non-attendance and abandonment of the school system, and mental health and well-being issues stand out as particularly salient (Ponce Mancilla, et al., 2021). In turn, it is highly likely that the suspension of in-person classes has also created an achievement gap between students in different socio-economic classes, amplifying the inequalities that already existed before the pandemic. In Chile, students belonging to the highest income quintile lost comparatively fewer classes (España, 2022). While students in the public system were closed 72% of the days of the school year measured between October 2020 and October 2021, subsidized private schools remained closed 50% of this time and paid private schools were closed 48% of the time. Technical and vocational schools, which are typically attended by students from more disadvantaged backgrounds, were only able to provide 46% of their standard curriculum – greatly limiting students’ practical learning (Mineduc, 2020a). In 2020, the Ministry of Education estimated that 40% of students in Chile were in a school that had delivered widespread distance learning; however, a strong inequality in the actual reach of distance learning was uncovered when disaggregating this data by levels of socioeconomic status. Schools with higher concentrations of students from high income families were able to reach 89% of their student population through distance learning, while schools with more students from low income families were only able to reach 27% (Mineduc, 2020b).Footnote 4

Given the inequality that existed regarding distance learning administration during the 2020 school year, student participation in daily school activities was highly variable depending on the type of school: public school teachers estimated that only 14% of their students participated in virtual classes versus 81% of private schools without state funding (CIAE, Eduinclusiva, Eduglobal, 2020). In addition, 71% of teachers indicated that their students experiences connection problems when sending information and pedagogical resources (Elige Educar, 2020); and only 1 in 4 teachers estimated that their students were equipped with the necessary resources to participate in distance education in Chile (Fundación Chile, 2020).

According to a longitudinal study with a sample of 16,000 households across the country, 1.2% of students did not receive any online classes or educational material during the pandemic. Also, students with more precarious connections were rarely able to attend live classes with their teachers, and instead received only daily brief educational capsules through social networks such as WhatsApp or email. In fact, 38% of public school teachers stated that they communicated with their students through telephone calls when the connection was poor – a means that was not used in private schools (CIAE, Eduinclusiva, Eduglobal, 2020). On the other hand, students from unsubsidized private schools received 85% of virtual classes with the possibility of interaction with the teacher and their peers, compared to 33% of their peers in public schools (Elige Educar, 2020).Despite all the measures implemented to improve student connectivity, 26% of Chilean students overall – and 33% of students enrolled in public schools – did not have an adequate connection to participate in distance learning activities in August 2021 (PUC-CIAE, 2021). Moreover, the same report estimated that about 8% of students in public schools were not participating in any educational activity. Estimates of students’ disengagement were two to three times higher among schools that remained closed compared to schools that began to implement in-person activities, with students from more disadvantaged contexts being the most affected.

Inequalities in remote learning administration soon resulted in negative impacts upon academic progress, as evidenced by the Comprehensive Learning Diagnosis (DIA) – a tool created by the Education Quality Agency that evaluated the learning of the prioritized curriculum during the year 2020. The results indicate that, between sixth grade and 12th grade, students had achieved only between 47% and 27% of the expected learning in mathematics, and between 48% and 60% of learning achievement in reading. Like attendance data, these results also reveal important gaps between achievement according to varying socioeconomic groups, which tend to increase in the upper grades of secondary education (Agencia de Calidad de la Educación, 2021). Estimates from the same instrument for 2022 were even more dramatic: between sixth and 12th grades, only 8% to 14% of students performed at a satisfactory level in reading, and 1% to 8% in mathematics. Certainly, the 2022 results showed that socioeconomically disadvantaged students performed worse than non-disadvantaged students for both reading and mathematics in all assessed levels (Agencia de Calidad de la Educación, 2022). Considering that this evaluation only includes a fraction of the official curriculum of each grade – which corresponds to the prioritized curriculum – the results are, at the very least, alarming.

The socio-emotional impact of distance learning on student well-being.

