Argentine Educational System: Past, present and future.

MARQUINA ,MÓNICA; ACOSTA, FELICITAS

Navigating the C's: Creativity, Care, Compassion, Character, Cosmopolitanism, Contribution and Critical Awareness: An introduction to Comparative Education

Eds. Keurkopie

Lugar: Noordbrug; Año: 2010; p. 125 - 154

Argentina has a long run tradition in education due to the rather quick organization and expansion of its national educational system between the last decades of the XIX century and mid´s of the XX. It is also undergoing, since the late ´90s, successive reforms whose results are currently under debate.   Is in this framework that the chapter presents a description of the Argentine Educational System considering its historical configuration as well as its present-day challenges. The chapter is organized in three parts. The first one introduces an overview on the system?s history with emphasis on two different moments: foundational strands and massification. An analysis of these two faced to the changes promoted by the 90´s reform closes the section.   The second part covers a wide range of aspects related to the system?s organization. Starting from most recent changes, the section undergoes a synthesized, yet thorough, description of the system?s main features related to government and administration, school structure, curriculum, private education, assessment, teacher training and higher education. Main system?s difficulties are mentioned for most of them.  Finally, the last part of the chapter refers to current issues specially related to the implementation of the new National Education Law. As aforementioned, many of these are referred along the chapter so this section seeks to summarize them and provide hints for an analytical prospective view.