In addition to concerns regarding student attendance, equitable remote instruction, and student learning, a number of studies have revealed the toll that distance learning has taken on the social interaction, mental health, and well-being of students in Chile (Díaz et al., 2022). According to a citizen consultation carried out by the Education Quality Agency,Footnote 5 55% of mothers, fathers, and guardians declared that their sons and daughters did not interact with peers during 2020 (Agencia de Calidad de la Educación, 2020). Like attendance and academic data, this figure varied based on school type, with students in public schools feeling the most isolated. Students living in rural areas were especially challenged due to their limited internet connection and lack of access to government or school interventions through devices that required a stable connection.

In addition to the effects of distance learning on academics, the Ministry of Education has given great centrality to the dimension of school coexistence, well-being, and mental health within the Comprehensive Educational Reactivation Policy proposed to face the effects of the pandemic on educational communities. Many studies have reported the way and extent to which the pandemic, confinement, and the suspension of face-to-face classes have affected students. A study conducted in public preschools in Northern Chile found that 52.2% of parents consider that distance learning affected the behavior of their children and 25.4% indicate that it has affected their emotional well-being or mental health. The most common situations included appetite changes, concentration problems, trouble sleeping, and fear of being alone (Alessandri & Turner, 2021). Additionally, 28% of kindergarten children reported feeling bored during the pandemic, while 12% and 13% reported feeling high levels of sadness and anger respectively.

On the other hand, an evaluation of socio-emotional conditions carried out in a sample of students between 10- and 18-years old living in poor communes of the Metropolitan Region of Santiago, found that 52% of students experienced negative emotions such as fear, worry, and loneliness during 2020 (Rojas-Andrade et al., 2021). In the same vein, a sample of high school students evaluated by Rodríguez-Rivas et al. (2021) indicated that a particularly affected aspect in 2020 was the mood of adolescents who presented low levels of energy, happiness, and confidence and high levels of nervousness. Likewise, the results of the Comprehensive Learning Diagnosis (DIA) referring to socio-emotional well-being showed that 55% of high school students reported feeling bored during the year 2020, while 40% declared feeling short-tempered or angry, and 54% experienced a lessened desire to do things (de Calidad de la Educación, 2021). Students’ mental health issues became even more apparent once they returned to in-person classes. According to a national survey conducted during the first semester of 2022, 85% of high-school principals reported that their students’ well-being and mental health had worsened as compared to 2019; this figure was around 70% among primary school principals and 58% for pre-school principals (PUC-CIAE, 2022).

It should be noted that even before the pandemic the incidence of mental health problems and socio-emotional well-being in children and adolescents already reached worrying figures in Chile. A 2012 study of students between 4 and 18 years old found that psychiatric disorders and psychosocial disabilities reached 22.5%, with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder along with anxiety disorder being the most common (De la Barra et al., 2012). In comparative terms, a 2011 study that measured behavioral and emotional problems in preschoolers from 24 countries found that Chile’s average score in the total problems measured was significantly higher than that of the remaining 23 countries.The study also found that Chilean children exhibited the highest prevalence in several categories including hyperactivity, aggressiveness, and attention deficit. While globally 15% of preschoolers have some of these problems, in Chile that figure rises to 25%. Likewise, while depression and anxiety reach 5% of children under 6 years old globally, it reaches between 12% and 16% among Chilean children (Rescorla et al., 2011). In this context, the pandemic has exacerbated and deepened problems that were already entrenched in Chilean youth.

Since the gradual return to in-person education in mid-2021, the problems of mental health and well-being of students manifested in problems of coexistence, aggression, and violence between peers and adults within schools. Almost 70% of the complaints received by the Superintendent of Education corresponded to problems of coexistence in 2022. Within these a third corresponded to complaints of mistreatment of students, which increased by 15% compared to 2018. In fact, according to school principals, issues of coexistence, poor discipline, and violence among students were the main problems the school faced during 2022 in about a third of the schools nationally. 30% of school principals estimated that the level of violence among students was significantly higher than in 2019, (PUC-CIAE, 2022). It is important to emphasize that high levels of disciplinary problems and students’ violence were reported by public and private schools alike, implying a generalized problem in the Chilean school system across social classes.

The impact of distance learning on student attendance and school dropout.

As students have faced continued challenges regarding access to learning, academic progress, and socio-emotional well-being, the rates of chronic absenteeism and school dropout have increased dramatically across the Chilean education system. As mentioned, the return to in-person classes by children and young people has been slow and gradual. For example, despite multiple efforts to promote school attendance, the students who regularly attended in-person classes during November 2021 represented only 49% of the total capacity of the school system. This figure was significantly higher for paid private schools than for publicly funded schools (November Report, 2021). According to official data, the national average school attendance during 2022 has been 83%, or 6.7 percentage points lower than in 2019 (PUC-CIAE, 2022). Additionally, “serious absences”Footnote 6 have increased by 98% compared to 2019, going from 20% that year to 39% in 2022. This growth has been accentuated in rural areas, within the poorest regions of the country, in subsidized private schools. and in primary education. However, it is the students of the public system (Local Education Service and municipal schools) who have the highest percentage of “serious absence,“representing 51% and 42% of the total enrollment, respectively. With 64% of pre-school students and 37% of primary school students recording “serious absences,” more than a third of primary school students in Chile would not be prepared to matriculate into the next grade level. Additionally, about 10% of students have attended less than 50% of the school days (Centro de Estudios Mineduc, 2022a).

School principals attribute increased rates of school absence during and after the pandemic to mainly physical health problems, as well as a general fear of contagion. Principals also identified the low commitment of families to regular school attendance for their children as a salient challenge. In turn, the school principals also recognized that non-attendance was linked to protocols associated with COVID that interrupted the continuity of the school process (Mineduc, 2022b). At the end of 2021 it was estimated that the partial opening modalities implemented by the schools only allowed students to attend classes in person 55% of the time as compared to 2019, which corresponds to an average of 18.9 hours per week (PUC-CIAE, 2021).

Beyond the perceptions of school principals, a 2021 national survey revealed that 58% of parents and caregivers preferred that their child did not attend in-person classes throughout the year regardless of the evolution of infections. Nevertheless, this disposition was strongly socially biased: while 60% and 64% of the parents of subsidized public and private schools shared this provision, this figure only represented 21% of parents from non-subsidized private schools. The same survey showed that a majority of parents did not send their children to in-person classes because they did not trust that their children would respect the protocols and sanitary measures that would prevent them from passing on the virus while other family members waited to receive their vaccinations.Footnote 7 (Fundación, 2020; IPSOS, 2021).

Beyond the general fear of contagion, it’s possible that health protocols taken to reduce the spread of the virus in schools also dissuaded families from returning to in-person learning. To learn in-person, students over the age of five were required to wear a mask at all times, maintain a physical distance of one meter in open and closed spaces, restrict any physical contact between members of the school community, and wash their hands every 2 to 3 hours. The mandatory use of masks for children and adolescents, especially in the case of young children, were increasingly criticized.Footnote 8Additionally, the protocols of action against positive cases of COVID-19 among students often resulted in the suspension of in-person classes for an entire course or reduced/alternating days. These measures may have also impacted willingness to send children to classes, especially given the lack of synchronicity between parent work schedules and childcare needs. In fact, according to data from a November 2021 survey, 39% of schools opened alternating days every day or every week, and 84% maintained shorter school days than they had before the pandemic. Finally, in-person classes were made compulsory for students only in March 2022, while the entire 2020 and 2021 school years attendance was voluntary. Although student dropout decreased in 2020 and 2021 compared to previous years and increased only slightly between 2021 and 2022, this indicator does not necessarily account for an improvement in the retention capacities of schools, since it is highly likely that this fall is due to pandemic policies such as automatic school promotion. Thus, it will be many years before we will be able to quantify the true magnitude of school dropout, since this phenomenon is commonly an end result of accumulated low learning and high absenteeism.

Conclusion: Post-pandemic Challenges for Re-institutionalizing Education

In this chapter we have identified the factors that most challenged Chilean education during the COVID-19 pandemic, and examined the country’s efforts to recover once the health crisis has been controlled. Fundamentally, we have shown that the implementation of distance education resulted in markedly unequal experiences between schools and students, which both reinforced pre-existing inequalities in Chile and created new ones. The depth of this crisis was aggravated by the enormous difficulties encountered by the educational system to resume its in-person activities, which resulted in a massive and prolonged closure of Chilean schools. The return to in-person learning was unevenly distributed in Chile, further harming the most disadvantaged students not only socioeconomically, but socio-emotionally. Attendance rates for in-person classes were very low in 2021 and – although higher – remained chronically low in 2022. Moreover, the return to in-person school activities exposed problems of mental health, coexistence, and school violence that have affected a large proportion of schools, teachers and students. Predictably, the available evidence on student learning and achievement, although still emerging, is appalling in all its dimensions. This is undoubtedly a historic socio-educational crisis for Chilean society.

The evidence and our analysis presented in this chapter reinforced and deepened our view that the pandemic affected the very foundations of the Chilean education system, triggering a process of deinstitutionalization. This deinstitutionalization is linked both to contemporary characteristics of Chilean society and to defining features of its educational system. According to our interpretation, the enormous difficulty of the Chilean school system to reopen timely, massively, and adequately reflects not only the crisis caused by the pandemic, but the difficulties of governing a radically decentralized school system with low institutional capacity for coordination and governance and a lack of trust in public institutions (Bellei & Munoz, 2021). This is the product of a double weakness of Chilean society: the crisis of the institutions of representation and democratic government, and the dismantling of the state capacity to implement effective public policies in a highly privatized system governed by market dynamics. This local phenomenon is added to another international one characterized as a greater decline of the institutional program of education, which paradoxically is associated with its enormous expansion and wide penetration in the lives of people in late modernity (Dubet, 2006; Mehta & Davies, 2018).

The undermining of the educational institution has been accompanied by a persistent weakness of the teaching profession in Chile, even though in the last decade various measures have been implemented to strengthen it (Ávalos, 2013; Ávalos & Bellei, 2019). In fact, the difficulties in ensuring the presence of teaching staff, linked to mental health problems and teacher shortages, reflect structural problems of the Chilean school system that existed prior to the pandemic. Poor working conditions, discrediting of the teaching profession, high dropout of young teachers, and a low capacity to attract new generations of secondary education graduates to the teaching profession have incited an enormous teacher shortage in Chile. At the student level, the crisis reflected in problems of absenteeism, mental health issues, and reduced learning outcomes is unquestionably distressing. The pandemic exacerbated an already existing problem regarding mental health and well-being, since Chilean children and adolescents already had a high prevalence of symptoms associated with stress, depression, and anxiety compared to other countries (Rescorla et al., 2011). For some authors, this goes back to the very form in which most Chilean families socialize their young children, characterized by high levels of violence, repression, and low levels of autonomy and respect (Lecannelier, 2021). Persistent underperformance in academic achievement has been a central issue in Chilean education policy for decades; however, current evidence of a long-term stagnation of student performance in both primary and secondary levels indicates the ineffectiveness of the implemented policies and makes clear the need for a new policy paradigm (Bellei & Munoz, 2021).

As explained, the current Chilean government announced a multidimensional plan to face the consequences of the crisis in the coming years, which includes national strategies for mental health, school coexistence, literacy and numeracy, dropout prevention, school connectivity, teacher training, and massive tutoring programs. Nevertheless, the very crisis of the educational device produced by the pandemic that included the use of the school space, the allocation of school time, the prevalent teaching/learning methodologies, the definition of an appropriate curriculum; among others, aggravated the problem of “returning to normality”. In our view, overcoming this process of deinstitutionalization requires a profound revision of the Chilean education system, since the traditional “school grammar” has been questioned. This crisis can be a great opportunity to adapt Chilean education to the demands of contemporary society (Bellei & Morawietz, 2016), as suggested by the latest UNESCO report calling for a “A New Social Contract for Education” (UNESCO, 2021). Ultimately, we face the fundamental question of what purpose formal education will have in a future Chilean society as a tool for human development and social equality.